ope, but I remember well the impression this made upon
me--my immediate pang of resentment, a disgust almost equal to Flora's
own. I felt as if a great rare sapphire had split in my hand.

CHAPTER III

This conversation occurred the night before I went back to town. I
settled on the morrow to take a late train, so that I had still my
morning to spend at Folkestone, where during the greater part of it I was
out with my mother. Every one in the place was as usual out with some
one else, and even had I been free to go and take leave of her I should
have been sure that Flora Saunt would not be at home. Just where she was
I presently discovered: she was at the far end of the cliff, the point at
which it overhangs the pretty view of Sandgate and Hythe. Her back,
however, was turned to this attraction; it rested with the aid of her
elbows, thrust slightly behind her so that her scanty little shoulders
were raised toward her ears, on the high rail that inclosed the down. Two
gentlemen stood before her whose faces we couldn't see but who even as
observed from the rear were visibly absorbed in the charming figure-piece
submitted to them. I was freshly struck with the fact that this meagre
and defective little person, with the cock of her hat and the flutter of
her crape, with her eternal idleness, her eternal happiness, her absence
of moods and mysteries and the pretty presentation of her feet, which
especially now in the supported slope of her posture occupied with their
imperceptibility so much of the foreground--I was reminded anew, I say,
how our young lady dazzled by some art that the enumeration of her merits
didn't explain and that the mention of her lapses didn't affect. Where
she was amiss nothing counted, and where she was right everything did. I
say she was wanting in mystery, but that after all was her secret. This
happened to be my first chance of introducing her to my mother, who had
not much left in life but the quiet look from under the hood of her chair
at the things which, when she should have quitted those she loved, she
could still trust to make the world good for them. I wondered an instant
how much she might be moved to trust Flora Saunt, and then while the
chair stood still and she waited I went over and asked the girl to come
and speak to her. In this way I saw that if one of Flora's attendants
was the inevitable young Hammond Synge, master of ceremonies of her
regular court, always off