ith dear Mrs. Floyd-Taylor: this
accounted for the effusiveness of her reunion with dear Mrs. Meldrum. Her
black garments were of the freshest and daintiest; she suggested a pink-
and-white wreath at a showy funeral. She confounded us for three minutes
with her presence; she was a beauty of the great conscious public
responsible order. The young men, her companions, gazed at her and
grinned: I could see there were very few moments of the day at which
young men, these or others, would not be so occupied. The people who
approached took leave of their manners; every one seemed to linger and
gape. When she brought her face close to Mrs. Meldrum's--and she
appeared to be always bringing it close to somebody's--it was a marvel
that objects so dissimilar should express the same general identity, the
unmistakable character of the English gentlewoman. Mrs. Meldrum
sustained the comparison with her usual courage, but I wondered why she
didn't introduce me: I should have had no objection to the bringing of
such a face close to mine. However, by the time the young lady moved on
with her escort she herself bequeathed me a sense that some such
_rapprochement_ might still occur. Was this by reason of the general
frequency of encounters at Folkestone, or by reason of a subtle
acknowledgment that she contrived to make of the rights, on the part of
others, that such beauty as hers created? I was in a position to answer
that question after Mrs. Meldrum had answered a few of mine.

CHAPTER II

Flora Saunt, the only daughter of an old soldier, had lost both her
parents, her mother within a few months. Mrs. Meldrum had known them,
disapproved of them, considerably avoided them: she had watched the girl,
off and on, from her early childhood. Flora, just twenty, was
extraordinarily alone in the world--so alone that she had no natural
chaperon, no one to stay with but a mercenary stranger, Mrs. Hammond
Synge, the sister-in-law of one of the young men I had just seen. She
had lots of friends, but none of them nice: she kept picking up
impossible people. The Floyd-Taylors, with whom she had been at
Boulogne, were simply horrid. The Hammond Synges were perhaps not so
vulgar, but they had no conscience in their dealings with her.

"She knows what I think of them," said Mrs. Meldrum, "and indeed she
knows what I think of most things."

"She shares that privilege with most of your friends!" I replied
laughing.

"No doubt;