ne avoids an importunate contact,
defeating her attempt rudely. She did not try again but kept pace with
his stride, and Mrs. Fyne watched them, walking independently, turn the
corner of the street side by side, disappear for ever.

The Fynes looked at each other eloquently, doubtfully: What do you think
of this? Then with common accord turned their eyes back to the street
door, closed, massive, dark; the great, clear-brass knocker shining in a
quiet slant of sunshine cut by a diagonal line of heavy shade filling the
further end of the street. Could the girl be already gone? Sent away to
her father? Had she any relations? Nobody but de Barral himself ever
came to see her, Mrs. Fyne remembered; and she had the instantaneous,
profound, maternal perception of the child's loneliness--and a girl too!
It was irresistible. And, besides, the departure of the governess was
not without its encouraging influence. "I am going over at once to find
out," she declared resolutely but still staring across the street. Her
intention was arrested by the sight of that awful, sombrely glistening
door, swinging back suddenly on the yawning darkness of the hall, out of
which literally flew out, right out on the pavement, almost without
touching the white steps, a little figure swathed in a holland pinafore
up to the chin, its hair streaming back from its head, darting past a
lamp-post, past the red pillar-box . . . "Here," cried Mrs. Fyne; "she's
coming here! Run, John! Run!"

Fyne bounded out of the room. This is his own word. Bounded! He
assured me with intensified solemnity that he bounded; and the sight of
the short and muscular Fyne bounding gravely about the circumscribed
passages and staircases of a small, very high class, private hotel, would
have been worth any amount of money to a man greedy of memorable
impressions. But as I looked at him, the desire of laughter at my very
lips, I asked myself: how many men could be found ready to compromise
their cherished gravity for the sake of the unimportant child of a ruined
financier with an ugly, black cloud already wreathing his head. I didn't
laugh at little Fyne. I encouraged him: "You did!--very good . . .
Well?"

His main thought was to save the child from some unpleasant interference.
There was a porter downstairs, page boys; some people going away with
their trunks in the passage; a railway omnibus at the door,
white-breasted waiters dodging about the entrance.

H