lush.

"Next day," she uttered distinctly, "I didn't think. I remembered. That
was enough. I remembered what I should never have forgotten. Never. And
Captain Anthony arrived at the cottage in the evening."

"Ah yes. Captain Anthony," I murmured. And she repeated also in a
murmur, "Yes! Captain Anthony." The faint flush of warm life left her
face. I subdued my voice still more and not looking at her: "You found
him sympathetic?" I ventured.

Her long dark lashes went down a little with an air of calculated
discretion. At least so it seemed to me. And yet no one could say that
I was inimical to that girl. But there you are! Explain it as you may,
in this world the friendless, like the poor, are always a little suspect,
as if honesty and delicacy were only possible to the privileged few.

"Why do you ask?" she said after a time, raising her eyes suddenly to
mine in an effect of candour which on the same principle (of the
disinherited not being to be trusted) might have been judged equivocal.

"If you mean what right I have . . . " She move slightly a hand in a
worn brown glove as much as to say she could not question anyone's right
against such an outcast as herself.

I ought to have been moved perhaps; but I only noted the total absence of
humility . . . "No right at all," I continued, "but just interest. Mrs.
Fyne--it's too difficult to explain how it came about--has talked to me
of you--well--extensively."

No doubt Mrs. Fyne had told me the truth, Flora said brusquely with an
unexpected hoarseness of tone. This very dress she was wearing had been
given her by Mrs. Fyne. Of course I looked at it. It could not have
been a recent gift. Close-fitting and black, with heliotrope silk
facings under a figured net, it looked far from new, just on this side of
shabbiness; in fact, it accentuated the slightness of her figure, it went
well in its suggestion of half mourning with the white face in which the
unsmiling red lips alone seemed warm with the rich blood of life and
passion.

Little Fyne was staying up there an unconscionable time. Was he arguing,
preaching, remonstrating? Had he discovered in himself a capacity and a
taste for that sort of thing? Or was he perhaps, in an intense dislike
for the job, beating about the bush and only puzzling Captain Anthony,
the providential man, who, if he expected the girl to appear at any
moment, must have been on tenterhooks all the time, and beside himse