had no objection to the bringing of
such a face close to mine. However, when 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 Mis. Meldrum had answered a few of mine.

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; but possibly to some of my friends it makes a little
difference. That girl doesn't care a button. She knows best of all what
I think of Flora Saunt."

"And what may your opinion be?"

"Why, that she's not worth talking about--an idiot too abysmal."

"Doesn't she care for that?"

"Just enough, as you saw, to hug me till I cry out. She's too pleased
with herself for anything else to matter."

"Surely, my dear friend," I rejoined, "she has a good deal to be pleased
with!"

"So every one tells her, and so you would have told her if I had given
you a chance. However, that doesn't signify either, for her vanity
is beyond all making or mending. She believes in herself, and she's
welcome, after all, poor dear, having only herself to look to. I've
seldom met a young woman more completely at liberty to be silly. She has
a clear course--she'll make a showy finish."

"Well," I replied, "as she probably will reduce many persons to the same
degraded state, her partaking of it won't stand out so