She wasn't going to put up
with such a life and, having just come out of some ducal family, she
bullied de Barral in a very lofty fashion. To pacify her he took a
splendidly furnished house in the most expensive part of Brighton for
them, and now and then ran down for a week-end, with a trunk full of
exquisite sweets and with his hat full of money. The governess spent it
for him in extra ducal style. She was nearly forty and harboured a
secret taste for patronizing young men of sorts--of a certain sort. But
of that Mrs. Fyne of course had no personal knowledge then; she told me
however that even in the Priory days she had suspected her of being an
artificial, heartless, vulgar-minded woman with the lowest possible
ideals. But de Barral did not know it. He literally did not know
anything . . . "
"But tell me, Marlow," I interrupted, "how do you account for this
opinion? He must have been a personality in a sense--in some one sense
surely. You don't work the greatest material havoc of a decade at least,
in a commercial community, without having something in you.
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