Anxious to make myself disagreeable by way of
retaliation I observed in accents of interested civility that the dear
girls must have been wondering at the sudden disappearance of their
mother's young friend. Had they been putting any awkward questions about
Miss Smith. Wasn't it as Miss Smith that Miss de Barral had been
introduced to me?
Mrs. Fyne, staring fixedly but also colouring deeper under her tan, told
me that the children had never liked Flora very much. She hadn't the
high spirits which endear grown-ups to healthy children, Mrs. Fyne
explained unflinchingly. Flora had been staying at the cottage several
times before. Mrs. Fyne assured me that she often found it very
difficult to have her in the house.
"But what else could we do?" she exclaimed.
That little cry of distress quite genuine in its inexpressiveness,
altered my feeling towards Mrs. Fyne. It would have been so easy to have
done nothing and to have thought no more about it. My liking for her
began while she was trying to tell me of the night she spent by the
girl's bedside, the night before her departure with her unprepossessing
relative.
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