" He had dragged her out by the
arm. She had seen that plainly. She remembered it. That was it! The
woman was mad. "Oh! Mrs. Fyne, don't tell me she wasn't mad. If you
had only seen her face . . . "
But Mrs. Fyne was unflinching in her idea that as much truth as could be
told was due in the way of kindness to the girl, whose fate she feared
would be to live exposed to the hardest realities of unprivileged
existences. She explained to her that there were in the world
evil-minded, selfish people. Unscrupulous people . . . These two persons
had been after her father's money. The best thing she could do was to
forget all about them.
"After papa's money? I don't understand," poor Flora de Barral had
murmured, and lay still as if trying to think it out in the silence and
shadows of the room where only a night-light was burning. Then she had a
long shivering fit while holding tight the hand of Mrs. Fyne whose
patient immobility by the bedside of that brutally murdered childhood did
infinite honour to her humanity. That vigil must have been the more
trying because I could see very well that at no time did she think the
victim particularly charming or sympathetic.
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