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He
refused to hold any communication with her whatever."
I remembered what Mrs. Fyne had told me before of the view she had years
ago of de Barral clinging to the child at the side of his wife's grave
and later on of these two walking hand in hand the observed of all eyes
by the sea. Pictures from Dickens--pregnant with pathos.

CHAPTER SIX--FLORA

"A very singular prohibition," remarked Mrs. Fyne after a short silence.
"He seemed to love the child."
She was puzzled. But I surmised that it might have been the sullenness
of a man unconscious of guilt and standing at bay to fight his
"persecutors," as he called them; or else the fear of a softer emotion
weakening his defiant attitude; perhaps, even, it was a self-denying
ordinance, in order to spare the girl the sight of her father in the
dock, accused of cheating, sentenced as a swindler--proving the
possession of a certain moral delicacy.
Mrs. Fyne didn't know what to think. She supposed it might have been
mere callousness. But the people amongst whom the girl had fallen had
positively not a grain of moral delicacy.


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