"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. Of that she was certain. Mrs.

Fyne could not undertake to give me an idea of their abominable

vulgarity. Flora used to tell her something of her life in that

household, over there, down Limehouse way. It was incredible. It passed

Mrs. Fyne's comprehension. It was a sort of moral savagery which she

could not have thought possible.

I, on the contrary, thought it very possible. I could imagine easily how

the poor girl must have been bewildered and hurt at her reception in that

household--envied for her past while delivered defenceless to the tender

mercies of people without any fineness either of feeling or mind, unable

to understand her misery, grossly curious, mistaking her manner for

disdain, her silent shrinking for pride. The wife of the "odious person"

was witless and fatuously conceited. Of the two girls of the house one

was pious and the other a romp; both were coarse-minded--if they may be

credited with any mind at all. The rather numerous men of the family

were dense and grumpy, or dense and jocose. None in that grubbing lot

had enough humanity to leave her alone. At first she was made much of,

in an offensively patronising manner. The connection with the great de

Barral gratified their vanity even in the moment of the smash. They

dragged her to their place of worship, whatever it might have been, where

the congregation stared at her, and they gave parties to other beings

like themselves at which they exhibited her with ignoble

self-satisfaction. She did not know how to defend herself from their

importunities, insolence and exigencies. She lived amongst them, a

passive victim, quivering in every nerve, as if she were flayed. After

the trial her position became still worse. On the least occasion and

even on no occasions at all she was scolded, or else taunted with her

dependence. The pious girl lectured her on her defects, the romping girl

teased her with contemptuous references to her accomplishments, and was

always trying to pick insensate quarrels with her about some "fellow" or

other. The mother backed up her girls invariably, adding her own silly,

wounding remarks. I must say they were probably not aware of the

ugliness of their conduct. They were nasty amongst themselves as a

matter of course; their disputes were nauseating in origin, in manner, in

the spirit of mean selfishness. These women, too, seemed to enjoy

greatly any sort of row and were always ready to combine together to make

awful scenes to the luckless girl on incredibly flimsy pretences. Thus

Flora on one occasion had been reduced to rage and despair, had her most

secret feelings lacerated, had obtained a view of the utmost baseness to

which common human nature can descend--I won't say a propos de bottes

as the French would excellently put it, but literally a propos of some

mislaid cheap lace trimmings for a nightgown the romping one was making

for herself. Yes, that was the origin of one of the grossest scenes

which, in their repetition, must have had a deplorable effect on the

unformed character of the most pitiful of de Barral's victims. I have it

from Mrs. Fyne. The girl turned up at the Fynes' house at half-past nine

on a cold, drizzly evening. She had walked bareheaded, I believe, just

as she ran out of the house, from somewhere in Poplar to the

neighbourhood of Sloane Square--without stopping, without drawing breath,

if only for a sob.




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