Chance

And all this torture for nothing, in the end! What looked at last like a

possible prize (oh, without illusions! but still a prize) broken in her

hands, fallen in the dust, the bitter dust, of disappointment, she

revelled in the miserable revenge--pretty safe too--only regretting the

unworthiness of the girlish figure which stood for so much she had longed

to be able to spit venom at, if only once, in perfect liberty. The

presence of the young man at her back increased both her satisfaction and

her rage. But the very violence of the attack seemed to defeat its end

by rendering the representative victim as it were insensible. The cause

of this outrage naturally escaping the girl's imagination her attitude

was in effect that of dense, hopeless stupidity. And it is a fact that

the worst shocks of life are often received without outcries, without

gestures, without a flow of tears and the convulsions of sobbing. The

insatiable governess missed these signs exceedingly. This pitiful

stolidity was only a fresh provocation. Yet the poor girl was deadly

pale.

"I was cold," she used to explain to Mrs. Fyne. "I had had time to get

terrified. She had pushed her face so near mine and her teeth looked as

though she wanted to bite me. Her eyes seemed to have become quite dry,

hard and small in a lot of horrible wrinkles. I was too afraid of her to

shudder, too afraid of her to put my fingers to my ears. I didn't know

what I expected her to call me next, but when she told me I was no better

than a beggar--that there would be no more masters, no more servants, no

more horses for me--I said to myself: Is that all? I should have laughed

if I hadn't been too afraid of her to make the least little sound."

It seemed that poor Flora had to know all the possible phases of that

sort of anguish, beginning with instinctive panic, through the bewildered

stage, the frozen stage and the stage of blanched apprehension, down to

the instinctive prudence of extreme terror--the stillness of the mouse.

But when she heard herself called the child of a cheat and a swindler,

the very monstrous unexpectedness of this caused in her a revulsion

towards letting herself go. She screamed out all at once "You mustn't

speak like this of Papa!"

The effort of it uprooted her from that spot where her little feet seemed

dug deep into the thick luxurious carpet, and she retreated backwards to

a distant part of the room, hearing herself repeat "You mustn't, you

mustn't" as if it were somebody else screaming. She came to a chair and

flung herself into it. Thereupon the somebody else ceased screaming and

she lolled, exhausted, sightless, in a silent room, as if indifferent to

everything and without a single thought in her head.