Chance

She looked round the room, told me positively that I was very comfortable

there; to which I assented, humbly, acknowledging my undeserved good

fortune.

"Why undeserved?" she wanted to know.

"I engaged these rooms by letter without asking any questions. It might

have been an abominable hole," I explained to her. "I always do things

like that. I don't like to be bothered. This is no great proof of

sagacity--is it? Sagacious people I believe like to exercise that

faculty. I have heard that they can't even help showing it in the

veriest trifles. It must be very delightful. But I know nothing of it.

I think that I have no sagacity--no practical sagacity."

Fyne made an inarticulate bass murmur of protest. I asked after the

children whom I had not seen yet since my return from town. They had

been very well. They were always well. Both Fyne and Mrs. Fyne spoke of

the rude health of their children as if it were a result of moral

excellence; in a peculiar tone which seemed to imply some contempt for

people whose children were liable to be unwell at times. One almost felt

inclined to apologize for the inquiry. And this annoyed me;

unreasonably, I admit, because the assumption of superior merit is not a

very exceptional weakness. 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. That Mrs. Fyne found means to comfort the child I doubt very

much. She had not the genius for the task of undoing that which the hate

of an infuriated woman had planned so well.