"If you mean what right I have . . . " She move slightly a hand in a
worn brown glove as much as to say she could not question anyone's right
against such an outcast as herself.
I ought to have been moved perhaps; but I only noted the total absence of
humility . . . "No right at all," I continued, "but just interest. Mrs.
Fyne--it's too difficult to explain how it came about--has talked to me
of you--well--extensively."
No doubt Mrs. Fyne had told me the truth, Flora said brusquely with an
unexpected hoarseness of tone. This very dress she was wearing had been
given her by Mrs. Fyne. Of course I looked at it. It could not have
been a recent gift. Close-fitting and black, with heliotrope silk
facings under a figured net, it looked far from new, just on this side of
shabbiness; in fact, it accentuated the slightness of her figure, it went
well in its suggestion of half mourning with the white face in which the
unsmiling red lips alone seemed warm with the rich blood of life and
passion.
Little Fyne was staying up there an unconscionable time. Was he arguing,
preaching, remonstrating? Had he discovered in himself a capacity and a
taste for that sort of thing? Or was he perhaps, in an intense dislike
for the job, beating about the bush and only puzzling Captain Anthony,
the providential man, who, if he expected the girl to appear at any
moment, must have been on tenterhooks all the time, and beside himself
with impatience to see the back of his brother-in-law. How was it that
he had not got rid of Fyne long before in any case? I don't mean by
actually throwing him out of the window, but in some other resolute
manner.
Surely Fyne had not impressed him. That he was an impressionable man I
could not doubt. The presence of the girl there on the pavement before
me proved this up to the hilt--and, well, yes, touchingly enough.
It so happened that in their wanderings to and fro our glances met. They
met and remained in contact more familiar than a hand-clasp, more
communicative, more expressive. There was something comic too in the
whole situation, in the poor girl and myself waiting together on the
broad pavement at a corner public-house for the issue of Fyne's
ridiculous mission. But the comic when it is human becomes quickly
painful. Yes, she was infinitely anxious. And I was asking myself
whether this poignant tension of her suspense depended--to put it
plainly--on hunger or love.
The answer would have been of some interest to Captain Anthony. For my
part, in the presence of a young girl I always become convinced that the
dreams of sentiment--like the consoling mysteries of Faith--are
invincible; that it is never never reason which governs men and women.