* * * * *
"--You understand," Marlow interrupted the current of his narrative,
"that in order to be consecutive in my relation of this affair I am
telling you at once the details which I heard from Mrs. Fyne later in the
day, as well as what little Fyne imparted to me with his usual solemnity
during that morning call. As you may easily guess the Fynes, in their
apartments, had read the news at the same time, and, as a matter of fact,
in the same august and highly moral newspaper, as the governess in the
luxurious mansion a few doors down on the opposite side of the street.
But they read them with different feelings. They were thunderstruck.
Fyne had to explain the full purport of the intelligence to Mrs. Fyne
whose first cry was that of relief. Then that poor child would be safe
from these designing, horrid people. Mrs. Fyne did not know what it
might mean to be suddenly reduced from riches to absolute penury. Fyne
with his masculine imagination was less inclined to rejoice extravagantly
at the girl's escape from the moral dangers which had been menacing her
defenceless existence. It was a confoundedly big price to pay. What an
unfortunate little thing she was! "We might be able to do something to
comfort that poor child at any rate for the time she is here," said Mrs.
Fyne. She felt under a sort of moral obligation not to be indifferent.
But no comfort for anyone could be got by rushing out into the street at
this early hour; and so, following the advice of Fyne not to act hastily,
they both sat down at the window and stared feelingly at the great house,
awful to their eyes in its stolid, prosperous, expensive respectability
with ruin absolutely standing at the door.
By that time, or very soon after, all Brighton had the information and
formed a more or less just appreciation of its gravity. The butler in
Miss de Barral's big house had seen the news, perhaps earlier than
anybody within a mile of the Parade, in the course of his morning duties
of which one was to dry the freshly delivered paper before the fire--an
occasion to glance at it which no intelligent man could have neglected.
He communicated to the rest of the household his vaguely forcible
impression that something had gone d---bly wrong with the affairs of "her
father in London."
This brought an atmosphere of constraint through the house, which Flora
de Barral coming down somewhat later than usual could not help noticing
in her own way. Everybody seemed to stare so stupidly somehow; she
feared a dull day.