She set her lips with cruel obstinacy and shook her head. She had her
idea, her completed plan. At that moment the Fynes, still at the window
and watching like a pair of private detectives, saw a man with a long
grey beard and a jovial face go up the steps helping himself with a thick
stick, and knock at the door. Who could he be?
He was one of Miss de Barral's masters. She had lately taken up painting
in water-colours, having read in a high-class woman's weekly paper that a
great many princesses of the European royal houses were cultivating that
art. This was the water-colour morning; and the teacher, a veteran of
many exhibitions, of a venerable and jovial aspect, had turned up with
his usual punctuality. He was no great reader of morning papers, and
even had he seen the news it is very likely he would not have understood
its real purport. At any rate he turned up, as the governess expected
him to do, and the Fynes saw him pass through the fateful door.
He bowed cordially to the lady in charge of Miss de Barral's education,
whom he saw in the hall engaged in conversation with a very good-looking
but somewhat raffish young gentleman. She turned to him graciously:
"Flora is already waiting for you in the drawing-room."
The cultivation of the art said to be patronized by princesses was
pursued in the drawing-room from considerations of the right kind of
light. The governess preceded the master up the stairs and into the room
where Miss de Barral was found arrayed in a holland pinafore (also of the
right kind for the pursuit of the art) and smilingly expectant. The
water-colour lesson enlivened by the jocular conversation of the kindly,
humorous, old man was always great fun; and she felt she would be
compensated for the tiresome beginning of the day.
Her governess generally was present at the lesson; but on this occasion
she only sat down till the master and pupil had gone to work in earnest,
and then as though she had suddenly remembered some order to give, rose
quietly and went out of the room.
Once outside, the servants summoned by the passing maid without a bell
being rung, and quick, quick, let all this luggage be taken down into the
hall, and let one of you call a cab. She stood outside the drawing-room
door on the landing, looking at each piece, trunk, leather cases,
portmanteaus, being carried past her, her brows knitted and her aspect so
sombre and absorbed that it took some little time for the butler to
muster courage enough to speak to her. But he reflected that he was a
free-born Briton and had his rights. He spoke straight to the point but
in the usual respectful manner.