paper, 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 nastily, 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 damnably 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.

In the dining-room the governess in her place, a newspaper
half-concealed under the cloth on her lap, after a few words exchanged
with lips that seemed hardly to move, remaining motionless, her eyes
fixed before her in an enduring silence; and presently Charley coming in
to whom she did not even give a glance. He hardly said good morning,
though he had a half-hearted try to smile at the girl, and sitting
op