was Captain Anthony who had no
appetite. His sister commented on it in a curt, businesslike manner,
and the eldest of his delightful nieces said mockingly: "You have been
taking too much exercise this morning, Uncle Roderick." The mild Uncle
Roderick turned upon her with a "What do you know about it, young lady?"
so charged with suppressed savagery that the whole round table gave one
gasp and went dumb for the rest of the meal. He took no notice whatever
of Flora de Barral. I don't think it was from prudence or any
calculated motive. I believe he was so full of her aspects that he did
not want to look in her direction when there were other people to hamper
his imagination.

You understand I am piecing here bits of disconnected statements. Next
day Flora saw him leaning over the field-gate. When she told me this, I
didn't of course ask her how it was she was there. Probably she could
not have told me how it was she was there. The difficulty here is to
keep steadily in view the then conditions of her existence, a
combination of dreariness and horror.

That hermit-like but not exactly misanthropic sailor was leaning over
the gate moodily. When he saw the white-faced restless Flora drifting
like a lost thing along the road he put his pipe in his pocket and
called out "Good morning, Miss Smith" in a tone of amazing happiness.
She, with one foot in life and the other in a nightmare, was at the same
time inert and unstable, and very much at the mercy of sudden impulses.
She swerved, came distractedly right up to the gate and looking straight
into his eyes: "I am not Miss Smith. That's not my name. Don't call me
by it."

She was shaking as if in a passion. His eyes expressed nothing; he only
unlatched the gate in silence, grasped her arm and drew her in. Then
closing it with a kick--

"Not your name? That's all one to me. Your name's the least thing
about you I care for." He was leading her firmly away from the gate
though she resisted slightly. There was a sort of joy in his eyes which
frightened her. "You are not a princess in disguise," he said with an
unexpected laugh she found blood-curdling. "And that's all I care for.
You had better understand that I am not blind and not a fool. And then
it's plain for even a fool to see that things have been going hard with
you. You are on a lee shore and eating your heart out with worry."

What seemed most awful to her was the elated light in his eyes, the