she? And she had better come, or--he broke off on an
unfinished threat.

She vanished into the unlighted cottage just as Mrs Fyne came up to the
porch. Nervous, holding her breath in the darkness of the living-room,
she heard her best friend say: "You ought to, have joined us, Roderick."
And then: "Have you seen Miss Smith anywhere?"

Flora shuddered, expecting Anthony to break out into betraying
imprecations on Miss Smith's head, and cause a painful and humiliating
explanation. She imagined him full of his mysterious ferocity. To her
great surprise, Anthony's voice sounded very much as usual, with perhaps
a slight tinge of grimness. "Miss Smith! No. I've seen no Miss
Smith."

Mrs Fyne seemed satisfied--and not much concerned really.

Flora, relieved, got clear away to her room upstairs, and shutting her
door quietly, dropped into a chair. She was used to reproaches, abuse,
to all sorts of wicked ill-usage--short of actual beating on her body.
Otherwise inexplicable angers had cut and slashed and trampled down her
youth without mercy--and mainly, it appeared, because she was the
financier de Barral's daughter and also condemned to a degrading sort of
poverty through the action of treacherous men who had turned upon her
father in his hour of need. And she thought with the tenderest possible
affection of that upright figure buttoned up in a long frock-coat,
soft-voiced and having but little to say to his girl. She seemed to
feel his hand closed round hers. On his flying visits to Brighton he
would always walk hand in hand with her. People stared covertly at
them; the band was playing; and there was the sea--the blue gaiety of
the sea. They were quietly happy together.--It was all over!

An immense anguish of the present wrung her heart, and she nearly cried
aloud. That dread of what was before her which had been eating up her
courage slowly in the course of odious years, flamed up into an access
of panic, that sort of headlong panic which had already driven her out
twice to the top of the cliff-like quarry. She jumped up saying to
herself: "Why not now? At once! Yes. I'll do it now--in the dark!"
The very horror of it seemed to give her additional resolution.

She came down the staircase quietly, and only on the point of opening
the door and because of the discovery that it was unfastened, she
remembered Captain Anthony's threat to stay in the garden all night.
She hesitated. She did not understa