ith my own--a circumstance indicating her rare sagacity,
inasmuch as her ground for undertaking it was a very different thing from
what Flora's wonderful visit had made of mine. I remarked to her that
what I had seen in the shop was sufficiently striking, but that I had
seen a great deal more that morning in my studio. "In short," I said,
"I've seen everything."

She was mystified. "Everything?"

"The poor creature is under the darkest of clouds. Oh she came to
triumph, but she remained to talk something in the nature of sense! She
put herself completely in my hands--she does me the honour to intimate
that of all her friends I'm the most disinterested. After she had
announced to me that Lord Iffield was utterly committed to her and that
for the present I was absolutely the only person in the secret, she
arrived at her real business. She had had a suspicion of me ever since
that day at Folkestone when I asked her for the truth about her eyes. The
truth is what you and I both guessed. She's in very bad danger."

"But from what cause? I, who by God's mercy have kept mine, know
everything that can be known about eyes," said Mrs. Meldrum.

"She might have kept hers if she had profited by God's mercy, if she had
done in time, done years ago, what was imperatively ordered her; if she
hadn't in fine been cursed with the loveliness that was to make her
behaviour a thing of fable. She may still keep her sight, or what
remains of it, if she'll sacrifice--and after all so little--that purely
superficial charm. She must do as you've done; she must wear, dear lady,
what you wear!"

What my companion wore glittered for the moment like a melon-frame in
August. "Heaven forgive her--now I understand!" She flushed for dismay.

But I wasn't afraid of the effect on her good nature of her thus seeing,
through her great goggles, why it had always been that Flora held her at
such a distance. "I can't tell you," I said, "from what special
affection, what state of the eye, her danger proceeds: that's the one
thing she succeeded this morning in keeping from me. She knows it
herself perfectly; she has had the best advice in Europe. 'It's a thing
that's awful, simply awful'--that was the only account she would give me.
Year before last, while she was at Boulogne, she went for three days with
Mrs. Floyd-Taylor to Paris. She there surreptitiously consulted the
greatest man--even Mrs. Floyd-Taylor doesn't know. Last autumn in