reflective mind, you know), and then as if Mrs. Fyne's whispers had an
occult power over that door it opened wide again and the white-bearded
man issued, astonishingly active in his movements, using his stick almost
like a leaping-pole to get down the steps; and hobbled away briskly along
the pavement. Naturally the Fynes were too far off to make out the
expression of his face. But it would not have helped them very much to a
guess at the conditions inside the house. The expression was humorously
puzzled--nothing more.

For, at the end of his lesson, seizing his trusty stick and coming out
with his habitual vivacity, he very nearly cannoned just outside the
drawing-room door into the back of Miss de Barral's governess. He
stopped himself in time and she turned round swiftly. It was
embarrassing; he apologised; but her face was not startled; it was not
aware of him; it wore a singular expression of resolution. A very
singular expression which, as it were, detained him for a moment. In
order to cover his embarrassment, he made some inane remark on the
weather, upon which, instead of returning another inane remark according
to the tacit rules of the game, she only gave him a smile of unfathomable
meaning. Nothing could have been more singular. The good-looking young
gentleman of questionable appearance took not the slightest notice of him
in the hall. No servant was to be seen. He let himself out pulling the
door to behind him with a crash as, in a manner, he was forced to do to
get it shut at all.

When the echo of it had died away the woman on the landing leaned over
the banister and called out bitterly to the man below "Don't you want to
come up and say good-bye." He had an impatient movement of the shoulders
and went on pacing to and fro as though he had not heard. But suddenly
he checked himself, stood still for a moment, then with a gloomy face and
without taking his hands out of his pockets ran smartly up the stairs.
Already facing the door she turned her head for a whispered taunt: "Come!
Confess you were dying to see her stupid little face once more,"--to
which he disdained to answer.

Flora de Barral, still seated before the table at which she had been
wording on her sketch, raised her head at the noise of the opening door.
The invading manner of their entrance gave her the sense of something she
had never seen before. She knew them well. She knew the woman better
than she knew her father. There