f contempt for speculators that fail, and a conceited
satisfaction with his own respectable vulgarity.

With Mrs. Fyne the manner of the obscure cousin of de Barral was but
little less offensive. He looked at her rather slyly but her cold,
decided demeanour impressed him. Mrs. Fyne on her side was simply
appalled by the personage, but did not show it outwardly. Not even when
the man remarked with false simplicity that Florrie--her name was Florrie
wasn't it? would probably miss at first all her grand friends. And when
he was informed that the girl was in bed, not feeling well at all he
showed an unsympathetic alarm. She wasn't an invalid was she? No. What
was the matter with her then?

An extreme distaste for that respectable member of society was depicted
in Fyne's face even as he was telling me of him after all these years. He
was a specimen of precisely the class of which people like the Fynes have
the least experience; and I imagine he jarred on them painfully. He
possessed all the civic virtues in their very meanest form, and the
finishing touch was given by a low sort of consciousness he manifested of
possessing them. His industry was exemplary. He wished to catch the
earliest possible train next morning. It seems that for seven and twenty
years he had never missed being seated on his office-stool at the factory
punctually at ten o'clock every day. He listened to Mrs. Fyne's
objections with undisguised impatience. Why couldn't Florrie get up and
have her breakfast at eight like other people? In his house the
breakfast was at eight sharp. Mrs. Fyne's polite stoicism overcame him
at last. He had come down at a very great personal inconvenience, he
assured her with displeasure, but he gave up the early train.

The good Fynes didn't dare to look at each other before this unforeseen
but perfectly authorized guardian, the same thought springing up in their
minds: Poor girl! Poor girl! If the women of the family were like this
too! . . . And of course they would be. Poor girl! But what could they
have done even if they had been prepared to raise objections. The person
in the frock-coat had the father's note; he had shown it to Fyne. Just a
request to take care of the girl--as her nearest relative--without any
explanation or a single allusion to the financial catastrophe, its tone
strangely detached and in its very silence on the point giving occasion
to think that the writer was not uneasy as to t