She looked round the room, told me positively that I was very comfortable
there; to which I assented, humbly, acknowledging my undeserved good
fortune.
"Why undeserved?" she wanted to know.
"I engaged these rooms by letter without asking any questions. It might
have been an abominable hole," I explained to her. "I always do things
like that. I don't like to be bothered. This is no great proof of
sagacity--is it? Sagacious people I believe like to exercise that
faculty. I have heard that they can't even help showing it in the
veriest trifles. It must be very delightful. But I know nothing of it.
I think that I have no sagacity--no practical sagacity."
Fyne made an inarticulate bass murmur of protest. I asked after the
children whom I had not seen yet since my return from town. They had
been very well. They were always well. Both Fyne and Mrs. Fyne spoke of
the rude health of their children as if it were a result of moral
excellence; in a peculiar tone which seemed to imply some contempt for
people whose children were liable to be unwell at times. One almost felt
inclined to apologize for the inquiry. And this annoyed me;
unreasonably, I admit, because the assumption of superior merit is not a
very exceptional weakness. Anxious to make myself disagreeable by way of
retaliation I observed in accents of interested civility that the dear
girls must have been wondering at the sudden disappearance of their
mother's young friend. Had they been putting any awkward questions about
Miss Smith. Wasn't it as Miss Smith that Miss de Barral had been
introduced to me?
Mrs. Fyne, staring fixedly but also colouring deeper under her tan, told
me that the children had never liked Flora very much. She hadn't the
high spirits which endear grown-ups to healthy children, Mrs. Fyne
explained unflinchingly. Flora had been staying at the cottage several
times before. Mrs. Fyne assured me that she often found it very
difficult to have her in the house.
"But what else could we do?" she exclaimed.
That little cry of distress quite genuine in its inexpressiveness,
altered my feeling towards Mrs. Fyne. It would have been so easy to have
done nothing and to have thought no more about it. My liking for her
began while she was trying to tell me of the night she spent by the
girl's bedside, the night before her departure with her unprepossessing
relative. That Mrs. Fyne found means to comfort the child I doubt very
much. She had not the genius for the task of undoing that which the hate
of an infuriated woman had planned so well.