eyes off me."
"I see that at this moment," I replied. "But what does it matter

where or how, for the present, she lives? She'll marry infallibly,
marry early, and everything then will change."

"Whom will she marry?" my companiongloomily asked.
"Any one she likes. She's so abnormally pretty that she can do

anything. She'll fascinate some nabob or some prince."
"She'll fascinate him first and bore him afterwards. Moreover

she's not so pretty as you make her out; she hasn't a scrap of a
figure."

"No doubt, but one doesn't in the least miss it."
"Not now," said Mrs. Meldrum, "but one will when she's older and

when everything will have to count."
"When she's older she'll count as a princess, so it won't matter."

"She has other drawbacks," my companion went on. "Those wonderful
eyes are good for nothing but to roll about like sugar-balls--which

they greatly resemble--in a child's mouth. She can't use them."
"Use them? Why, she does nothing else."

"To make fools of young men, but not to read or write, not to do
any sort of work. She never opens a book, and her maid writes her

notes. You'll say that those who live in glass houses shouldn't
throw stones. Of course I know that if I didn't wear my goggles I

shouldn't be good for much."
"Do you mean that Miss Saunt ought to sport such things?" I

exclaimed with more horror than I meant to show.
"I don't prescribe for her; I don't know that they're what she

requires."
"What's the matter with her eyes?" I asked after a moment.

"I don't exactly know; but I heard from her mother years ago that
even as a child they had had for a while to put her into spectacles

and that though she hated them and had been in a fury of disgust,
she would always have to be extremely careful. I'm sure I hope she

is!"
I echoed the hope, but I remember well the impression this made

upon me--my immediate pang of resentment, a disgust almost equal to
Flora's own. I felt as if a great rare sapphire had split in my

hand.
CHAPTER III

This conversation occurred the night before I went back to town. I
settled on the morrow to take a late train, so that I had still my

morning to spend at Folkestone, where during the greater part of it
I was out with my mother. Every one in the place was as usual out

with some one else, and even had I been free to go and take leave
of her I should have been sure that Flora Saunt would not be at

home. Just where she was I presently discovered: she was at the
far end of the cliff, the point at which it overhangs the pretty

view of Sandgate and Hythe. Her back, however, was turned to this
attraction; it rested with the aid of her elbows, thrust slightly

behind her so that her scanty little shoulders were raised toward
her ears, on the high rail that inclosed the down. Two gentlemen

stood before her whose faces we couldn't see but who even as
observed from the rear were visibly absorbed in the charming

figure-piece submitted to them. I was freshly struck with the fact
that this meagre and defective little person, with the cock of her

hat and the flutter of her crape, with her eternalidleness, her
eternal happiness, her absence of moods and mysteries and the

pretty presentation of her feet, which especially now in the
supported slope of her posture occupied with their imperceptibility

so much of the foreground--I was reminded anew, I say, how our
young lady dazzled by some art that the enumeration of her merits

didn't explain and that the mention of her lapses didn't affect.
Where she was amiss nothing counted, and where she was right

everything did. I say she was wanting in mystery, but that after
all was her secret. This happened to be my first chance of

introducing her to my mother, who had not much left in life but the
quiet look from under the hood of her chair at the things which,

when she should have quitted those she loved, she could still trust
to make the world good for them. I wondered an instant how much

she might be moved to trust Flora Saunt, and then while the chair
stood still and she waited I went over and asked the girl to come

and speak to her. In this way I saw that if one of Flora's
attendants was the inevitable young Hammond Synge, master of

ceremonies of her regular court, always offering the use of a
telescope and accepting that of a cigar, the other was a personage

I had not yet encountered, a small pale youth in showy
knickerbockers, whose eyebrows and nose and the glued points of

whose little moustache were extraordinarily uplifted and sustained.
I remember taking him at first for a foreigner and for something of

a pretender: I scarce know why unless because of the motive I felt
in the stare he fixed on me when I asked Miss Saunt to come away.

He struck me a little as a young man practising the social art of
impertinence; but it didn't matter, for Flora came away with

alacrity, bringing all her prettiness and pleasure and gliding over
the grass in that rustle of delicatemourning which made the

endless variety of her garments, as a painter could take heed,
strike one always as the same obscure elegance. She seated herself

on the floor of my mother's chair, a little too much on her right
instep as I afterwards gathered, caressing her still hand, smiling

up into her cold face, commending and approving her without a
reserve and without a doubt. She told her immediately, as if it

were something for her to hold on by, that she was soon to sit to
me for a "likeness," and these words gave me a chance to enquire if

it would be the fate of the picture, should I finish it, to be
presented to the young man in the knickerbockers. Her lips, at

this, parted in a stare; her eyes darkened to the purple of one of
the shadow-patches on the sea. She showed for the passing instant

the face of some splendid tragic mask, and I remembered for the
inconsequence of it what Mrs. Meldrum had said about her sight. I

had derived from this lady a worrying impulse to catechise her, but
that didn't seem exactly kind; so I substituted another question,

inquiring who the pretty young man in knickerbockers might happen
to be.

"Oh a gentleman I met at Boulogne. He has come over to see me."
After a moment she added: "Lord Iffield."

I had never heard of Lord Iffield, but her mention of his having
been at Boulogne helped me to give him a niche. Mrs. Meldrum had

incidentally thrown a certain light on the manners of Mrs. Floyd-
Taylor, Flora's recent hostess in that charming town, a lady who,

it appeared, had a special vocation for helping rich young men to
find a use for their leisure. She had always one or other in hand

and had apparently on this occasion pointed her lesson at the rare
creature on the opposite coast. I had a vague idea that Boulogne

was not a resort of the world's envied; at the same time there
might very well have been a strong attraction there even for one of

the darlings of fortune. I could perfectly understand in any case
that such a darling should be drawn to Folkestone by Flora Saunt.

But it was not in truth of these things I was thinking; what was
uppermost in my mind was a matter which, though it had no sort of

keeping, insisted just then on coming out.
"Is it true, Miss Saunt," I suddenly demanded, "that you're so

unfortunate as to have had some warning about your beautiful eyes?"
I was startled by the effect of my words; the girl threw back her

head, changing colour from brow to chin. "True? Who in the world
says so?" I repented of my question in a flash; the way she met it

made it seem cruel, and I felt my mother look at me in some
surprise. I took care, in answer to Flora's challenge, not to

incriminate Mrs. Meldrum. I answered that the rumour had reached
me only in the vaguest form and that if I had been moved to put it

to the test my very real interest in her must be held responsible.
Her blush died away, but a pair of still prettier tears glistened

in its track. "If you ever hear such a thing said again you can
say it's a horrid lie!" I had brought on a commotion deeper than