It was when I saw all this that I judged how, though it was the last thing she asked for, what one would ever most have at her service was a curious compassion. That sentiment was coloured by the vision of the dire exposure of a being whom vanity had put so off her guard. Hers was the only vanity I have ever known that made its possessor superlatively soft. Mrs. Meldrum's further information contributed moreover to these indulgences--her account of the girl's neglected childhood and queer continental relegations, with straying squabbling Monte-Carlo-haunting parents;the more invidious picture, above all, of her pecuniary arrangement, still in force, with the Hammond Synges, who really, though they never took her out--practically she went out alone--had their hands half the time in her pocket. She had to pay for everything, down to her share of the wine-bills and the horses' fodder, down to Bertie Hammond Synge's fare in the "underground"when he went to the City for her. She had been left with just money enough to turn her head; and it hadn't even been put in trust, nothing prudent or proper had been done with it. She could spend her capital, and at the rate she was going, expensive, extravagant and with a swarm of parasites to help, it certainly wouldn't last very long.
"Couldn't YOU perhaps take her, independent, unencumbered as you are?" I asked of Mrs. Meldrum. "You're probably, with one exception, the sanest person she knows, and you at least wouldn't scandalously fleece her.""How do you know what I wouldn't do?" my humorous friend demanded.
"Of course I've thought how I can help her--it has kept me awake at night. But doing it's impossible; she'll take nothing from me.
You know what she does--she hugs me and runs away. She has an instinct about me and feels that I've one about her. And then she dislikes me for another reason that I'm not quite clear about, but that I'm well aware of and that I shall find out some day. So far as her settling with me goes it would be impossible moreover here;she wants naturally enough a much wider field. She must live in London--her game is there. So she takes the line of adoring me, of saying she can never forget that I was devoted to her mother--which I wouldn't for the world have been--and of giving me a wide berth.
I think she positively dislikes to look at me. It's all right;there's no obligation; though people in general can't take their 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 companion gloomily 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 Ishouldn't be good for much."
"Do you mean that Miss Saunt ought to sport such things?" Iexclaimed 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.
