Chapter 2

Flora Saunt, the only daughter of an old soldier, had lost both her
parents, her mother within a few months. Mrs. Meldrum had known
them, disapproved of them, considerably avoided them: she had
watched the girl, off and on, from her early childhood. Flora,
just twenty, was extraordinarily alone in the world--so alone that
she had no natural chaperon, no one to stay with but a mercenary
stranger, Mrs. Hammond Synge, the sister-in-law of one of the young
men I had just seen. She had lots of friends, but none of them
nice: she kept picking up impossible people. The Floyd-Taylors,
with whom she had been at Boulogne, were simply horrid. The
Hammond Synges were perhaps not so vulgar, but they had no
conscience in their dealings with her.

"She knows what I think of them," said Mrs. Meldrum, "and indeed
she knows what I think of most things."

"She shares that privilege with most of your friends!" I replied
laughing.

"No doubt; but possibly to some of my friends it makes a little
difference. That girl doesn't care a button. She knows best of
all what I think of Flora Saunt."

"And what may your opinion be?"

"Why, that she's not worth troubling about-- an idiot too abysmal."

"Doesn't she care for that?"

"Just enough, as you saw, to hug me till I cry out. She's too
pleased with herself for anything else to matter."

"Surely, my dear friend," I rejoined, "she has a good deal to be
pleased with!"

"So every one tells her, and so you would have told her if I had
given you the chance. However, that doesn't signify either, for
her vanity is beyond all making or mending. She believes in
herself, and she's welcome, after all, poor dear, having only
herself to look to. I've seldom met a young woman more completely
free to be silly. She has a clear course--she'll make a showy
finish."

"Well," I replied, "as she probably will reduce many persons to the
same degraded state, her partaking of it won't stand out so much."

"If you mean that the world's full of twaddlers I quite agree with
you!" cried Mrs. Meldrum, trumpeting her laugh half across the
Channel.

I had after this to consider a little what she would call my
mother's son, but I didn't let it prevent me from insisting on her
making me acquainted with Flora Saunt; indeed I took the bull by
the horns, urging that she had drawn the portrait of a nature which
common charity now demanded of her to put into relation with a
character really fine. Such a frail creature was just an object of
pity. This contention on my part had at first of course been
jocular; but strange to say it was quite the ground I found myself
taking with regard to our young lady after I had begun to know her.
I