"A very singular prohibition," remarked Mrs. Fyne after a short silence. "He seemed to
love the child."
She was puzzled. But I surmised that it might have been the sullenness of a man
unconscious of guilt and standing at bay to fight his "persecutors," as he called them; or
else the fear of a softer emotion weakening his defiant attitude; perhaps, even, it was a
self-denying ordinance, in order to spare the girl the sight of her father in the dock,
accused of cheating, sentenced as a swindler--proving the possession of a certain
moral delicacy.
Mrs. Fyne didn't know what to think. She supposed it might have been mere
callousness. But the people amongst whom the girl had fallen had positively not a grain
of moral delicacy. Of that she was certain. Mrs. Fyne could not undertake to give me an
idea of their abominable vulgarity. Flora used to tell her something of her life in that
household, over there, down Limehouse way. It was incredible. It passed Mrs. Fyne's
comprehension. It was a sort of moral savagery which she could not have thought
possible.
I, on the contrary, thought it very possible. I could imagine easily how the poor girl must
have been bewildered and hurt at her reception in that household--envied for her past
while delivered defenceless to the tender mercies of people without any fineness either
of feeling or mind, unable to understand her misery, grossly curious, mistaking her
manner for disdain, her silent shrinking for pride. The wife of the "odious person" was
witless and fatuously conceited. Of the two girls of the house one was pious and the
other a romp; both were coarse-minded--if they may be credited with any mind at all.
The rather numerous men of the family were dense and grumpy, or dense and jocose.
None in that grubbing lot had enough humanity to leave her alone. At first she was
made much of, in an offensively patronising manner. The connection with the great de
Barral gratified their vanity even in the moment of the smash. They dragged her to their
place of worship, whatever it might have been, where the congregation stared at her,
and they gave parties to other beings like themselves at which they exhibited her with
ignoble self-satisfaction. She did not know how to defend herself from their
importunities, insolence and exigencies. She lived amongst them, a passive victim,
quivering in every nerve, as if she were flayed. After the trial her position became still
worse. On the least occasion and even on no occasions at all she was scolded, or else
taunted with her dependence. The pious girl lectured her on her defects, the romping
girl teased her with contemptuous references to her accomplishments, and was always
trying to pick insensate quarrels with her about some "fellow" or other. The mother
backed up her girls invariably, adding her own silly, wounding remarks. I must say they
were probably not aware of the ugliness of their conduct. They were nasty amongst
themselves as a matter of course; their disputes were nauseating in origin, in manner, in
the spirit of mean selfishness. These women, too, seemed to enjoy greatly any sort of
row and were always ready to combine together to make awful scenes to the luckless
