she has consulted? She must have been to people. How else can she have
been condemned?"

"Condemned to what? Condemned to perpetual nippers? Of course she has
consulted some of the big specialists, but she has done it, you may be
sure, in the most clandestine manner; and even if it were supposable that
they would tell you anything--which I altogether doubt--you would have
great difficulty in finding out which men they are. Therefore leave it
alone; never show her what you suspect."

I even before he quitted me asked him to promise me this. "All right, I
promise"--but he was gloomy enough. He was a lover facing the fact that
there was no limit to the deceit his loved one was ready to practise: it
made so remarkably little difference. I could see by what a stretch his
passionate pity would from this moment overlook the girl's fatuity and
folly. She was always accessible to him--that I knew; for if she had
told him he was an idiot to dream she could dream of him, she would have
rebuked the imputation of having failed to make it clear that she would
always be glad to regard him as a friend. What were most of her
friends--what were all of them--but repudiated idiots? I was perfectly
aware that in her conversations and confidences I myself for instance had
a niche in the gallery. As regards poor Dawling I knew how often he
still called on the Hammond Synges. It was not there but under the wing
of the Floyd-Taylors that her intimacy with Lord Iffield most flourished.
At all events, when a week after the visit I have just summarised Flora's
name was one morning brought up to me, I jumped at the conclusion that
Dawling had been with her, and even I fear briefly entertained the
thought that he had broken his word.