However . . .

He gazed contemptuously round the prettily decorated dining-room. He
wrinkled his nose in a puzzled way at the dishes offered to him by the
waiter but refused none, devouring the food with a great appetite and
drinking ("swilling" Fyne called it) gallons of ginger beer, which was
procured for him (in stone bottles) at his request. The difficulty of
keeping up a conversation with that being exhausted Mrs. Fyne herself,
who had come to the table armed with adamantine resolution. The only
memorable thing he said was when, in a pause of gorging himself "with
these French dishes" he deliberately let his eyes roam over the little
tables occupied by parties of diners, and remarked that his wife did for
a moment think of coming down with him, but that he was glad she didn't
do so. "She wouldn't have been at all happy seeing all this alcohol
about. Not at all happy," he declared weightily.

"You must have had a charming evening," I said to Fyne, "if I may judge
from the way you have kept the memory green."

"Delightful," he growled with, positively, a flash of anger at the
recollection, but lapsed back into his solemnity at once. After we had
been silent for a while I asked whether the man took away the girl next
day.

Fyne said that he did; in the afternoon, in a fly, with a few clothes the
maid had got together and brought across from the big house. He only saw
Flora again ten minutes before they left for the railway station, in the
Fynes' sitting-room at the hotel. It was a most painful ten minutes for
the Fynes. The respectable citizen addressed Miss de Barral as "Florrie"
and "my dear," remarking to her that she was not very big "there's not