He had cared for her lovely face, cared for it in the amused and haunted way it had been her poor little delusive gift to make men care; and her lovely face, damn it, with the monstrous gear she had begun to rig upon it, was just what had let him in.

He had in the judgment of his family done everything that could be expected of him; he had made--Mrs.Meldrum had herself seen the letter--a "handsome" offer of pecuniary compensation.

Oh if Flora, with her incredible buoyancy, was in a manner on her feet again now it was not that she had not for weeks and weeks been prone in the dust.

Strange were the humiliations, the forms of anguish, it was given some natures to survive.

That Flora had survived was perhaps after all a proof she was reserved for some final mercy.