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.