Who could say that the girl's father had not once been a fashionable clergyman in the States and that drink had got him and forced him down, step by step, until--to use the child's odd expression--he had come upon the beach?
She was cynical, this spinster.

There was no such a thing as perfection in a mixed world.
Clergymen were human.

Still, it was rather terrible to suspect that one had fallen from grace, but nevertheless the thing was possible.
With the last glimmer of decency he had sent the daughter to his sister.

The poor child! What frightful things she must have seen on that island of hers! The noise of crashing glass caused a diversion; and Ruth turned gratefully toward the sound.
The young man had knocked over the siphon.

He rose, steadied himself, then walked out of the dining room.