Very unsatisfactory surroundings.

The girl was known in the streets, was stared at in public places as if she had been a sort of princess, but she was kept with a very ominous consistency, from making any acquaintances--though of course there were many people no doubt who would have been more than willing to--h'm--make themselves agreeable to Miss de Barral.

But this did not enter into the plans of the governess, an intriguing person hatching a most sinister plot under her severe air of distant, fashionable exclusiveness.

Good little Fyne's eyes bulged with solemn horror as he revealed to me, in agitated speech, his wife's more than suspicions, at the time, of that, Mrs., Mrs.What's her name's perfidious conduct.

She actually seemed to have--Mrs.Fyne asserted--formed a plot already to marry eventually her charge to an impecunious relation of her own--a young man with furtive eyes and something impudent in his manner, whom that woman called her nephew, and whom she was always having down to stay with her.
"And perhaps not her nephew.