No servant was to be seen.

He let himself out pulling the door to behind him with a crash as, in a manner, he was forced to do to get it shut at all.
When the echo of it had died away the woman on the landing leaned over the banister and called out bitterly to the man below "Don't you want to come up and say good-bye." He had an impatient movement of the shoulders and went on pacing to and fro as though he had not heard.

But suddenly he checked himself, stood still for a moment, then with a gloomy face and without taking his hands out of his pockets ran smartly up the stairs.
Already facing the door she turned her head for a whispered taunt: "Come! Confess you were dying to see her stupid little face once more,"-- to which he disdained to answer.
Flora de Barral, still seated before the table at which she had been wording on her sketch, raised her head at the noise of the opening door.
The invading manner of their entrance gave her the sense of something she had never seen before.

She knew them well.

She knew the woman better than she knew her father.