CHAPTER SIX--FLORA.
"A very singular prohibition," remarked Mrs.Fyne after a short silence.
"He seemed to love the child." She was puzzled.

But I surmised that it might have been the sullenness of a man unconscious of guilt and standing at bay to fight his "persecutors," as he called them; or else the fear of a softer emotion weakening his defiant attitude; perhaps, even, it was a self-denying ordinance, in order to spare the girl the sight of her father in the dock, accused of cheating, sentenced as a swindler--proving the possession of a certain moral delicacy.
Mrs.Fyne didn't know what to think.

She supposed it might have been mere callousness.

But the people amongst whom the girl had fallen had positively not a grain of moral delicacy.

Of that she was certain.