I said: "And so she went away with that respectable ruffian." Mrs.Fyne moved her shoulders slightly--"What else could she have done ?" I agreed with her by another hopeless gesture.

It isn't so easy for a girl like Flora de Barral to become a factory hand, a pathetic seamstress or even a barmaid.

She wouldn't have known how to begin.

She was the captive of the meanest conceivable fate.

And she wasn't mean enough for it.