in my character of a lover of peace, soothed by that conclusion, I prepared myself to enjoy a fine day.

"And it was a fine day; a delicious day, with the horror of the Infinite veiled by the splendid tent of blue; a day innocently bright like a child with a washed face, fresh like an innocent young girl, suave in welcoming one's respects like like a Roman prelate. I love such days. They are perfection for remaining indoors. And I enjoyed it temperamentally in a chair, my feet up on the sill of the open window, a book in my hands and the murmured harmonies of wind and sun in my heart making an accompaniment to the rhythms of my author. Then looking up from the page I saw outside a pair of grey eyes thatched by ragged yellowy-white eyebrows gazing at me solemnly over the toes of my slippers. There was a grave, furrowed brow surmounting that portentous gaze, a brown tweed cap set far back on the perspiring head.

"Come inside,' I cried as heartily as my sinking heart would permit.

"After a short but severe scuffle with his dog at the outer door, Fyne entered. I treated him without ceremony and only waved my hand towards a chair. Even before he sat down he gasped out

"We've heard-midday post.'

"Gasped out! The grave, immovable Fyne of the Civil Service gasped! This was enough, you'll admit, to cause me to put my feet to the ground swiftly. That fellow was always making me do things in subtle discord with my meditative temperament. No wonder that I had but a qualified liking for him. I said with just a suspicion of jeering tone

666

"Of course. I told you last night on the road that it was a farce we were engaged in.'

"He made the little parlour resound to its foundations

with a note of anger positively sepulchral in its depth of tone. 'Farce be hanged! She has bolted with my wife's brother, Captain Anthony.' This outburst was followed by complete subsidence. He faltered miserably as he added from force of habit: "The son of the poet, you know.'

"A silence fell. Fyne's several expressions were so many examples of varied consistency. This was the discomfiture of solemnity. My interest of course was revived.

"But hold on,' I said.

"They didn't go together. Is it a suspicion or does she actually say that.

"She has gone after him,' stated Fyne in comminatory tones. 'By previous arrangement. She con

fesses that much.'

"He added that it was very shocking. I asked him whether he should have preferred them going off together; and on what ground he based that preference. This was sheer fun for me in regard of the fact that Fyne's too was a runaway match, which even got into the papers in its time, because the late indignant. poet had no discretion and sought to avenge this outrage publicly in some absurd way before a bewigged judge. The dejected gesture of little Fyne's hand disarmed my mocking mood. But I could not help expressing my surprise that Mrs. Fyne had not detected at once what was brewing. Women were supposed to have an unerring eye.

"He told me that his wife had been very much engaged in a certain work. I had always wondered how she occupied her time. It was in writing. Like her husband, she too published a little book. It had nothing to do with pedestrianism. It was a sort of handbook for women with grievances (and all women had them), a sort of compendious theory and practice of feminine

free morality. It made you laugh at its transparent simplicity. But that authorship was revealed to me much later. I didn't of course ask Fyne what work his wife was engaged on; but I marvelled to myself at her complete ignorance of the world, of her own sex, and of the other kind of sinners. Yet, where could she have got any experience? Her father had kept her strictly cloistered. Marriage with Fyne was certainly a change, but only to another kind of claustration. You may tell me that the ordinary powers of observation ought to have been enough. Why, yes! But, then, as she had set up for a guide and teacher, there was nothing surprising for me in the discovery that she was blind. That's quite in order. She was a profoundly innocent person; only it would not have been proper to tell her husband so.

CHAPTER THREE

THRIFT AND THE CHILD

"BUT there was nothing improper in my observing tc Fyne that, last night, Mrs. Fyne seemed to have some idea where that enterprising young lady had gone to. Fyne shook his head. No; his wife had been by no means so certain as she had pretended to be. She merely had her reasons to think, to hope, that the girl might have taken a room somewhere in London, had buried herself in town-in readiness or perhaps in horror of the approaching day—

"He ceased and sat solemnly dejected, in a brown study. 'What day?' I asked at last; but he did not hear me apparently. He diffused such portentous gloom into the atmosphere that I lost patience with him.

"What on earth are you so dismal about?' I cried, being genuinely surprised and puzzled. 'One would think the girl was a state prisoner under your care.'

"And suddenly I became still more surprised at myself, at the way I had somehow taken for granted things which did appear queer when one thought them out.

"But why this secrecy? Why did they elope—if it is an elopement? Was the girl afraid of your wife? And your brother-in-law? What on earth possessed him to make a clandestine match of it? Was he afraid of your wife too?'

"Fyne made an effort to rouse himself.

"Of course my brother-in-law, Captain Anthony, the

son of .' He checked himself as if trying to break a bad habit. 'He would be persuaded by her. We have been most friendly to the girl!'

"She struck me as a foolish and inconsiderate little person. But why should you and your wife take to heart so strongly mere folly or even a want of consideration?'

"It's the most unscrupulous action,' declared Fyne weightily-and sighed.

"I suppose she is poor,' I observed after a short silence. But after all

"You don't know who she is.' Fyne had regained his average solemnity.

"I confessed that I had not caught her name when his wife had introduced us to each other.

'It was someAnd then with

thing beginning with an S-wasn't it?' the utmost coolness Fyne remarked that it did not matter. The name was not her name.

"Do you mean to say that you made a young lady known to me under a false name?' I asked, with the amused feeling that the days of wonders and portents had not passed away yet. That the eminently serious Fyne should do such an exceptional thing was simply staggering. With a more hasty enunciation than usual little Fyne was sure that I would not demand an apology for this irregularity if I knew what her real name was. A sort of warmth crept into his deep

tone.

"We have tried to befriend that girl in every way. She is the daughter and only child of de Barral.'

"Evidently he'expected to produce a sensation; but I merely returned his intense, awaiting gaze. For a time we stared at each other. Conscious of being reprehensibly dense I groped in the darkness of my mind: De Barral, de Barral-and all at once noise and