stand was Mrs Fyne's dog-in-the-manger attitude.
Sentimentally she needed that brother of hers so little! What could it
matter to her one way or another--setting aside common humanity which
would suggest at least a neutral attitude. Unless indeed it was the
blind working of the law that in our world of chances the luckless
_must_ be put in the wrong somehow.

And musing thus on the general inclination of our instincts towards
injustice I met unexpectedly, at the turn of the road, as it were, a
shape of duplicity. It might have been unconscious on Mrs Fyne's part,
but her leading idea appeared to me to be not to keep, not to preserve
her brother, but to get rid of him definitely. She did not hope to stop
anything. She had too much sense for that. Almost anyone out of an
idiot asylum would have had enough sense for that. She wanted the
protest to be made, emphatically, with Fyne's fullest concurrence in
order to make all intercourse for the future impossible. Such an action
would estrange the pair for ever from the Fynes. She understood her
brother and the girl too. Happy together, they would never forgive that
outspoken hostility--and should the marriage turn out badly... Well, it
would be just the same. Neither of them would be likely to bring their
troubles to such a good prophet of evil.

Yes. That must have been her motive. The inspiration of a possibly
unconscious Machiavellism! Either she was afraid of having a
sister-in-law to look after during the husband's long absences; or
dreaded the more or less distant eventuality of her brother being
persuaded to leave the sea, the friendly refuge of his unhappy youth,
and to settle on shore, bringing to her very door this undesirable, this
embarrassing connection. She wanted to be done with it--maybe simply
from the fatigue of continuous effort in good or evil, which, in the
bulk of common mortals, accounts for so many surprising inconsistencies
of conduct.

I don't know that I had classed Mrs Fyne, in my thoughts, amongst
common mortals. She was too quietly sure of herself for that. But
little Fyne, as I spied him next morning (out of the carriage window)
speeding along the platform, looked very much like a common, flustered
mortal who has made a very near thing of catching his train: the
starting wild eyes, the tense and excited face, the distracted gait, all
the common symptoms were there, rendered more impressive by his native
solemnity which flapp