her severe air of distant, fashionable
exclusiveness. Good little Fyne's eyes bulged with solemn horror as he
revealed to me, in agitated speech, his wife's more than suspicions, at
the time, of that, Mrs., Mrs. What's her name's perfidious conduct. She
actually seemed to have--Mrs. Fyne asserted--formed a plot already to
marry eventually her charge to an impecunious relation of her own--a
young man with furtive eyes and something impudent in his manner, whom
that woman called her nephew, and whom she was always having down to stay
with her.

"And perhaps not her nephew. No relation at all"--Fyne emitted with a
convulsive effort this, the most awful part of the suspicions Mrs. Fyne
used to impart to him piecemeal when he came down to spend his week-ends
gravely with her and the children. The Fynes, in their good-natured
concern for the unlucky child of the man busied in stirring casually so
many millions, spent the moments of their weekly reunion in wondering
earnestly what could be done to defeat the most wicked of conspiracies,
trying to invent some tactful line of conduct in such extraordinary
circumstances. I could see them, simple, and scrupulous, worrying
honestly about that unprotected big girl while looking at their own
little girls playing on the sea-shore. Fyne assured me that his wife's
rest was disturbed by the great problem of interference.

"It was very acute of Mrs. Fyne to spot such a deep game," I said,
wondering to myself where her acuteness had gone to now, to let her be
taken unawares by a game so much simpler and played to the end under her
very nose. But then, at that time, when her nightly rest was disturbed
by the dread of the fate preparing for de Barral's unprotected child, she
was not engaged in writing a compendious and ruthless hand-book on the
theory and practice of life, for the use of women with a grievance. She
could as yet, before the task of evolving the philosophy of rebellious
action had affected her intuitive sharpness, perceive things which were,
I suspect, moderately plain. For I am inclined to believe that the woman
whom chance had put in command of Flora de Barral's destiny took no very
subtle pains to conceal her game. She was conscious of being a complete
master of the situation, having once for all established her ascendancy
over de Barral. She had taken all her measures against outside
observation of her conduct; and I could not help smiling at the thought
what a