minute and then pulled out
of his pocket the travelling chessboard, and holding it in his hand,
directed at me a glance of inquiry.

"Yes. Certainly," I said, very much disappointed.

CHAPTER SEVEN--ON THE PAVEMENT

Fyne was not willing to talk; but as I had been already let into the
secret, the fair-minded little man recognized that I had some right to
information if I insisted on it. And I did insist, after the third game.
We were yet some way from the end of our journey.

"Oh, if you want to know," was his somewhat impatient opening. And then
he talked rather volubly. First of all his wife had not given him to
read the letter received from Flora (I had suspected him of having it in
his pocket), but had told him all about the contents. It was not at all
what it should have been even if the girl had wished to affirm her right
to disregard the feelings of all the world. Her own had been trampled in
the dirt out of all shape. Extraordinary thing to say--I would admit,
for a young girl of her age. The whole tone of that letter was wrong,
quite wrong. It was certainly not the product of a--say, of a
well-balanced mind.

"If she were given some sort of footing in this world," I said, "if only
no bigger than the palm of my hand, she would probably learn to keep a
better balance."

Fyne ignored this little remark. His wife, he said, was not the sort of
person to be addressed mockingly on a serious subject. There was an
unpleasant strain of levity in that letter, extending even to the
references to Captain Anthony himself. Such a disposition was enough,
his wife had pointed out to him, to alarm one for the future, had all the
circumstances of that preposterous project been as satisfactory as in
fact they were not. Other parts of the letter seemed to have a
challenging tone--as if daring them (the Fynes) to approve her conduct.
And at the same time implying that she did not care, that it was for
their own sakes that she hoped they would "go against the world--the
horrid world which had crushed poor papa."

Fyne called upon me to admit that this was pretty cool--considering. And
there was another thing, too. It seems that for the last six months (she
had been assisting two ladies who kept a kindergarten school in
Bayswater--a mere pittance), Flora had insisted on devoting all her spare
time to the study of the trial. She had been looking up files of old
newspapers, and working herself up into a sta