te of indignation with what
she called the injustice and the hypocrisy of the prosecution. Her
father, Fyne reminded me, had made some palpable hits in his answers in
Court, and she had fastened on them triumphantly. She had reached the
conclusion of her father's innocence, and had been brooding over it. Mrs.
Fyne had pointed out to him the danger of this.

The train ran into the station and Fyne, jumping out directly it came to
a standstill, seemed glad to cut short the conversation. We walked in
silence a little way, boarded a bus, then walked again. I don't suppose
that since the days of his childhood, when surely he was taken to see the
Tower, he had been once east of Temple Bar. He looked about him
sullenly; and when I pointed out in the distance the rounded front of the
Eastern Hotel at the bifurcation of two very broad, mean, shabby
thoroughfares, rising like a grey stucco tower above the lowly roofs of
the dirty-yellow, two-storey houses, he only grunted disapprovingly.

"I wouldn't lay too much stress on what you have been telling me," I
observed quietly as we approached that unattractive building. "No man
will believe a girl who has just accepted his suit to be not well
balanced,--you know."

"Oh! Accepted his suit," muttered Fyne, who seemed to have been very
thoroughly convinced indeed. "It may have been the other way about." And
then he added: "I am going through with it."

I said that this was very praiseworthy but that a certain moderation of
statement . . . He waved his hand at me and mended his pace. I guessed
that he was anxious to get his mission over as quickly as possible. He
barely gave himself time to shake hands with me and made a rush at the
narrow glass door with the words Hotel Entrance on it. It swung to
behind his back with no more noise than the snap of a toothless jaw.

The absurd temptation to remain and see what would come of it got over my
better judgment. I hung about irresolute, wondering how long an embassy
of that sort would take, and whether Fyne on coming out would consent to
be communicative. I feared he would be shocked at finding me there,
would consider my conduct incorrect, conceivably treat me with contempt.
I walked off a few paces. Perhaps it would be possible to read something
on Fyne's face as he came out; and, if necessary, I could always eclipse
myself discreetly through the door of one of the bars. The ground floor
of the Eastern Hotel was an unab