is effortless,
grave chest voice, "drafting his will."

This was unexpected, but I preserved a noncommittal attitude, knowing
full well that our actions in themselves are neither mad nor sane. But I
did not see what there was to be excited about. And Fyne was distinctly
excited. I understood it better when I learned that the captain of the
_Ferndale_ wanted little Fyne to be one of the trustees. He was leaving
everything to his wife. Naturally, a request which involved him into
sanctioning in a way a proceeding which he had been sent by his wife to
oppose, must have appeared sufficiently mad to Fyne.

"Me! Me, of all people in the world!" he repeated portentously. But I
could see that he was frightened. Such want of tact!

"He knew I came from his sister. You don't put a man into such an
awkward position," complained Fyne. "It made me speak much more strongly
against all this very painful business than I would have had the heart to
do otherwise."

I pointed out to him concisely, and keeping my eyes on the door of the
hotel, that he and his wife were the only bond with the land Captain
Anthony had. Who else could he have asked?

"I explained to him that he was breaking this bond," declared Fyne
solemnly. "Breaking it once for all. And for what--for what?"

He glared at me. I could perhaps have given him an inkling for what, but
I said nothing. He started again:

"My wife assures me that the girl does not love him a bit. She goes by
that letter she received from her. There is a passage in it where she
practically admits that she was quite unscrupulous in accepting this
offer of marriage, but says to my wife that she supposes she, my wife,
will not blame her--as it was in self-defence. My wife has her own
ideas, but this is an outrageous misapprehension of her views.
Outrageous."

The good little man paused and then added weightily:

"I didn't tell that to my brother-in-law--I mean, my wife's views."

"No," I said. "What would have been the good?"

"It's positive infatuation," agreed little Fyne, in the tone as though he
had made an awful discovery. "I have never seen anything so hopeless and
inexplicable in my life. I--I felt quite frightened and sorry," he
added, while I looked at him curiously asking myself whether this
excellent civil servant and notable pedestrian had felt the breath of a
great and fatal love-spell passing him by in the room of that East-end
hotel. He did look for a