hooled herself into that sort of
thing. Having seen two successive wives of the delicate poet chivied
and worried into their graves, she had adopted that cool, detached
manner to meet her gifted father's outbreaks of selfish temper. It had
now become a second nature. I suppose she was always like that; even in
the very hour of elopement with Fyne. That transaction when one
remembered it in her presence acquired a quaintly marvellous aspect to
one's imagination. But somehow her self-possession matched very well
little Fyne's invariable solemnity.

I was rather sorry for him. Wasn't he worried! The agony of solemnity.
At the same time I was amused. I didn't take a gloomy view of that
"vanishing girl" trick. Somehow I couldn't. But I said nothing. None
of us said anything. We sat about that big round table as if assembled
for a conference and looked at each other in a sort of fatuous
consternation. I would have ended by laughing outright if I had not
been saved from that impropriety by poor Fyne becoming preposterous.

He began with grave anguish to talk of going to the police in the
morning, of printing descriptive bills, of setting people to drag the
ponds for miles around. It was extremely gruesome. I murmured
something about communicating with the young lady's relatives. It
seemed to me a very natural suggestion; but Fyne and his wife exchanged
such a significant glance that I felt as though I had made a tactless
remark.

But I really wanted to help poor Fyne; and as I could see that, manlike,
he suffered from the present inability to act, the passive waiting, I
said: "Nothing of this can be done till to-morrow. But as you have
given me an insight into the nature of your thoughts I can tell you what
may be done at once. We may go and look at the bottom of the old quarry
which is on the level of the road, about a mile from here."

The couple made big eyes at this, and then I told them of my meeting
with the girl. You may be surprised but I assure you I had not
perceived this aspect of it till that very moment. It was like a
startling revelation; the past throwing a sinister light on the future.
Fyne opened his mouth gravely and as gravely shut it. Nothing more.
Mrs Fyne said, "You had better go," with an air as if her
self-possession had been pricked with a pin in some secret place.

And I--you know how stupid I can be at times--I perceived with dismay
for the first time that by pandering to Fy