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hony, I inquired. I was told that Mr. Fyne was very little at the cottage at the time. Some colleague of his was convalescing after a severe illness in a little seaside village in the neighbourhood and Fyne went off every morning by train to spend the day with the elderly invalid who had no one to look after him. It was a very praiseworthy excuse for neglecting his brother-in-law "the son of the poet, you know," with whom he had nothing in common even in the remotest degree. If Captain Anthony (Roderick) had been a pedestrian it would have been sufficient; but he was not. Still, in the afternoon, he went sometimes for a slow casual stroll, by himself of course, the children having definitely cold-shouldered him, and his only sister being busy with that inflammatory book which was to blaze upon the world a year or more afterwards. It seems however that she was capable of detaching her eyes from her task now and then, if only for a moment, because it was from that garret fitted out for a study that one afternoon she observed her brother and Flora de Barral coming down the road side by side. They had met somewhere accidentally (which of them crossed the other's path, as the saying is, I don't know), and were returning to tea together. She noticed that they appeared to be conversing without constraint. "I had the simplicity to be pleased," Mrs. Fyne commented with a dry little laugh. "Pleased for both their sakes." Captain Anthony shook off his indolence from that day forth, and accompanied Miss Flora frequently on her morning walks. Mrs. Fyne remained pleased. She could now forget them comfortably and give herself up to the delights of audacious thought and literary composition. Only a week before the blow fell she, happening to raise her eyes from the paper, saw two figures seated on the grass under the shade of the elms. She could make out the white blouse. There could be no mistake. "I suppose they imagined themselves concealed by the hedge. They forgot no doubt I was working in the garret," she said bitterly. "Or perhaps they didn't care. They were right. I am rather a simple person . . . " She laughed again . . . "I was incapable of suspecting such duplicity." "Duplicity is a strong word, Mrs. Fyne--isn't it?" I expostulated. "And considering that Captain Anthony himself . . . " "Oh well--perhaps," she interrupted me. Her eyes which never strayed away from mine, her set features, her whole im
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