She merely had her reasons to think,
to hope, that the girl might have taken a room somewhere in London, had
buried herself in town--in readiness or perhaps in horror of the
approaching day--
He ceased and sat solemnly dejected, in a brown study. "What day?" I
asked at last; but he did not hear me apparently. He diffused such
portentous gloom into the atmosphere that I lost patience with him.
"What on earth are you so dismal about?" I cried, being genuinely
surprised and puzzled. "One would think the girl was a state prisoner
under your care."
And suddenly I became still more surprised at myself, at the way I had
somehow taken for granted things which did appear queer when one thought
them out.
"But why this secrecy? Why did they elope--if it is an elopement? Was
the girl afraid of your wife? And your brother-in-law? What on earth
possesses him to make a clandestine match of it? Was he afraid of your
wife too?"
Fyne made an effort to rouse himself.
"Of course my brother-in-law, Captain Anthony, the son of . . . " He
checked himself as if trying to break a bad habit.
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