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Conrad, Joseph, 1857-1924

"Chance"

, Mrs. What's her name's perfidious conduct. She
actually seemed to have--Mrs. Fyne asserted--formed a plot already to
marry eventually her charge to an impecunious relation of her own--a
young man with furtive eyes and something impudent in his manner, whom
that woman called her nephew, and whom she was always having down to stay
with her.
"And perhaps not her nephew. No relation at all"--Fyne emitted with a
convulsive effort this, the most awful part of the suspicions Mrs. Fyne
used to impart to him piecemeal when he came down to spend his week-ends
gravely with her and the children. The Fynes, in their good-natured
concern for the unlucky child of the man busied in stirring casually so
many millions, spent the moments of their weekly reunion in wondering
earnestly what could be done to defeat the most wicked of conspiracies,
trying to invent some tactful line of conduct in such extraordinary
circumstances. I could see them, simple, and scrupulous, worrying
honestly about that unprotected big girl while looking at their own
little girls playing on the sea-shore.


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