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 moment as though he had seen a ghost, an other-
world thing. But that look vanished instantaneously, and he nodded at me
with mere exasperation at something quite of this world--whatever it was.
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