"I confess that I can't understand his motive," I exclaimed.

"This is exactly what John wondered at, at first," said Mrs. Fyne. By

that time an intimacy--if not exactly confidence--had sprung up between

us which permitted her in this discussion to refer to her husband as

John. "You know he had not opened his lips all that time," she pursued.

"I don't blame his restraint. On the contrary. What could he have said?

I could see he was observing the man very thoughtfully."

"And so, Mr. Fyne listened, observed and meditated," I said. "That's an

excellent way of coming to a conclusion. And may I ask at what

conclusion he had managed to arrive? On what ground did he cease to

wonder at the inexplicable? For I can't admit humanity to be the

explanation. It would be too monstrous."

It was nothing of the sort, Mrs. Fyne assured me with some resentment, as

though I had aspersed little Fyne's sanity. Fyne very sensibly had set

himself the mental task of discovering the self-interest. I should not

have thought him capable of so much cynicism. He said to himself that

for people of that sort (religious fears or the vanity of righteousness

put aside) money--not great wealth, but money, just a little money--is

the measure of virtue, of expediency, of wisdom--of pretty well

everything. But the girl was absolutely destitute. The father was in

prison after the most terribly complete and disgraceful smash of modern

times. And then it dawned upon Fyne that this was just it. The great

smash, in the great dust of vanishing millions! Was it possible that

they all had vanished to the last penny? Wasn't there, somewhere,

something palpable; some fragment of the fabric left?

"That's it," had exclaimed Fyne, startling his wife by this explosive

unseating of his lips less than half an hour after the departure of de

Barral's cousin with de Barral's daughter. It was still in the dining-

room, very near the time for him to go forth affronting the elements in

order to put in another day's work in his country's service. All he

could say at the moment in elucidation of this breakdown from his usual

placid solemnity was:

"The fellow imagines that de Barral has got some plunder put away

somewhere."

This being the theory arrived at by Fyne, his comment on it was that a

good many bankrupts had been known to have taken such a precaution. It

was possible in de Barral's case. Fyne went so far in his display of

cynical pessimism as to say that it was extremely probable.




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