CHAPTER III.
Drake repeated his question to Fielding two days later, after a dinner with Conway at his club, but in a tone of languid interest.
'Why don't you ask Mallinson ?' said Fielding.

'He knows her better than I do.' Conway contested the assertion with some heat.
'Besides,' added Drake, 'his imagination may have been at work.

About women, I prefer the estimate of a man of the world.' The phrase was distasteful to a gentleman whose ambition it was to live and to be recognised as living within view of, but outside the world, say just above it in a placid atmosphere of his own creation.

Fielding leaned back in his chair to mete out punishment, joining the finger-tips with an air of ordering a detailed statement.
'The inhabitants of Sark,' he began, 'were from immemorial times notable not merely for their predatory instincts, but for the stay-at-home fashion in which they gave those instincts play.

They did not scour the seas for their victims, neither did they till their island.