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.

Fyne assured me that his wife's rest was disturbed by the great problem of interference.
"It was very acute of Mrs.Fyne to spot such a deep game," I said, wondering to myself where her acuteness had gone to now, to let her be taken unawares by a game so much simpler and played to the end under her very nose.

But then, at that time, when her nightly rest was disturbed by the dread of the fate preparing for de Barral's unprotected child, she was not engaged in writing a compendious and ruthless hand-book on the theory and practice of life, for the use of women with a grievance.