It could not have been a recent gift.

Close-fitting and black, with heliotrope silk facings under a figured net, it looked far from new, just on this side of shabbiness; in fact, it accentuated the slightness of her figure, it went well in its suggestion of half mourning with the white face in which the unsmiling red lips alone seemed warm with the rich blood of life and passion.
Little Fyne was staying up there an unconscionable time.

Was he arguing, preaching, remonstrating?
Had he discovered in himself a capacity and a taste for that sort of thing?
Or was he perhaps, in an intense dislike for the job, beating about the bush and only puzzling Captain Anthony, the providential man, who, if he expected the girl to appear at any moment, must have been on tenterhooks all the time, and beside himself with impatience to see the back of his brother-in-law.

How was it that he had not got rid of Fyne long before in any case?
I don't mean by actually throwing him out of the window, but in some other resolute manner.
Surely Fyne had not impressed him.

That he was an impressionable man I could not doubt.