The Damsel - Chapter 3 Thrift and the Child

But there was nothing improper in my observing to Fyne that, last night,
Mrs. Fyne seemed to have some idea where that enterprising young lady had
gone to. Fyne shook his head. No; his wife had been by no means so
certain as she had pretended to be. She merely had her reasons to think,
to hope, that the girl might have taken a room somewhere in London, had
buried herself in town--in readiness or perhaps in horror of the
approaching day-He ceased and sat solemnly dejected, in a brown study. "What day?" I
asked at last; but he did not hear me apparently. He diffused such
portentous gloom into the atmosphere that I lost patience with him.

"What on earth are you so dismal about?" I cried, being genuinely
surprised and puzzled. "One would think the girl was a state prisoner
under your care."

And suddenly I became still more surprised at myself, at the way I had
somehow taken for granted things which did appear queer when one thought
them out.

"But why this secrecy? Why did they elope--if it is an elopement? Was
the girl afraid of your wife? And your brother-in-law? What on earth
possesses him to make a clandestine match of it? Was he afraid of your
wife too?"

Fyne made an effort to rouse himself.

"Of course my brother-in-law, Captain Anthony, the son of . . . " He
checked himself as if trying to break a bad habit. "He would be
persuaded by her. We have been most friendly to the girl!"