own sex and of the other kind of sinners. Yet, where could she have got
any experience? Her father had kept her strictly cloistered. Marriage
with Fyne was certainly a change but only to another kind of
claustration. You may tell me that the ordinary powers of observation
ought to have been enough. Why, yes! But, then, as she had set up for a
guide and teacher, there was nothing surprising for me in the discovery
that she was blind. That's quite in order. She was a profoundly
innocent person; only it would not have been proper to tell her husband
so.



CHAPTER THREE--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."