Somehow I couldn't.

But I said nothing.

None of us said anything.

We sat about that big round table as if assembled for a conference and looked at each other in a sort of fatuous consternation.

I would have ended by laughing outright if I had not been saved from that impropriety by poor Fyne becoming preposterous.
He began with grave anguish to talk of going to the police in the morning, of printing descriptive bills, of setting people to drag the ponds for miles around.