.

.

" By a great effort of will I found myself able to smile amiably, to speak with proper softness.
"My dear Mrs.Fyne, you forget that I don't know him--not even by sight.
It's difficult to imagine a victim as passive as all that; but granting you the (I very nearly said: imbecility, but checked myself in time) innocence of Captain Anthony, don't you think now, frankly, that there is a little of your own fault in what has happened.

You bring them together, you leave your brother to himself!" She sat up and leaning her elbow on the table sustained her head in her open palm casting down her eyes.

Compunction?
It was indeed a very off- hand way of treating a brother come to stay for the first time in fifteen years.