How time passes! </p> <p> Noticing my gaze directed inquiringly at the partition of glass and varnished wood, Miss Blank was good enough to say, encouragingly: </p> <p> &ldquo;Only Mr. Jermyn and Mr. Stonor in the parlour with another gentleman I&rsquo;ve never seen before.&rdquo; </p> <p> I moved towards the parlour door. A voice discoursing on the other side (it was but a matchboard partition), rose so loudly that the concluding words became quite plain in all their atrocity. </p> <p> &ldquo;That fellow Wilmot fairly dashed her brains out, and a good job, too!&rdquo; </p> <p> This inhuman sentiment, since there was nothing profane or improper in it, failed to do as much as to check the slight yawn Miss Blank was achieving behind her hand. And she remained gazing fixedly at the window-panes, which streamed with rain. </p> <p> As I opened the parlour door the same voice went on in the same cruel strain: </p> <p> &ldquo;I was glad when I heard she got the knock from somebody at last. Sorry enough for poor Wilmot, though. That man and I used to be chums at one time. Of course that was the end of him. A clear case if there ever was one. No way out of it. None at all.&rdquo; </p> <p> The voice belonged to the gentleman Miss Blank had never seen before. He straddled his long legs on the hearthrug. Jermyn, leaning forward, held his pocket-handkerchief spread out before the grate. He looked back dismally over his shoulder, and as I slipped behind one of the little wooden tables, I nodded to him. On the other side of the fire, imposingly calm and large, sat Mr. Stonor, jammed tight into a capacious Windsor armchair. There was nothing small about him but his short, white side-whiskers. Yards and yards of extra superfine blue cloth (made up into an overcoat) reposed on a chair by his side. And he must just have brought some liner from sea, because another chair was smothered under his black waterproof, ample as a pall, and made of three-fold oiled silk, double-stitched throughout. A man&rsquo;s hand-bag of the usual size looked like a child&rsquo;s toy on the floor near his feet. </p> <p> I did not nod to him. He was too big to be nodded to in that parlour. He was a senior Trinity pilot and condescended to take his turn in the cutter only during the summer months. He had been many times in charge of royal yachts in and out of Port Victoria. Besides, it&rsquo;s no use nodding to a monument. And he was like one. He didn&rsquo;t speak, he didn&rsquo;t budge. He just sat there, holding his handsome old head up, immovable, and almost bigger than life. It was extremely fine. Mr. Stonor&rsquo;s presence reduced poor old