"You've said that once before, and you needn't say it again. Capable! Why, man alive, I _saw_ them together. Nothing less than the evidence of my own eyes would have convinced me. I have been slow enough to believe. There is not a man or woman in this house, yourself included, who has not, in his secret soul, despised me for my slowness. And yet, now, because there is a question of a pistol-shot or two you fence round, and try to persuade me that my wife's good name is immaculate, that all which you have seen and wondered at for the last three weeks means nothing." "Those open flirtations seldom do mean anything," said Jack, persuasively. A man may belong to the hawk tribe and yet not be without certain latent instincts of compassion and good feeling. "Perhaps not--but secret meetings do: what I saw at the Kieve to-day was conclusive. Besides, the affair is all settled--you and de Cazalet have arranged it between you. He is willing that there should be no witness but you. The whole business will rest a secret between us three; and if we get quietly down to the sands before any one is astir to see us no one else need ever know what happened there." "If there is bloodshed the thing must be known." "It will seem like accident?" "True," answered Vandeleur, looking at him searchingly; "like that accident last year at the Kieve--poor Hamleigh's death. Isn't to-morrow the anniversary, by-the-by?" "Yes--the date has come round again." "Dates have an awkward knack of doing that. There is a cursed mechanical regularity in life which makes a man wish himself in some savage island where there is no such thing as an almanack," said Vandeleur, taking out another cigarette. "If I had been Crusoe, I should never have stuck up that post. I should have been too glad to get rid of quarter-day." * * * * *