“In my letter I had fixed a rendezvous at half-past nine. I was exact—on time, you say, isn't it? But it seemed that this Staveley could not see me alone there; others were in the cottage. Then he said that he would meet me later—at half-past ten—at some great rock beside the sea, the rock one calls Neptune's Seat.” “So you came away, and he went back into the cottager” Armadale demanded. Mme. Laurent-Desrousseaux assented with a slight bow. “I came away,” she continued. “To pass the time, I walked on the road, and perhaps I walked too far. It was late—after the hour of the rendezvous—when I arrived opposite the rock, this Neptune's Seat. I went down on to the sands and attained to the rock. Staveley was there, very angry because I was ten minutes late. He was much enraged, it appears, because he had a second rendezvous at that place in a few minutes. He would not listen to me at all at the moment. I saw that it was no time for negotiating with him, he was so much in anger and so anxious to deliver himself of me. I fixed another rendezvous for the following day, and I left him.” “What time did you leave him on the rock?” Armadale interjected. “Let us see.” Mme. Laurent-Desrousseaux halted for a moment to consider. “I passed some minutes with him on the rock—let us put ten minutes at the least.” “That would mean you left the rock very shortly before eleven o'clock, then?” Mme. Laurent-Desrousseaux agreed with a gesture. “I went away from the rock by the same road as I had come,” she went on. “I was much agitated, you understand? It was a great disappointment that I had attained to no arrangement at that moment, I had hoped for something better, isn't it? And that Staveley had been very little obliging—unkind, isn't it? It was very desolating. “As I was crossing the sands, a great automobile appeared on the road, coming from the hotel. It stopped whilst I was waiting for it to pass; and the chauffeur extinguished its projectors. Then a woman descended from the automobile, and walked down on to the sands towards the rock.” Wendover could read on Armadale's face an expression of triumph. The inspector was clearly overjoyed at getting some direct evidence to support his case against Cressida; and Wendover had to admit, with considerable disquietude, that Mme. Laurent-Desrousseaux's narrative bore out Armadale's hypothesis very neatly. “When I again regarded the automobile, the chauffeur also had vanished. He was not on the road. Perhaps he also had gone down to the _rivage_.” “Shore,” Sir Clinton interjected, seeing Armadale's obvious perplexity at the word. “I was standing there for some minutes,” Mme. Laurent-Desrousseaux continued. “Against one like that Staveley one must utilise all weapons, isn't it?—even espionage. I had a presentiment that something might eventuate. Staveley and a woman, you understand? I was hoping that something, anything, might arrive to give me an advantage over him.