"I horsewhipped him, Dick, as you horsewhipped that man." "And he challenged you, and you fought, and--" "Yes, heaven forgive me," said Mellersh in a low voice, "I shot him dead!" "You did this for the woman you did not love," said Richard Linnell, as if speaking to himself. "Yes, for the woman I did not love." "What I did was for the woman I love with all my heart." Volume Two, Chapter V. A RETIRED SPOT FOR A BATHE. It was a cold grey morning as Colonel Mellersh and Richard Linnell went out on to the parade, quite unaware that a pair of dark eyes were watching from behind an upper blind; but the fact that each man carried a towel in his hand disarmed suspicion, and the owner of the eyes went back to the couch in her room as the gentlemen passed out of sight. "I was afraid," she said to herself softly. "Perhaps there was no truth in it after all." Meanwhile, the Colonel and Richard Linnell went briskly on past the pier, with no one yet astir upon the parade; but farther on there were boats putting out to sea, and fishermen carrying oars and baskets down to those lying on the shingle. As they went on along the cliff, Fisherman Dick was down by his upturned boat, trying the pitch, to find out whether it was hardened, and hearing the voices, he looked up and saw the two men pass. "Master Richard Linnell--the Colonel," he said to himself. "Bathing, eh? Well, it's lonesome enough out there." The mist hung over the sea, and the waves came in with a mournful sound upon the shore, the pebbles rattling together as they were driven up and rolled back with the retiring waters, sounding in the distance as if they were whispering together about the meeting that was about to take place a mile or so onward, beyond the chalk bluff, where the land trended inward, and formed a little bay. Fisherman Dick found the bottom of his boat rather sticky, but he did not seem to be thinking about it, but to be putting that and that together. "Master Richard Linnell give that Major Rockley an out and out good welting yonder in the cornfield, and if he'd been with him instead of that tother one, I should say there was going to be a fight with pistols; but I suppose it means a bit of a swim, and--" Dick Miggles bent down over his boat, and seemed to be paying not the least heed, for just then he saw four people coming down the cliff path on to the beach, and as they passed he saw that they were Rockley, Sir Harry Payne, a gentleman he did not know, and the Major's dragoon servant, James Bell, carrying something under his military cloak. "It's a fight," said Dick Miggles, as they passed him, picking their way down over the shingle to the firmer ground, close to the water's edge, where there were long stretches of sand, and it was better walking.