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But Chatfield was already bearing down on them, his solemn-featured face dark with displeasure. He raised his voice while he was yet a dozen yards away. "I thought I'd told you as you wasn't to come near these here ruins!" he said, addressing Audrey in a fashion which made Copplestone's fingers itch to snatch the oak staff from the agent and lay it freely about his person.
It may be that justice demands our best endeavours not only as regards our deceased friend, Bassett Oliver, but in the interests of this young lady. So " "I wish you wouldn't, Mr. Dennie!" exclaimed Audrey. "I don't like this at all. Please don't!" She turned, almost instinctively, to seek Copplestone's aid in repressing the old man.
But she was coming towards them in a dead straight line, and as she was accordingly bow on, and as her top deck and lamps were obscured by clouds of black smoke, pouring furiously from her funnels, they could make little out of her appearance. Copplestone's first notion was that she was a naval patrol boat, or a torpedo destroyer.
The letter was written, and despatched by the evening post, and then the captain shut himself up in his own room, and gave way to the bitterest grief he had ever experienced. Who shall describe the agony which Lady Eversleigh suffered when Captain Copplestone's letter reached her?
Nevertheless, Copplestone's mind was not entirely absorbed by this pleasant subject; the events of the day and of the arrival in London kept presenting themselves. And coming across a fellow club-member whom he knew for a thorough man about town, he suddenly plumped him with a question. "I say!" he said. "Do you know the Fragonard Club?" "Of course!" replied the other man. "Don't you?"
Wooler presently ushered in a figure which Copplestone's dramatic sense immediately seized on. He saw before him a tall, heavily-built man, with a large, solemn, deeply-lined face, out of which looked a pair of the smallest and slyest eyes ever seen in a human being queer, almost hidden eyes, set beneath thick bushy eyebrows above which rose the dome of an unusually high forehead and a bald head.
Vickers heard this with amazement. Young as he was, he had had various dealings with Peter Chatfield, and he had an idea that he knew something of him, subtle old fellow though he was, and he believed that Chatfield was now speaking the truth. But, in that case, what of Copplestone's revelation about the Falmouth and Bristol affair and the dead man?
Both listened in silence and with deep attention; when all the facts had been put before them, they went aside and talked together; then they returned and Sir Cresswell besought Stafford and Copplestone's attention. "I want to tell you young gentlemen precisely what Mr. Petherton and I think it best to do," he said in the mild and bland accents which had so much astonished Copplestone.
That work was no less painful a task than the writing of a letter to Lady Eversleigh, to inform her of the calamity which had taken place of the terrible realization of her worst fears. Captain Copplestone's varied and adventurous life had never brought him a severer or more painful duty, but he was not the man to shirk or defer it, because it involved suffering to himself.
I beg to be sworn immediately, for my evidence may be of some importance to that lady." Reginald sat down, unable to contest the captain's right to be heard, though he would fain have done so. Lady Eversleigh for the first time that day gave evidence of some slight emotion. She raised her eyes to Captain Copplestone's bronzed face with a tearful glance, expressive of gratitude and confidence.
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