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The cruiser on which he served was visiting Kingstown, and at the Horse Show he had run across the Halbertons whom he had met when he was stationed in their own county at Devonport. Beyond them he didn't know a soul in the country, and the soft western brogue of Gabrielle fascinated him.
If that was all the fellow had to say it struck him as a waste of time and paper. Who was he, anyhow? Gabrielle explained that he had dined with them at the Halbertons, and Jocelyn, who naturally had no recollection of the event, was satisfied with these credentials. "I asked him to come and shoot here," said Gabrielle. Jocelyn stared at her with wrinkled eyes. "The devil you did!" said he.
He did not even like her to take an intimate share in the management of the house. After all she was a Hewish and a cousin of the august Halbertons. That was why he had employed Mrs. Bemerton as housekeeper. "I shall be obliged," he said, "if you don't mention a matter that may possibly become unsavoury, to Mrs. Considine.
At this point an easy solution seemed to offer itself in an invitation from the Halbertons. They had heard all the details of the affair from Radway's people and wrote inviting Gabrielle to stay with them in Devon for a month.
Next morning the ship left Kingstown for Bermuda. It was not in Radway's nature to take these things lightly. At a distance the memory of Gabrielle gained a good deal by imagination. It seemed to him that she was far too precious to lose, and the fact that she was a cousin of the exclusive Halbertons settled any social scruples that might have worried him.
For the moment she forgot all about her questionable clothes; but when, later in the day, she was taken by her father to be presented to the Halbertons, the family of the Devonshire peer with whom the Hewishes were connected, she became immediately and horribly conscious of Lady Halberton's magnificence and the elegance of her daughters.
The strain made him more shaky than usual, and when telegrams began to flutter in from Radway's relatives a few days later Radway had left no address and so they had been forced to wire to the Halbertons he threw up the sponge altogether. His weakness was Considine's opportunity.
They stayed for a quarter of an hour exactly by the French clock on the mantelpiece, contriving, in this calculated period, to make it quite clear that they were on terms of intimacy with the Halbertons, and they invariably finished by inviting the Considines to lunch.
It was the usual type of shooting accident that no one could explain. The gun had gone off and shot him dead. "He was terribly mutilated about the head," said Mrs. Payne's informant. She did not know what had happened to his widow. Probably she had gone to her cousins the Halbertons. In any case the jury had completely exonerated her. Mrs. Payne flared up in Gabrielle's defence. "Exonerated?"
He scarcely mentioned Gabrielle, except as the only witness of the accident, and the Radway family returned to England with their son's body, satisfied that he had gone to Roscarna for the grouse shooting on the invitation of people who, in spite of their questionable appearance, were actually connected with the Halbertons, and thankful that no element of intrigue or passion had any part in the tragedy.
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