Skepsey handed it back. He spoke of a new French rifle. He mentioned, in the form of query for no answer, the translation of the barking little volume he had shown to Mr. Barmby: he slapped at his breast-pocket, where it was. Not a ship was on the sea-line; and he seemed to deplore that vacancy.
‘But it tells both ways,’ Dartrey said. ‘We don’t want to be hectoring in the Channel. All we want, is to be sure of our power, so as not to go hunting and fawning for alliances. Up along that terrace Miss Nesta lives. Brighton would be a choice place for a landing.’
Skepsey temporized, to get his national defences, by pleading the country’s love of peace.
‘Then you give-up your portion of the gains of war—an awful disgorgement,’ said Dartrey. ‘If you are really for peace, you toss all your spare bones to the war-dogs. Otherwise, Quakerly preaching is taken for hypocrisy.’
‘I ‘m afraid we are illogical, sir,’ said Skepsey, adopting one of the charges of Mr. Durance, to elude the abominable word.
‘In you run, my friend.’ Dartrey sped him up the steps of the hotel.
A little note lay on his breakfast-table. His invalid uncle’s valet gave the morning’s report of the night.
The note was from Mrs. Blathenoy: she begged Captain Dartrey, in double underlinings of her brief words, to mount the stairs. He debated, and he went.
She was excited, and showed a bosom compressed to explode: she had been weeping. ‘My husband is off. He bids me follow him. What would you have me do?’
‘Go.’