“I arrive here; and at once I write him a letter saying I go to Flatt's cottage to see him on Friday night. There is no response, but I go to Flatt's cottage as I had planned. When I knocked at the door, Staveley appeared.”
“What time on Friday night was that?” Armadale interposed.
“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.