"The question I have to ask you is this: Did the yacht go steadily on that day and night, or did she stop at any landing on the Bay?"
Mrs. Leslie pursed up her pretty lips, and reflected.
"Let me see," she said. "Ah, yes, I remember. We did stop that night, about nine o'clock, at a landing in the Bay. It was at a place called Brooke's Wharf, and was noted for the fine fruit to be obtained there. I think it was at Mr. Revington's instance we stopped, and Mr. Stuart obtained a supply of the most luscious fruit."
Outwardly calm and composed, Guy Kenmore inwardly trembled with excitement. Was he about to find a clew to Ronald Brooke's slayer?
"Did anyone leave the yacht and go on shore?" he inquired.
"Oh, yes, we all did," said Mrs. Leslie, readily enough. "I mean all except the captain and crew. It was the most beautiful night I ever saw, I think. These Italian nights are not lovelier. We went on shore, and rambled about in the moonlight. I remember the night perfectly."
Ah! did he not, too, he groaned, silently, to himself. How vividly it all rushed over him. His careless visit to Bertha Brooke, from which so much had arisen. Memory recalled the lovely, willful girl, who had carried him off to the hall perforce that night, and he thought, with a softened tenderness, of the childish spite and self-will that had so vexed him then. Poor little Irene! she had suffered enough from Bertha's rage to atone for her willfulness. A feeling of pity and remorse mingled with the love he bore his hapless child-wife.
"Poor child! I was vexed and annoyed when I first found out the truth that we were legally married that night. It came upon me so suddenly, and I showed my feelings too plainly, and she—she was equally averse to having me for a husband. But, better, far better for her, if she had taken me at my word when I offered to make the best of my sad mistake than to have given her heart to that dandy jackanapes," he concluded, bitterly, for he had gauged the depth of Julius Revington at first sight, and the conspiracy he had overheard last night had filled him with horror and contempt for the traitor.
"To think that, she—my own beautiful and beloved wife—should turn coldly from me to lavish her precious love on a thing like that," he thought, jealously.
Mr. Kenmore, in his indolent way, though unconsciously to himself, had possessed some little complacent conceit of himself. His mirror had told him he was noble-looking and handsome, and women's eyes had repeated it. His progress through society had been a complete ovation to his pride and his vanity. Men had honored him for his manliness as much as for his great wealth, and women had angled for him as a most unexceptionable parti. But the complacent conceit that the world had fostered in him for years, had received a terrible blow from Irene's indifference and her palpable preference for the weakly-handsome, guitar-playing and tenor-singing Julius Revington.