"No, no; you do not comprehend. I must enforce my claim; if the estate is mine, I will never yield it--to him, or to anyone. But it may be his: and I think it is only just to offer him one more opportunity of privately satisfying me, before I take any proceedings. I shall do so. If I cannot see him to-morrow, I will write to him fully."
"The meeting might only lead to another quarrel, Mr. Anthony."
"Well--yes--I have thought of that. And I fear he would injure me if he could," added the young man, in a dreamy manner, and speaking to himself instead of to his landlord. "There: don't put more coal, please: it is too warm."
John Bent went away with his coal-scuttle. He remarked to his wife that their inmate did not seem in his usual good spirits. Mrs. Bent, trimming one of her smart caps at the round table by the fire, answered that she knew as much as that without being told; and that he (John) had better see that Molly was properly attending to the company in the public-room.
It was considerably past ten, and the company--as Mrs. Bent called them, which consisted principally of fishermen--were singing a jovial song, when Anthony Castlemaine came out of his parlour, the letter in his hand. Just as he had posted the one written in the afternoon, so he went over to the box now and posted this. After that, he took a turn up and down the beach, listening to the low murmuring of the sea, watching the moonbeams as they played on the water. It was a most beautiful night; the air still and warm, the moon rather remarkably bright. That Greylands' Rest was his own legally now, and would soon be his own practically, he entertained no doubt, and he lost himself in visions of the pleasant life he might lead there. Thus the time slipped unconsciously on, and when he got back to the Dolphin the clock had struck eleven. John Bent's company were taking their departure--for the house closed at the sober hour of eleven--John's man was shutting the shutters, and John himself stood outside his door, his hat on his head and a pipe in his mouth.
"A lovely night, sir, isn't it?" he began. "A'most like summer. I've been finishing my pipe outside on the bench here."
"Lovely indeed," replied Anthony. "I could never tire of looking at the sea yonder."
They paced about together before the bench, talking, and presently extending their stroll up the hill. Mr. Nettleby's residence, a fair-sized, pretty cottage, stood aback from the road in its garden, just opposite the Grey Nunnery; and Mr. Nettleby, smoking his pipe, was at the outer gate.
When that fatal night was gone and past, and people began to recall its events, they said how chance trifles seemed to have worked together to bring about the ill. Had Anthony Castlemaine not written that letter, the probability was that he would never have gone out at all; on returning from the post and the beach, had the landlord not been outside the inn, he would at once have entered: and finally, had the superintendent of the coastguard not been at his gate, they would not have stayed abroad.
Mr. Nettleby invited them in, hospitably offering them a pipe and glass. He had business abroad that night, and therefore had not retired to rest. They consented to enter, "just for a minute."