CHAPTER XVIII
THE LOSER
Justin Carthew was standing as if thunderstruck by these extraordinary statements. His incredulous glance shifted from the stout stranger of the tinted eye and the inimical stare to the others of the little group regarding him, until it met Sallie's again, and they two looked blankly into each other's eyes while Mr. Jobling proceeded to introduce himself as her ladyship's legal adviser, and stated briefly the grounds on which his dogmatic assertion was based.
To Carthew, the lawyer's voice seemed to come from very far away, but none the less intelligibly, as he himself stood gazing at the girl to whom he owed his life, whom he had last seen late at night among the shadows on the deck of the Olive Branch in Genoa harbour. At first sight it had seemed so utterly impossible that it could be she who had stepped out on to the Warder's Tower of Loquhariot that he had supposed the sun in his eyes and a striking resemblance must have combined to delude him.
But—he knew now that it was really she. And as Mr. Jobling, concluding his homily, mentioned again who she claimed to be, he was dazedly thankful that he had not at once contradicted her lawyer; as he might have done—since he knew as a matter of fact that the real Lady Josceline Justice was dead.
Mr. Jobling had also repeated that Mr. Carthew was trespassing there. But at that Sallie turned on her legal adviser in generous indignation, and he shrank into the background again as she spoke.
"If this is my property, as you say it is," she flashed, "what right have you to tell any visitor that he is trespassing here! And if Mr. Carthew has been misinformed—"
"He isn't a visitor, Sallie. He's the man in possession at present," whispered the smartly-dressed young-old man who had been studying Carthew with a most supercilious expression, "and you'd better leave Mr. Jobling to deal with him." He was obviously not at all pleased with her, and his whisper was perfectly audible.
The girl had stopped to listen to him. "We're evidently the trespassers, then," she finished. "We have no business here at all while he remains in possession."