“Why not?”

Mr. Pendleton sought for a reason, but could find none.  “It’s rather late, isn’t it?” he suggested.

“Nonsense!” Mrs. Pendleton glanced at her wrist watch.  “It’s not much past eight.”

“Why not leave it until the morning?” said her husband, with a lingering glance at the cheery glow of the log-fire in the lounge.  “It’s a beast of a night to be out.  Hark to the wind!”

“If it is to be settled, it must be settled to-night,” said Mrs. Pendleton decisively.  “There’ll be no time in the morning for anything, if we are to catch the ten o’clock train for London.  Beside, Austin would see us if we went there in daylight, and I do not want him to know anything about it—­he would only try and put obstacles in our way.”

“What about Sisily?”

“She will be quite all right in her room.  She looked tired out, and needs a good night’s rest.  You had better see about the car at once.”

Mr. Pendleton said no more, and his wife bustled away to put on her outdoor things.  When she descended from her room her husband was awaiting her in the lounge, and the head-light of the hired motor-car gleamed in the darkness outside.

They set out through the narrow uneven streets, which smelt strongly of mackerel and pitch.  In a few minutes the car was clear of the town, and running at an increased pace through the gusty darkness of the moors.

CHAPTER VI

With a face grimly immobile as the carved head of a heathen god, Thalassa stood at the front door watching the departure of Sisily and her aunt until the car was lost to sight in a dip of the moors.  Then with a glance at the leaping water at the foot of the cliffs, grey and mysterious in the gloaming, he turned and went inside the house.

It was his evening duty to prepare the lamps which lighted up the old house on the cliffs.  Sisily generally helped him in that tedious duty, but she was gone, and for the future he must do it alone.

The lamps were kept in a little lowbrowed room off the stone kitchen.  There Thalassa betook himself.  Robert Turold disliked the dark, and a great array of lamps awaited him:  large ones for the rooms, small ones for the passages and staircase.  Thalassa set to work with a will, filling them with oil, trimming the wicks, and polishing the glasses with a piece of chamois leather.

As he filled and trimmed and polished he sang to himself an old sea song: 

    “The devil and me, we went away to sea,
       In the old brig ’Lizbeth-Jane’—­”

His voice was gruff and harsh, and the melody, such as it was, did nothing to relax his expression, which remained grim and secret as ever.

Each lamp he lit as he finished it, and their gathered strength gushed in a flood of yellow light on his crafty brown face and deep-set eyes.  He placed several of the lamps on a tray, carefully lowered the wicks, and carried them to their allotted places, returning for others until only half a dozen small lamps remained.  These he gathered on the tray and took upstairs.