“Notorious?”

“It was a George Gordon who was the hero of that piratical affair; that mutiny on board the Morning Star.”

“Ah, to be sure.  And an awful villain too!  A man I met in Australia knew Gordon well.  But he tells a curious tale, though.  He was a doctor, that Gordon; had come last from somewhere in Kirkcudbrightshire.”

“He did,” said Thomas Carr, quietly.  “What curious tale does your friend tell?”

“Well, sir, he says—­or rather said, for I’ve not seen him since my first visit there—­that George Gordon did not sail in the Morning Star.  He was killed in a drunken brawl the night before he ought to have sailed:  this man was present and saw him buried.”

“But there’s pretty good proof that Gordon did sail.  He was the ringleader of the mutiny.”

“Well, yes.  I don’t know how it could have been.  The man was positive.  I never knew Gordon; so that the affair did not interest me much.”

“You are doing well over there?”

“Very well.  I might retire now, if I chose to live in a small way, but I mean to take a few more years of it, and go on to riches.  Ah! and it was just the turn of a pin whether I went over there that second time, or whether I stopped in London to serve writs and starve.”

“Val was right,” thought the barrister.

On the following Saturday Mr. Carr took a return-ticket, and went down to Hartledon:  as he had done once or twice before in the old days.  The Hartledons had not come to town this season; did not intend to come:  Anne was too happy in the birth of her baby-boy to care for London; and Val liked Hartledon better than any other place now.

In one single respect the past year had failed to bring Anne happiness—­there was not entire confidence between herself and her husband.  He had something on his mind, and she could not fail to see that he had.  It was not that awful dread that seemed to possess him in his first wife’s time; nevertheless it was a weight which told more or less on his spirits at all times.  To Anne it appeared like remorse; yet she might never have thought this, but for a word or two he let slip occasionally.  Was it connected with his children?  She could almost have fancied so:  and yet in what manner could it be?  His behaviour was peculiar.  He rather avoided them than not; but when with them was almost passionately demonstrative, exactingly jealous that due attention should be paid to them:  and he seemed half afraid of caressing Anne’s baby, lest it should be thought he cared for it more than for the others.  Altogether Lady Hartledon puzzled her brains in vain:  she could not make him out.  When she questioned him he would deny that there was anything the matter, and said it was her fancy.