CHAPTER XII.
Mr.Chalk, when half-awake next morning, tried to remember Mr.Stobell's remarks of the night before; fully awake, he tried to forget them.

He remembered, too, with a pang that Tredgold had been content to enact the part of a listener, and had made no attempt to check the somewhat unusual fluency of the aggrieved Mr.Stobell.

The latter's last instructions were that Mrs.Chalk was to be told, without loss of time, that her presence on the schooner was not to be thought of.
With all this on his mind Mr.Chalk made but a poor breakfast, and his appetite was not improved by his wife's enthusiastic remarks concerning the voyage.

Breakfast over, she dispatched a note to Mrs.Stobell by the housemaid, with instructions to wait for a reply.

Altogether six notes passed during the morning, and Mr.Chalk, who hazarded a fair notion as to their contents, became correspondingly gloomy.
"We're to go up there at five," said his wife, after reading the last note.