The listener by the rock learnt definitely what he had previously suspected--that there was bitter blood and bad feeling between the two men, buried for a time, but now revived with a savageness which revealed the hollowness of their supposed reconciliation.

It was about a girl, some girl in England with whom they had both been in love.

Thalassa gathered that Remington had left England as the favoured suitor.

He had (in Thalassa's words) "cut Turold out." Charles Turold could not forbear a faint exclamation of astonishment.

His brain reeled in trying to imagine the austere figure of Robert Turold squabbling over a girl and some diamonds on a lonely island in the South Pacific.