Now I've had enough ruffling for one morning. Before I interrogate Madame about the creature at Grandpont, I mean to run down to the bathing-hut and enjoy an hour's basking in the sun.
I have seen the man from Grandpont. Has the event proved worse than my fears, or better? I can't say. All I know is that the event was different.
Susan didn't go down with me to the bathing-hut. I unlocked it myself, and carried out the deck-chair on to a sunny patch of clean white pebbles. But I had hardly drunk in two draughts of the salt air when I sat up with a start.
He had been sprawling on the stones at the foot of the cliff about a quarter of a mile away. At such a distance it was impossible to make out his features, but, as he stood up, I saw it was not Mr. John Lamb. I saw the figure of a man well drilled, a man accustomed to an outdoor life. The man wore a dark blue lounge suit and a straw boater of unmistakably English lines.
For a moment I thought with disgust that he was one of those provincial English tourists (we have had two or three of them off and on at Sainte Véronique) who find some sort of pleasure in lurking about the beaches furtively watching "the ladies" while they bathe. I wished I hadn't left Susan behind. But, as soon as he saw me sit up, the man began to walk towards me in a perfectly open manner.
I couldn't feel sure that it wasn't Ruddington. It flashed across my brain that he was scheming an interview with me as a flank movement upon Susan. Besides, I remembered that a rather fine-tempered man like Ruddington must perceive the unpleasantness of the position in which Susan's acceptance of him would place Susan's mistress, and, in his unconventional ingenuousness, he was just the sort of man to come forward betimes with boyishly candid explanations, and adjustments, and appeals. As he sped towards me over the blinding chalk-stones, there was something in his stride that recalled the eager, masterful love-making of his present Majesty of Spain.
I got up, relocked the hut door, left the chair outstretched on the shingle, and swung off for home as swiftly as was possible without seeming to run away. I did not choose to grant an audience to Lord Ruddington whenever and wherever it might suit him to claim it.