To add to the scene, a low black cloud with coppery edges hovered at the meeting of sea and sky, between which and themselves one taut sail could be seen trailing its boom in the water.
To one of them--to Mr.Gryce, in fact, upon whose age Fancy had begun to work, this battling craft presented an ominous appearance.

It was doomed.
The gale was too much for it.

Did he see in this obvious fact a prophecy of what lay before the man upon whose privacy they were on the point of intruding?
The house was so arranged that to reach the main entrance it was necessary to pass a certain window.

As they did so, the figure of Mr.
Roberts could be seen in the room beyond moving about in an interested survey of its new furnishings and present comfortable arrangement.

To these men bent on an errand as far as possible removed from interests of this kind, this evidence of Mr.Roberts' pleasure in the promise of future domesticity gave a painful shock, and raised in the minds of more than one of them a doubt--perhaps the first in days--whether a man so heavily weighted with a burden of unacknowledged guilt could show this pleasurable absorption in his new surroundings.
However, when they came to see him nearer, and marked the stiffening of his body and the slight toss-up of his head, as he noted the number and the exact character of his guests, their spirits fell again, for he was certainly a broken man, however much he might seek to disguise it.