It was not because the vessel was overdue that David confessed.

Bulmer, despite his sixty-eight years, was an acute man of business.

Moreover, he was blessed with a retentive memory, and he treasured every word of the bogus messages from Iris concocted by her uncle.

They were lucid at first, but under the stress of time they wore thin, grew disconnected, showed signs of the strain imposed on their author's imagination.
Bulmer, a typical Lancashire man, blended in his disposition a genial openhandedness with a shrewd caution.

He could display a princely generosity in dealing with Verity as the near relative and guardian of his promised wife; to the man whom he suspected of creating the obstacles that kept her away from him he applied a pitiless logic.
The storm had burst unexpectedly.