A very different Roy soon appeared, dressed in a castoff suit of Mr. Bryce's, which, though it was by no means a perfect fit, since Roy was markedly the taller, yet shone by comparison with what he had worn before. Roy had grown very brown during his prolonged wanderings; and the dye, which it had been thought advisable to keep going so long as he remained on French soil, was still en evidence. But the face and the grey eyes were unmistakable. They had been unmistakable to Molly from the moment she saw him.
An abundant dinner, hastily heated and brought together, awaited him soon in the dining-room; and Roy confessed to a "wolfish" appetite. Molly said nothing then in allusion to Ivor. She knew that Polly would wish the subject to be avoided while Drake was present, and Drake took care to be present throughout the meal. He would not lose a single word of Roy's narration of the escape from Bitche, and the journey through France. That any Frenchman should have acted as Jean had acted, came as a positive shock to the insular prejudices of the old butler. Drake arrived at a solemn conclusion, while he listened, that some among those Mounseers over the water were not perhaps altogether bad, even though they lacked the advantages of an English "eddication."
But when dinner was over, when Roy's wants were satisfied, and when the three were together in the drawing-room, Roy in a comfortable chair, with Molly close to his side, Polly herself remarked quietly—
"And now Roy will tell us all about them at Verdun."
"Haven't seen 'em lately, you know, Polly. I wish I had. The latest news I can give you is near a year old. No, not quite the latest, but—Well, I left my father and mother all right at Verdun, last spring. Not much less than a year. Denham had been away at Valenciennes for, eighteen months. You must have heard that."
"One letter from your mother, which had been long on the road, spoke of his having been there. But no explanation. We thought he had perhaps gone thither for a few weeks."
"Eighteen months. Ordered off for nothing, and brought back in the same fashion. He got to Verdun the very day before I broke that bust, and was arrested. You know—I told you."
"Then you have not seen anything of Denham for an age?" Molly asked this.
"Pretty near two years and a half, except that one day."
"And they were all well?" Polly said.