The search seemed useless. Either Mouraki had not received a letter from Mrs Bennett Hipgrave, or he had done what I myself always did with the good lady’s communications—thrown it away immediately after reading it. I examined every scrap of paper, official documents, private notes (the captain was very nervous when I insisted on looking through these for a trace of Mrs Hipgrave’s name), lists of stores; in a word, the whole contents of Mouraki’s despatch-boxes.
‘It’s a blank!’ I cried, stepping back at last in disappointment.
‘Yes, it’s gone; but depend upon it, he had it,’ said Denny.
A sudden recollection flashed across me, the remembrance of the subtle amused smile with which Mouraki had spoken of the lady who was most anxious about me and my future wife. He must have known then; he must even then have had Mrs Hipgrave’s letter in his possession. He had played a deliberate trick on me by suppressing the letter; hence his fury when I announced my intention of disregarding the ties that bound me—a fury which had, for the moment, conquered his cool cunning and led him into violent threats. At that moment, when I realised the man’s audacious knavery, when I thought of the struggle he had caused to me and the pain to Phroso, well, just then I came near to canonising Demetri, and nearer still to grudging him his exploit.
‘What was in the letter, then?’ I cried to Denny.
‘Read mine again,’ said he, and he threw it across to me.
I read it again. I was cooler now, and the meaning of it stood out plain and not to be doubted. Mrs Bennett Hipgrave’s letter, her wise letter, had broken off my engagement to her daughter. The fact was plain; all that was missing, destroyed by the caution or the carelessness of Mouraki Pasha, was the reason; and the reason I could supply for myself. I reached my conclusion, and looked again at Denny.
‘Allow me to congratulate you,’ said Denny ironically.
Man is a curious creature. I (and other people) may have made that reflection before. I offer no apology for it. The more I see of myself and my friends the more convinced I grow of its truth. Here was the thing for which I had been hoping and praying, the one great gift that I asked of fate, the single boon which fortune enviously withheld. Here was freedom—divine freedom! Yet what I actually said to Denny, in reply to his felicitations, was: