"To me it would make all the difference," he urged, but still very gently, as one who, sure of himself, might reason with a child. "I doubt if I shall recover, indeed, until this debt is paid."
"A debt, Oliver? What kind of debt?"
"Why, of gratitude, to be sure. Did you not win me back from death?—to be a new and different man henceforth, please God!"
Upon an excuse she left him and went to her own sleeping tent. It stood a little within the royal garden of Belem and (the weather being chilly) the guard of the gate usually kept a small brazier alight for her. This evening for some reason he had neglected it, and the fire had sunk low. She stooped to rake its embers together, and, as she did so, at length her laughter escaped her; soft laughter, terrible to hear.
In the midst of it a voice—a high, jolly, schoolboy voice—called out from the gateway demanding, in execrable Portuguese, to be shown Lady Vyell's tent. She dropped the raking-iron with a clatter and stood erect, listening.
"Dicky?" . . . she breathed.
Yes; the tent flap was lifted and Dicky stood there in the twilight; a Dicky incredibly grown.
"Dicky!"
"Motherkin!" He was folded in her arms.
"But what on earth brings you to this terrible Lisbon, of all places?"