"The latter has yet to come, Senor Capitano," the Doctor interposed.
And I: "My cousin, your distaste for disguise will yet be the death of you. But tell me, what were you doing in this neighbourhood?"
"Why, watching Marmont, to be sure, as my orders were."
"Your orders? You don't mean to tell me that Lord Wellington knows of your return!"
"I reported myself to him on the nineteenth of last month in the camp on
San Christoval: he gave me my directions that same evening."
"But, Heavens!" I cried, "it is barely a week ago that I returned from the north and had an hour's interview with him; and he never mentioned your name, though aware (as he must be) that no news in the world could give me more joy."
"Is that so, cousin?" He gazed at me earnestly and wistfully, as I thought.
"You know it is so," I answered, turning my face away that he might not see my emotion.
"As for Lord Wellington's silence," Captain Alan went on, after musing a while, "he has a great capacity for it, as you know; and perhaps he has persuaded himself that we work better apart. Our later performances in and around Sabugal might well excuse that belief."
"But now I suppose you have some message for him. Is it urgent? Or will you satisfy me first how you came here—you, whom I left a prisoner on the road to Bayonne and, as I desperately thought, to execution?"