“A good old Southern name; they used to be D’Aubignys in Colonial times.”
“What do you know about them?”
“Nothing, excepting what little leaked into me out of the history books in school: French, of course, and Huguenots. Settled first in Virginia, I believe. But that’s not to the point. As I say, we’ve got to find Miss Jean.”
“‘We’?” Philip queried.
“That is what I said. Your relations with the young woman are your own, and I’m not messing in on them. Mine are in the nature of a debt.”
“But you don’t know her!” Philip protested.
“No more I don’t; but the debt remains. Tell me baldly, Phil: would you ever have thought of taking me on the prospecting trip, if she hadn’t suggested it?”
“Since you put it that way, I might not have.”
“Very well, then. In that case I owe her my stake in the game, whatever it is, or whatever it may eventually amount to. We must find this shipwrecked family.”
Philip shook his head in discouragement.