“It is indeed Markham,” said Colonel Gerald. “And you know him?”
“Know him?” the stranger laughed. “Know him?” Then as the wagonette pulled up beside where Markham was standing in front of the house, the stranger leapt down, saying, as he clapped Oswin on the shoulder, “The General asks me if I know you, old boy; answer for me, will you?”
But Oswin Markham was staring blankly from the man to Daireen and her father.
“You told me you were going to New York,” he said at last.
“And so I was when you packed me aboard the Virginia brig so neatly at Natal, but the Virginia brig put into Simon's Bay and cut her cable one night, leaving me ashore. It's Providence, Oswin—Providence.”
Oswin had allowed his hand to be taken by the man, who was the same that had spent the night with him in the hotel at Pietermaritzburg. Then he turned as if from a fit of abstraction, to Daireen and the colonel.
“I beg your pardon a thousand times,” he said. “But this meeting with Mr. Despard has quite startled me.”
“Mr. Despard,” said the colonel, “I must ever look on as one of my best friends, though we met to-day for the first time. I owe him a debt that I can never repay—my daughter's life.”
Oswin turned and grasped the hand of the man whom he had called Mr. Despard, before they entered the house together.
Daireen went in just before Markham; they had not yet exchanged a sentence, but when her father and Despard had entered one of the rooms, she turned, saying: