"How was it," he asked when he concluded, "that you did not write to my parents, Gerald, on your return home? You knew where they lived."
"I talked the matter over with Inez," Gerald replied, "and we agreed that it was kinder to them to be silent. Of course they had mourned you as killed in the fight with the Armada. A year had passed, and the wound must have somewhat healed. Had I told them that you had escaped death at that time, had been months with me in Spain, and had, on your way home, been either killed by the Moors or were a prisoner in their galleys, it would have opened the wound afresh, and caused them renewed pain and sorrow."
"No doubt you were right, Gerald, and that it was, as you say, the kindest thing to leave them in ignorance of my fate."
Upon the next visit Sir Francis Vere paid to England, Geoffrey spoke to him with regard to Gerald Burke's affairs. Sir Francis took the matter up warmly, and his influence sufficed in a very short time to obtain an order for the restoration to Gerald of all his estates. Inez and Dolores became as fast friends as were their husbands; and when the Burkes came to England Geoffrey's house was their home.
The meeting with Gerald was followed by a still greater surprise, for not many days after, when Geoffrey was sitting with his wife and Don Mendez under the shade of a broad cypress in the garden of the merchant's house at Chelsea, they saw a servant coming across towards them, followed by a man in seafaring attire. "Here is a person who would speak to you, Master Vickars," the servant said. "I told him it was not your custom to see any here, and that if he had aught to say he should call at your house in St. Mary Axe; but he said that he had but just arrived from Hedingham, and that your honour would excuse his intrusion when you saw him."
"Bring him up; he may be the bearer of a message from my father," Geoffrey said; and the servant went back to the man, whom he had left a short distance off.
"Master Vickars will speak with you."
The sailor approached the party. He stood for a minute before Geoffrey without speaking. Geoffrey looked at him with some surprise, and saw that the muscles of his face were twitching, and that he was much agitated. As he looked at him remembrance suddenly flashed upon him, and he sprang to his feet. "Stephen Boldero!" he exclaimed.
"Ay, ay, Geoffrey, it is me."
For a time the men stood with their right hands clasped and the left on each other's shoulders. Tears fell down the sailor's weather-beaten cheeks, and Geoffrey himself was too moved to speak. For two years they had lived as brothers, had shared each other's toils and dangers, had talked over their plans and hopes together; and it was to Stephen that Geoffrey owed it that he was not now a galley-slave in Barbary.