“I only met him once or twice before,” Bathurst said. “You see I am not here very often, and when I am it is only on business, so I know a very few people here except those I have to deal with, and by the time I have got through my business I am generally so thoroughly out of temper with the pig headed stupidity and obstinacy of people in general, that I get into my buggy and drive straight away.”
“I fancy you irritate them as much as they irritate you, Bathurst. Well, here we are; now we will have a quiet cheroot and a peg, to quiet our nerves after all that din, before we turn in. Let us get off our coats and collars, and make ourselves comfortable; it is a proof of the bestial stupidity of mankind that they should wear such abominations as dress clothes in a climate like this. Here, boy, light the candles and bring two sodas and brandies.”
“Well, Bathurst,” he went on, when they had made themselves comfortable in two lounging chairs, “what do you thing of Miss Hannay?”
“I was prepared to admire her, Doctor, from what you said; it is not very often that you overpraise things; but she is a charming girl, very pretty and bright, frank and natural.”
“She is all that,” the Doctor said. “We were four months on the voyage out, and I saw enough of her in that time to know her pretty thoroughly.”
“What puzzles me about her,” Bathurst said, “is that I seemed to know her face. Where I saw her, and under what circumstances, I have been puzzling myself half the evening to recall, but I have the strongest conviction that I have met her.”
“You are dreaming, man. You have been out here eight years; she was a child of ten when you left England! You certainly have not seen her, and as I know pretty well every woman who has been in this station for the last five or six years, I can answer for it that you have not seen anyone in the slightest degree resembling her.”
“That is what I have been saying to myself, Doctor, but that does not in the slightest degree shake my conviction about it.”
“Then you must have dreamt it,” the Doctor said decidedly. “Some fool of a poet has said, 'Visions of love cast their shadows before,' or something of that sort, which of course is a lie; still, that is the only way that I can account for it.”
Bathurst smiled faintly. “I don't think the quotation is quite right, Doctor; anyhow, I am convinced that the impression is far too vivid to have been the result of a dream.”