“Stop; don’t talk now.”
Vane was silent for a time; then memory reasserted itself. He was not at Greythorpe, but in Brazil.
“Why, I was taken ill up the river. Have you been nursing me?”
“Yes, for weeks,” said Distin, with a smile.
“Where am I?”
“At Rio. In my house. I am head here of my father’s mercantile business.”
“But—”
“No, no, don’t talk.”
“I must ask this: How did I get here?”
“I heard that you were ill, and had you brought home that’s all. I was told that the overseer with the surveying expedition was brought down ill—dying, they said, and then I heard that his name was Vane Lee. Can it be old Weathercock? I said; and I went and found that it was, and—well, you know the rest.”