“He was your brother?” I asked.
“Yes, monsieur, my one brother.” Her tears dropped slowly.
“And Galt Roscoe, who was he?” asked I.
Through her grief her face was eloquent. “I never saw him—never knew him,” she said. “He saved my poor Hector from much suffering; he nursed him, and buried him here when he died, and then—that!” pointing to the tombstone. “He made me love the English,” she said. “Some day I shall find him, and I shall have money to pay him back all he spent—all.” Now I guessed the meaning of the scene on board the ‘Fulvia’, when she had been so anxious to preserve her present relations with Mrs. Falchion. This was the secret—a beautiful one. She rose. “They disgraced Hector in New Caledonia,” she said, “because he refused to punish a convict at Ile Nou who did not deserve it. He determined to go to France to represent his case. He left me behind, because we were poor. He went to Sydney. There he came to know this good man,”—her finger gently felt his name upon the stone,—“who made him a guest upon his ship; and so he came on towards England. In the Indian Ocean he was taken ill: and this was the end.”
She mournfully sank again beside the grave, but she was no longer weeping.
“What was this officer’s vessel?” I said presently. She drew from her dress a letter. “It is here. Please read it all. He wrote that to me when Hector died.”
The superscription to the letter was—H.B.M.S. Porcupine.
I might have told her then that the ‘Porcupine’ was in the harbour at Aden, but I felt that things would work out to due ends without my help—which, indeed, they began to do immediately. As we stood there in silence, I reading over and over again the line upon the pedestal, I heard footsteps behind, and, turning, I saw a man approaching us, who, from his manner, though he was dressed in civilian’s clothes, I guessed to be an officer of the navy. He was of more than middle height, had black hair, dark blue eyes, straight, strongly-marked brows, and was clean-shaven. He was a little ascetic-looking, and rather interesting and uncommon, and yet he was unmistakably a sea-going man. It was a face that one would turn to look at again and again—a singular personality. And yet my first glance told me that he was not one who had seen much happiness. Perhaps that was not unattractive in itself, since people who are very happy, and show it, are often most selfish too, and repel where they should attract. He was now standing near the grave, and his eyes were turned from one to the other of us, at last resting on Justine.
Presently I saw a look of recognition. He stepped quickly forward. “Mademoiselle, will you pardon me?” he said very gently, “but you remind me of one whose grave I came to see.” His hand made a slight motion toward Hector Caron’s resting-place. Her eyes were on him with an inquiring earnestness. “Oh, monsieur, is it possible that you are my brother’s friend and rescuer?”
“I am Roscoe. He was my good friend,” he said to her, and he held out his hand. She took it, and kissed it impulsively. He flushed, and drew it back quickly and shyly.