The surgeon laughed good-humoredly.
"If you must have a reason, you were an interesting case. I'm Dennis Ormond, of the Gold Coast service, and Dom Pedro asked me to look at you. I obliged him, and at first you were not a very encouraging spectacle. Of course, I did my little, but I may say that my medicine was not the only thing responsible for your cure. The señorita assisted me very ably, and—for a man must sleep sometimes—without her help it is quite probable we should have attended the expected funeral."
Ormond said this with an indifference which Dane, because he did not then know how much his little had been, or that his was an eminent name on the fever coast, thought hardly civil; but there was a warning gravity in his tone as he continued:
"It was, of course, my business; but not the señorita's; and you might have changed the pronouns in your last sentence advantageously."
Dane was ashamed of several things he said and did that day, and his answer among them; but few white men are quite accountable for their actions when recovering from fever, and there was that in the surgeon's glance which aroused his indignation.
"Are you not taking an unfair advantage—considering how much I owe you!" he asked.
"Perhaps so!" said Ormond. "In this land one takes an advantage when and how one can. I dare say I'm a meddlesome idiot; but I conceived a certain respect for you, if only because of the spirited manner in which you resisted my attempts to cure you; and more for the señorita. Now, I don't think Miss Castro, curious combination of ministering angel, child, and—well, the angel's antithesis, as she evidently is, would have done so much for everybody!"
Dane answered nothing. One cannot rebuke the man one owes one's life to. Ormond, however, had not finished with the subject.
"You crawled off your cot in delirium one night, and I found you groping among some papers scattered from your pocket-book about the floor," he said. "It required the assistance of two Krooboys to induce you to lie down again, and Miss Castro helped me to pick up the papers. I, however, found this among them first, and considered it well to take charge of it in the meantime. Miss Castro, you have heard, made an excellent nurse."
Dane felt that the surgeon noticed the way his fingers tightened on the little photograph handed him; but the man went on, with a smile: