"Yes, Mademoiselle Rivière," he replied, with a cold and significant emphasis upon the second word.
But he found her eyes fixed, not upon him, but upon the flames. He followed the direction of her gaze and beheld a surprising sight. There, burning in the fire, was a thick piece of planking, and on the part of it not yet consumed were five black-painted letters, forming in their arrangement the word:—
"I-d-r-i-s!"
His own name! Yes: there it was, plain to be seen on the plank, the black characters shining out clearly through the yellow flame.
Lorelie had simply been murmuring the word as it caught her eyes, without any intention of addressing him by it.
How came his name to be inscribed on this piece of timber? If the materials composing the fire were driftwood picked up from the beach (and he did not doubt that such was the origin of the timber in the cave), then this plank was probably a relic of a sunken vessel, the word Idris forming its name.
Was there any connection between himself and this lost barque other than mere identity of name?
His active mind, eager to give an affirmative to this question, immediately devised a theory. Captain Rochefort, on flying from Brittany with Eric Marville, would be compelled by considerations of safety either to disguise and rename the yacht in which the flight had been effected, or, what was more probable, dispose of the Nemesis in some way, and purchase another vessel. That Captain Rochefort had so acted, naming his new barque after the son of his escaped friend, became Idris' firm conviction: for, lost to reason in his excitement, he overlooked the possibility that other yacht-owners might have a partiality for the same name.
The plank now burning before his eyes had come from the figure-head of the yacht in which his father and Captain Rochefort had cruised about, after disposing of the Nemesis.