“No,” said Evelyn promptly. “We shall prepare supper, but if you keep Captain Warden more than half an hour I shall come for him.”
“You must remain here, sweetheart,” said the grim–looking Arab. “There is a lot to be done outside. Be sure I shall join you without delay. Come along, Bellairs, and rummage your kit—there’s a good chap.”
As they crossed the compound together, the sailor appeared to make up his mind to discharge a disagreeable duty.
“By the way,” he said, “I hope I am not mixing matters absurdly, but are you the Warden that Mrs. Laing was once engaged to?”
“Yes—more than ten years ago. What of it?”
“Well, she has left you everything she possessed—a regular pile, somebody told me.”
“On condition that I do not marry Evelyn Dane, I suppose?” said Warden, who treated the sailor’s astonishing announcement as though the receipt of a thumping legacy were an every–day affair.
“I haven’t heard anything of a fly in the amber,” said Bellairs. “Hudson knows all about it—he will be able to tell you.”
But Warden had no word to say to Hudson concerning Rosamund Laing or her bequest. His mind was too full of the greater wonder that Evelyn and he should meet on the Benuë; that it had fallen to him to snatch her from the clutches of the men of Oku.