“’Pon my honor, Evelyn, the greatest of your many charms is your prompt sympathy. In those few words you have reconciled me to my lot.”
“I think Arthur is rather a nice name,” she sighed contentedly. After all, it was best to humor him, and he was the first man who had ever won her confidence.
“I ask for more than pity,” he said. “Nevertheless, if I would gain credence I must propound a plain tale. List, then, while I unfold marvels.”
He was a good talker, and he kept her amused and interested, at times somewhat thrilled, by the recital of his doings in London.
They were in a carriage speeding out into the lovely country westward of Plymouth when he told her the strange history of Domenico Garcia. She shivered a little at the gruesome memory of the “parchment” which she had examined so intently, but she did not interrupt, save for an occasional question, until he reached that part of his narrative which ended in the determination of the previous night to sail to Plymouth forthwith.
“It is all very strange and mysterious,” she said at last. “You were coming to Milford Haven, I gather?”
“Yes.”
“And were it not for the impulse that brought me here you would now be on your way over Dartmoor?”
“That was my fixed intention.”