He was at once on his guard.
“That seems to be the trouble. There has been a great deal of misapprehension. I was lost in the ice, given up for dead, and finally rescued by my English friends. I can’t tell you how good they were to me,” he hurried on. “I was so nearly gone that they had no hope at first, and I was so ill and delirious afterward that they didn’t know who I was. I had left my papers with my men, and I happened to have one of poor Rayburn’s diaries on me. They thought I was Rayburn—that’s why no word came back about me. It wasn’t until I recovered enough to know myself that the English nurses found out who I was.”
Fanny turned uneasily and broke off a spray of yellow buds that lay at the window-ledge.
“Mr. Faunce told us how terrible it all was. He couldn’t bear to speak of the worst of it. He said you were the best friend a man ever had. I think”—she looked at him—“the thought of your death nearly crazed him at first.”
She caught the expression in Overton’s eyes, but she could not fathom it; only the tension in his face increased.
“I’ve just seen Faunce. They were up in the Catskills when I went there to visit my old aunt.”
“Oh!” She pulled the yellow buds off one by one. “Then you’ve just seen Diane, too? We didn’t know where they went.”
“Yes, I saw her. When I met her I didn’t know that she was married. You see, we’d had no news.”
Fanny sank back in her chair.
“I never thought of that!”