"What did he say?"
"Say? Laughed at me, and called me green."
Dr. West sat thoughtfully pulling his great dark whiskers. Dark as they were, they had yet a tinge of red in the fire-light. "It was a curious thing; a very curious thing, that both brothers should die, as was supposed, in Australia," said he. "Better—as things have turned out—that Fred should have turned up afterwards, than John."
"I don't know that," spoke Jan with his accustomed truth-telling freedom. "The pair were not good for much, but John was the best of them."
"I was thinking of Sibylla," candidly admitted the doctor. "It would have been better for her."
Jan opened his eyes considerably.
"Better for her!—for it to turn out that she had two husbands living? That's logic, that is."
"Dear me, to be sure!" cried the doctor. "I was not thinking of that phase of the affair, Mr. Jan. Is she in spirits?"
"Who? Sibylla? She's fretting herself into her grave."
Dr. West turned his head with a start. "What at? The loss of Verner's Pride?"