‘I do not think she would object to my going, for we are not to be married, as you know, until she is twenty-one. Her mother will not consent to part with her before that time. In any case I should not have the journey for nothing, because I could bring Eva back with me.’
‘So you could,’ said Robert Foster. ‘We should be put down as a couple of foolish fellows if anyone knew what you went to Sydney for.’
‘I shall tell no one, with the exception of Muriel,’ said Edgar. ‘She will not think it foolish.’
‘I ought to tell you more,’ said Robert Foster. ‘There was a sketch in the letter, and it bore a strange resemblance to Manton. I cannot make out where the letter has got to.’
‘Was it a sketch made on the spot, or drawn from memory?’
‘Drawn in Sydney, I believe the writer said.’
‘Then it may have been drawn from Wal Jessop’s description,’ said Edgar.
‘Possibly, but I hardly think so. It seemed to me to be a sketch just as the man who drew it remembered to have seen him. I did not tell you of this before, because I thought it might upset you during the tour.’
‘I should have thought a good deal about it, no doubt,’ said Edgar; ‘and perhaps it was as well you did not tell me.’
Edgar pondered over what his father told him, and the more he thought over it, the more impossible it seemed to him that anyone, least of all Captain Manton, should have been saved from the wreck of the Distant Shore.