Albemarle continued to stare at him in deepening amazement.
“So that is what brought you?” he said at last, when full understanding came to him.
“But for that I certainly should never have come.”
“Gad!” said Albemarle, and he repeated the ejaculation with a laugh, for he found the situation curious enough to be amusing. “Gad! The ways of Chance!”
“Chance!” echoed Holles, suddenly very sober, realizing how this sudden, unexpected turn of Fortune’s wheel had changed the whole complexion of his life. “Almost it seems that Chance has stood my friend at last, though it has waited until I had touched the very bottom of misfortune. But for your proclamation, and but for Mrs. Quinn, too, I should have been Fortune’s fool again over the matter of this commission. It would have been here waiting for me, and I should never have known. The very malice by which Mrs. Quinn sought to do me disservice has turned to my benefit. For had she told your messenger the truth—that I had vanished and that she had no knowledge of my whereabouts—you would never have traced me just then, and you would never have waited that fortnight. Thus all might have been changed.” He paused, lost in a wonder that Albemarle did not share.
“Maybe, maybe,” said his grace briskly. “But what matters now is that you are here, and that the command is yours if you still wish it. There is not even the fear of the plague to deter you, since you are a safe man now. It is an important office, as I told you, and so that you discharge its duties, as I know you will, it may prove but a stepping-stone to greater things. What do you say?”
“Say?” cried Holles, his cheeks flushed, his grey eyes gleaming. “Why, I give you thanks with all my heart.”
“Then you accept it. Good! For I believe you to be the very man for the office.” Albemarle stepped to his writing-table, selected from among some documents a parchment bearing a heavy seal, sat down, took up a pen, and wrote briskly for a few seconds. He dusted the writing with pounce, and proffered the document. “Here, then, is your commission. How soon can you sail?”
“In a month,” said Holles promptly.
“A month!” Albemarle was taken aback. He frowned. “Why, man, you should be ready in a week.”