The girl arose from her seat, saying she would try to find the book, and left him there meditating. When she came back, after the lapse of half an hour or so, she found him sitting just as she had left him, with his sad eyes on the sad sea. The girl had a volume in her hand. "There," she said, "I knew there would be a copy on board, but I am more bewildered than ever; the frontispiece is an exact portrait of you, only you are dressed differently and do not look—" the girl hesitated, "so ill as when you came on board."
Ormond looked up at the girl with a smile, and said—
"You might say with truth, so ill as I look now."
"Oh, the voyage has done you good. You seem ever so much better than when you came on board."
"Yes, I think that is so," said Ormond, reaching for the volume she held in her hand. He opened it at the frontispiece and gazed long at the picture.
The girl sat down beside him and watched his face, glancing from it to the book.
"It seems to me," she said at last, "that the coincidence is becoming more and more striking. Have you ever seen that portrait before?"
"Yes," said Ormond slowly. "I recognise it as a portrait I took of myself in the interior of Africa which I sent to a dear friend of mine; in fact, the only friend I had in England. I think I wrote him about getting together a book out of the materials I sent him, but I am not sure. I was very ill at the time I wrote him my last letter. I thought I was going to die, and told him so. I feel somewhat bewildered, and don't quite understand it all."
"I understand it," cried the girl, her face blazing with indignation. "Your friend is a traitor. He is reaping the reward that should have been yours, and so poses as the African traveller, the real Ormond. You must put a stop to it when you reach England, and expose his treachery to the whole country."
Ormond shook his head slowly and said—