How clever he was, to be sure!  I saw in a moment Jack had interpreted my whole frame of mind correctly and wonderfully.

“Well, I went back to Babbicombe,” Jack continued, “and, lest my heart should break for want of human sympathy, I confided every word of my terrible story to Elsie.  Elsie can trust me; and Elsie believed me.  Gradually, as you began to recover, I realised the soundness of your doctor’s idea that you should be allowed to come back to yourself by re-education from the very beginning, without any too early intrusion of reminiscences from your previous life to confuse and disturb you.  But I couldn’t go on with my profession, all the same, while I waited.  I couldn’t attend as I ought to my patients’ wants and ailments:  I was too concentrated upon you:  the strain was too great upon me.  So I threw up my practice, came out to Canada, bought a bit of land, and began farming here, and seeing a few patients now and again locally, just to fill up my time with.  I felt confident in the end you would recover and remember me.  I felt confident you would come to yourself and marry me.  But still, it was very long work waiting.  Every month, Elsie got news indirectly from Minnie Moore or someone of your state of health; and I intended to go back and try to see you as soon as ever you were in a condition to bear the shock of re-living your previous life again.

“Unfortunately, however, the police got hold of you before I could carry my plan into execution.  As soon as I heard that, I made up my mind at once to go home by the first mail and break it all gently to you.  So Elsie and I started for Quebec, meaning to sail by the Dominion steamer for England.  But at the hotel at Quebec we saw the telegrams announcing that you were then on your way out to Canada.  Well, of course we didn’t feel sure whether you came as a friend or an enemy.  We were certain it was to seek me out you were coming to America; but whether you remembered me still and still loved me, or whether you’d found out some stray clue to the missing man, and were anxious to hunt me down as your father’s murderer, we hadn’t the slightest conception.  So under those circumstances, we thought it best not to meet you ourselves at the steamer, or to reveal our identity too soon, for fear of a catastrophe.  I knew it would be better to wait and watch—­to gain your confidence, if possible—­in any case, to find out how you were affected on first seeing us and talking with us.

“Well then, as the time came on for the Sarmatian to arrive, it began to strike me by degrees that all Quebec was agog with curiosity to see you.  I dared not go down to meet you at the quay myself; but the Chief Constable of Quebec, Major Tascherel, was an old friend and fellow-officer of my father’s; and when I explained to him my fears that you might be mobbed by sightseers on your arrival at the harbour, and told him how afraid I was of the shock it might give you to meet an old friend unexpectedly at the steamer’s side, he very kindly consented to go down and see you safe through the Custom House, It was so lucky I knew him.  If it hadn’t been for that, you might have been horribly inconvenienced.