"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."