Page:Quiller-Couch--Old fires and profitable ghosts.djvu/301

Rh fourth had actually been launched, and was being manned when the vessel plunged and stove her in as she went down.

"That is as much as needs be told about the Nerbuddha. Let me get on to the happier part of the story, that which concerns Dick Hobart and the small girl whom by Heaven's mercy he helped to save. Her name was Felicia—Felicia Rose Derwent Stanhope in full. Her uncle and guardian, Sir John Derwent, came down and fetched her home, with the bodies of her father and mother. I have told you that Dick was just then waiting for his commission, which, by the way, his family could poorly afford to purchase. Well, in recognition of his 'gallantry' (as the old gentleman was good enough to term it) Sir John, who possessed a good deal of influence, had him gazetted within six weeks, and to the 2-th Regiment—'for which,' so ran the gracious letter bringing the news, 'you have performed the first of what I hope will be a long list of distinguished services.'

"Pretty, was it not? Yes, but there's prettier to come. Felicia, who was an only child and quite an heiress in a small way, kept up from the first a steady correspondence with her 'preserver': childish letters, to begin with, but Dick kept them all. In Bombay, in Abyssinia, for a few weeks in England (when he saw her for the first time since the wreck), then back in India again, he has told me since that the world held but one woman for him, and that was