“I don’t believe,” said the minister’s wife to her husband, when the bridal party had left, “that you ever before married such a handsome couple.”

“The fact is,” said he, “that I never before saw standing together such a fine specimen of a man and such a beautiful, glowing, radiant woman.”

“I don’t see why you need say that,” said she, quickly.  “You and I stood up together.”

“Yes,” he replied, with a smile, “but I wasn’t a spectator.”

CHAPTER LI

BANKER DOES SOME IMPORTANT BUSINESS

When Banker went back to the prison cell, he was still firmly convinced that he had been overreached by his former captain, Raminez; and, although he knew it not, there were good reasons for his convictions.  Often had he noticed, in the Rackbirds’ camp, a peculiar form of the eyebrows which surmounted the slender, slightly aquiline nose of his chief.  Whenever Raminez was anxious, or beginning to be angered, his brow would slightly knit, and the ends of his eyebrows would approach each other, curling upward and outward as they did so.  This was an action of the eyebrows which was peculiar to the Darcias of Granada, from which family the professor’s father had taken a wife, and had brought her to Paris.  A sister of this wife had afterwards married a Spanish gentleman named Blanquote, whose second son, having fallen into disgrace in Spain, had gone to America, where he changed his name to Raminez, and performed a number of discreditable deeds, among which was the deception of several of his discreditable comrades in regard to his family.  They could not help knowing that he came from Spain, and he made them all believe that his real name was Raminez.  There had been three of them, besides Banker, who had made it the object of their lives to wait for the opportunity to obtain blackmail from his family, by threatened declarations of his deeds.

This most eminent scoundrel, whose bones now lay at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, had inherited from his grandfather that same trick of the eyebrows above his thin and slightly aquiline nose which Banker had observed upon the countenance of the professor in the police station, and who had inherited it from the same Spanish gentleman.

The next day Banker received a visitor.  It was Professor Barre.  As this gentleman entered the cell, followed by two guards, who remained near the door, Banker looked up in amazement.  He had expected a message, but had not dreamed that he should see the man himself.

“Captain,” he exclaimed, as he sprang to his feet, “this is truly good of you.  I see you are the same old trump as ever, and do not bear malice.”  He spoke in Spanish, for such had been the language in common use in camp.

The professor paid no attention to these words.  “I came here,” he said, “to demand of you why you made that absurd and malicious charge against me the other day.  Such charges are not passed over in France, but I will give you a chance to explain yourself.”