“Well, Harland, how are you?” said a mellow voice in the cheeriest of accents—­“It’s strange we should meet like this after so many years!”

VI

RECOGNITION

At these words and at sight of the speaker, Morton Harland started back as if he had been shot.

“Santoris!” he exclaimed—­“Not possible!  Rafel Santoris!  No!  You must be his son!”

The stranger laughed.

“My good Harland!  Always the sceptic!  Miracles are many, but there is one which is beyond all performance.  A man cannot be his own offspring!  I am that very Santoris who saw you last in Oxford.  Come, come!—­you ought to know me!”

He stepped more fully into the light which was shed from the open door of the deck saloon, and showed himself to be a man of distinguished appearance, apparently about forty years of age.  He was well built, with the straight back and broad shoulders of an athlete,—­his face was finely featured and radiant with the glow of health and strength, and as he smiled and laid one hand on Mr. Harland’s shoulder he looked the very embodiment of active, powerful manhood.  Morton Harland stared at him in amazement and something of terror.

“Rafel Santoris!” he repeated—­“You are his living image,—­but you cannot be himself—­you are too young!”

A gleam of amusement sparkled in the stranger’s eyes.

“Don’t let us talk of age or youth for the moment”—­he said.  “Here I am,—­your ‘eccentric’ college acquaintance whom you and several other fellows fought shy of years ago!  I assure you I am quite harmless!  Will you present me to the ladies?”

There was a brief embarrassed pause.  Then Mr. Harland turned to us where we had withdrawn ourselves a little apart and addressed his daughter.

“Catherine,”—­he said—­“This gentleman tells me he knew me at Oxford, and if he is right I also knew him.  I spoke of him only the other night at dinner—­you remember?—­but I did not tell you his name.  It is Rafel Santoris—­if indeed he is Santoris!—­though my Santoris should be a much older man.”

“I extremely regret,” said our visitor then, advancing and bowing courteously to Catherine and myself—­“that I do not fulfil the required conditions of age!  Will you try to forgive me?”

He smiled—­and we were a little confused, hardly knowing what to say.  Involuntarily I raised my eyes to his, and with one glance saw in those clear blue orbs that so steadfastly met mine a world of memories—­memories tender, wistful and pathetic, entangled as in tears and fire.  All the inward instincts of my spirit told me that I knew him well—­as well as one knows the gold of the sunshine or the colour of the sky,—­yet where had I seen him often and often before?  While my thoughts puzzled over this question he averted his gaze from mine and went on speaking to Catherine.

“I understand,” he said—­“that you are interested in the lighting of my yacht?”