"I doubt," replied my uncle, "whether there are six people in Europe who know him--know him intimately, that is. As a young man he graduated at Upsala----"
"In Sweden, you know," I interjected, for the enlightenment of the artist, who seemed to resent this attempt of mine to teach him geography.
"And then," continued my uncle, "after a brief interval in England he sailed for India, where he has been ever since till the last two months."
"And it was during that brief interval in England, I suppose," said Angelo, "that he became engaged to Miss Leslie?"
"And Captain Willard did not return to England, you say, till the preparations for his marriage brought him over?"
"You have it. Daphne and I took a voyage to India last winter, and spent several weeks with George at Poonah; and a very happy time we had of it, too. None could ever have guessed that their engagement would come to such an ending as this."
My uncle's replies seemed to have given great satisfaction to the artist.
"You are quite a prophet," I said to the latter. "Your wedding gift, the picture, seems like a prediction of what happened to-day. Were you prepared for the event?"
"To a certain extent--yes," replied Angelo.
"Had you any reason for your belief other than George's strange appearance at Charing Cross last night?"
"Well, a day or two after I was introduced to Captain Willard, I congratulated him on his approaching marriage. His face changed at once from gay to grave. 'Don't allude to it,' he said; 'it may, perhaps, never take place.' I thought this strange language from one who had come all the way from India to be married, and asked him to explain himself, but he was silent. Since then, on one or two occasions when I have alluded to the wedding he would become melancholy in an instant; and I began to surmise that all was not right."
"Your surmises were only too well founded," I said.
And I began to tell the story of my night adventure. For a long time we sat discussing the affair, and devising all kinds of theories to account for George's flight.
"I can't understand it at all," said my perplexed uncle. "There was nothing strange or unusual in his manner last night when he left us. He talked in the most natural way of the wedding--said he would be at the church by 9:30 prompt. And yet he must have written that letter soon after he parted from us, for he left here about ten o'clock, and it is dated, you see, just an hour later."