What had I done to earn such true friends or deserve such faithful care?
The trial passed happily enough, and Alphonse arrived at Genoa ere I had been there a week.

He had delayed little in realising with a boyish delight one of his recovered drafts for five thousand pounds.
He repaid such loans as I had been able to make him, settled accounts with Sander, and greatly relieved my mind by seeing him depart.

For I felt in some sort a criminal myself, and the secret, which had by the merest accident been thrust upon me, discomfited me under the keen eye of the expert.
The weather was exceedingly hot, and sickness raged unchecked in the city.

A fortnight elapsed, during which Giraud was my faithful attendant.

The doctor who had been called in, the first of his craft with whom I had had business, a Frenchman and a clever surgeon, restored me to a certain stage of convalescence, but could not get beyond it.
"Where do you live," he asked me one day, with a grave face, "when you are at home ?" "In Suffolk, on the east coast of England." "Where the air is different from this." "As different as sunrise from afternoon," I answered, with a sudden longing for the bluff, keen air of Hopton.
"Are you a good sailor ?" he asked.
"I spent half my boyhood on the North Sea." He walked to the window and stood there in deep thought.
"Then," he said at length, "go home at once by steamer from here, and stay there.