"My own brave darling! you shall never have to revive me again. The dead past may bury its dead; my last moan is made; henceforward will we not hope, even against hope." In spite of his newly-born confidence, he scarcely repressed a start and a shiver, as, looking up during the happy silence that ensued, he seemed to be answered by the earnest melancholy eyes of the last Baron Vavasour. There are certain pictures, you know, whose gaze always follows you, however often you may change your position. This portrait was one of such. It ought to have been excepted from the other ancestors, when we spoke of the unconcern with which they regarded the proceedings of their descendants. It was a very remarkable face, as I have said before, and by far the most peculiar feature in it were those same eyes. Notwithstanding their soft beauty, there was something dark and dangerous about them, as if the devil that lurked in their languid depths _would_ look out sometimes. They were just the eyes from which an Italian would dread the _jetta-tura_, seeming to threaten not only evil to others, but misfortune to their owner. In Fulke Vavasour's life certainly both promises were amply fulfilled. If those scornful lips could have spoken now, one might have guessed at the import of the words. "No change since my time. Those old commonplaces about faith and hope and love are not worn out yet; but it amuses me to hear them again now and then--not too often. I could repeat them glibly enough myself once, and perhaps I believed in them a little. I am wiser now, and so will you be, _beau cousin_, before you have done. I had my romance, of course. You know how that was cut short one cold morning on Tower-hill; but you _don't_ know where yours will end." Some ideas like these shot across Wyverne's mind, but he had no time to give them form or distinctness, even if he had wished to indulge in such absurdity, for one of the doors of the gallery opened just then, and though the drawing aside of the heavy _portière_ gave them a moment's grace, the cousins had scarcely time to resume an erect and decorous posture before their _tête-à-tête_ was ended. CHAPTER VII. MATED, NOT MATCHED.