Events which had been minutely described in his letters to the executors were now detailed with the most copious explanations; while allusions to his former life as a guardsman, and to incidents of his youth, kept her in continual mind of his genuineness. He was constantly throwing little proofs of his identity in her way, and surrounding himself with a halo of reality, and yet--and yet---- Margaret paced over the crisp brown leaves, whirling round her footsteps in the bleak November wind, her eyes ever and anon turning upon her companion in troubled scrutiny, her ear intent to catch each syllable. "How these old creaking oaks bring back to me my boyhood! What bright dreams of glory filled my brain! What a life mine was to be! I was to go forth and conquer; all men were to bow before St. Udo Brand; beauty was to melt and find its level at my feet. But see me, Miss Walsingham--no longer a dream-dazzled boy. A man at his prime! Where are my brilliant prospects now? My visions of fame--of love--of happiness? Lost in the quicksand of Time. Is there in the whole world a more useless, ruined wretch than myself? I am famous but for my misdeeds. My intellect has been squandered upon worthless objects; love has cheated me; I have sold my birthright for a mess of pottage." Margaret could not respond to this half-earnest, half-bitter appeal. How often she had imagined just such words in the mouth of St. Udo Brand, with a yearning thrill, as if Heaven itself would have been opened to her. But now that the time had come she shrank from the man and his loneliness and his half remorse in cold sympathy. How dare he come to her with his polluted life. She read the false and shifting eyes with loathsome shudder, and a hardening of the lip, as if a rat had fawned upon her. "You wretch!" thought the girl, with fiercely-clenched hand. "How dare you think to step into St. Udo's shoes and expect to cheat me?" "It is strange that Colonel Brand should be so dissatisfied with his laurels," she said, with cold scorn. "One would have thought that the reputation which he gained for bravery and intrepidity as a commander, would have slaked his thirst for fame. Perhaps _you_ fear that the laurels of a whole army would not cover your deficiencies?" She placed such unconscious emphasis on the "you," that the colonel turned his face upon her with broad attention. She saw the startled eye, though it instantly wavered from hers, and she felt the lagging of his feet. "Is there no possibility of trapping him out of his own mouth?" she thought, "Can I not force him to betray himself?" Women are apt at resources; they cannot surmount great difficulties--their muscles are so soft, and their brains so repressed by convention and circumstance, but they can vault the slighter obstacles with lightning quickness, while the man's slower strength is culminating for the heights.