"More confused than ever, my dear sir," said Julia. "Here is this young man come from India, after he had been supposed dead, like Aboulfouaris the great voyager to his sister Canzade and his provident brother Hour. I am wrong id the story, I believe--Canzade was his wife--but Lucy may represent the one, and the Dominie the other. And then this lively crack-brained Scotch lawyer appears like a pantomime at the end of a tragedy.--And then how delightful it will be if Lucy gets back her fortune!" "Now I think," said the Colonel, "that the most mysterious part of the business is, that Miss Julia Mannering, who must have known her father's anxiety about the fate of this young man Brown, or Bertram, as we must now call him, should have met him when Hazlewood's accident took place, and never once mentioned to her father a word of the matter, but suffered the search to proceed against this young gentleman as a suspicious character and assassin." Julia, much of whose courage had been hastily assumed to meet the interview with her father, was now unable to rally herself; she hung down her head in silence, after in vain attempting to utter a denial that she recollected Brown when she met him. "No answer--well, Julia," continued her father, gravely but kindly, "allow me to ask you, Is this the only time you have seen Brown since his return from India?--still no answer. I must then naturally suppose that it is not the first time--Still no reply. Julia Mannering, will you have the kindness to answer me? Was it this young man who came under your window and conversed with you during your residence at Mervyn Hall? Julia--I command I entreat you to be candid." Miss Mannering raised her head. "I have been, sir--I believe I am still very foolish--and it is perhaps more hard upon me that I must meet this gentleman, who has been, though not the cause entirely, yet the accomplice of my folly, in your presence."--Here she made a full stop. "I am to understand, then," said Mannering, "that this was the author of the serenade at Mervyn Hall?" There was something in this allusive change of epithet, that gave Julia a little more courage--"He was indeed, sir; and if I am very wrong, as I have often thought, I have some apology." "And what is that?" answered the Colonel, speaking quick, and with something of harshness. "I will not venture to name it, sir--but"--She opened a small cabinet, and put some letters into his hands; "I will give you these, that you may see how this intimacy began, and by whom it was encouraged." Mannering took the packet to the window--his pride forbade a more distant retreat--he glanced at some passages of the letters with an unsteady eye and an agitated mind--his stoicism, however, came in time to his aid; that philosophy, which, rooted in pride, yet frequently bears the fruits of virtue. He returned towards his daughter with as firm an air as his feelings permitted him to assume.