Mary's voice trembled nervously as she uttered these last words, for she felt that now had come an opportunity she must not neglect, for leading on to the critical subject on which she had to speak: and, as if to support her desperate purpose, unclasped the little trinket-case she had all this time still held concealed in the palm of her delicate hand. "To Italy! oh, indeed;" was Eugene's reply. "I was very nearly going there at the same time; it was just a chance that I did not. My father's illness, a constant tie upon my movements, prevented me at the last moment; how delightful it would have been if we had met." Mary made no reply, but looked down still with that peculiar expression which could not but strike Eugene as ominous of something of an important and peculiar nature. "And you were charmed, I suppose;" he proceeded, perusing her countenance with increasing interest and attention; "so much so that I fear you would scarcely have considered my society as an addition to your enjoyment; you have learnt to live too well without me, I am afraid, Mary." That low and flattering tone of other days thrilled Mary's heart, and flushed her cheek with emotions as of old; but gently removing the hand which for an instant she passively yielded to his pressure, she did not raise her eyes as once she would have done, in tender rebuke at the unjust assumption--she did not say how wearisome and dark had life become without him--how void, wasted and incomplete!--but hurriedly, as if she feared the working of the olden spell, and the consequent melting away of her sterner resolution, she started forward upon the anxious theme weighing on her heart. "I met with a strange adventure at Tivoli, Eugene; it was about that I wished most particularly to speak to you. One morning, as I was walking out early, I found this ring upon the ground;" and as she spoke she produced the signet from the case, and held it towards him. "You may imagine how surprised I was to see your initials, and your crest; I scarcely knew indeed what to think, till walking on a little further I overtook--Mr. Temple!" Her listener, who had at first taken the ring wonderingly from her hand; as she proceeded, raised it to the light, and then abruptly, as if for the purpose of closer examination, he started up and approached the candle. He uttered not a word, but had his face not been turned away, it might have been seen to have changed to an ashy hue. "I was surprised," Mary proceeded, "for though the initials were thus accounted for, the crest being yours seemed too unlikely a coincidence; indeed I had previously cherished a vague but wild idea that it might possibly belong to your brother, and that his long-wished for recovery was at hand." She paused, but no comment on her words, no reply, but an almost fiercely impatient interrogative: "Well?" as he turned his countenance, but not his eyes, round upon her, proceeded from his lips.