"Oh! I've got some letters and papers for you, which have come recently," and he hastened to seek them. Miles's heart beat high. They most probably, in some manner, related to the overflowing thought of his heart. He took them with trembling hands from the other, and scrutinized them all; a cold feeling of disappointment filled his heart--not a line in her handwriting!--then she was truly lost, and indifferent to him! All this time the other was gazing at him with an embarrassed look, not knowing when or how to commence--something he had to give utterance to; this look had come over him immediately after their first salutation. Miles tore open the Marseilles paper, and flung it down with a "pshaw." The name caught his friend's eye, and he took it up. As he did so, Miles, to conceal his disappointed look, hastily seated himself at the easel, and commenced finishing his sketch. "Look," he said, "Duplin, this is the model of the sweet villa where I have been sojourning often, in Florence--I must return--already I grow weary in France!" In good truth, he looked so; he was pale, care-worn, and his smile passed like a breath on glass, leaving a dark, dim vapour behind. "Tremenhere," said the other at last, "have you heard aught of madame, lately?" The question made his hand tremble. "No," he replied, continuing his sketch. "How should I? Have you?" and he looked up wistfully. "Nor of _ce milord_?" asked Duplin, again interrogatively, without replying to his demand. "He is in the Mediterranean," answered Miles bitterly, "cruising in a yacht." "Then it _was_ the case," fell from his friend's lip, as if in self-satisfaction, at a doubt solved. "What?" cried Miles, looking up hastily; "speak out, I can bear it--I suspect all, from the reports I have heard." "Well, then, after you left I resolved to discover all; I deemed it right towards you, and also a satisfaction, where madame would fain have seemed so wronged. I found out that milord went to Italy and the Mediterranean, and shortly afterwards madame quitted Paris for England; but this must have been a _ruse_ to mislead, for she was recently in Marseilles with her child." Tremenhere groaned aloud at the thoughts this communication awakened; there was something so bitter in the memory of all the happiness her supposed infamy had cost him, wife, child, home--all but a vain dream. "And thence," continued Duplin, anxious, by fortifying his (Miles's) heart with contempt for her, to prepare him to receive calmly the intelligence he had gained through the public prints, "madame with her child, sailed the other day for the _Mediterranean_ for Malta; in fact, where I last heard of milord's yacht." "True!" ejaculated Miles through his closed teeth, as he bent over his sketch. "And now, _mon ami_," added the other hurriedly, "I have something more to tell you. I do not think you need much courage to hear it; for after all, 'tis better, far better thus."