On the other hand, Rose was somewhat of a brown-haired hoyden; very lovely in her bursts of wild joy and laughter; all smiles and rosy dimples, and full of waggish expressions, in which the quieter Ethel never indulged; so she rather enjoyed the fanfaronades of Hawkshaw, and mimicked some of his idioms and Spanish exclamations with great success. Tea over, and the piano opened, Morley hung fondly over Ethel, who ran her white fingers over the notes of an old and favourite air, which they had often sung together; while the captain, with his feet planted apart on the rich hearthrug, was romancing, or to use his own phraseology, "bouncing away" about the Tierra Caliente the mighty sierras of New Mexico, and so forth, to Mr. Basset, whose eyes were fixed on the embers that glowed in the bright steel grate, and whose thoughts were elsewhere. "Your visitor seems quite at home here--a privileged man, in fact," said Morley. "You did not tell me this at first, Ethel," he added, in a lower tone. Ethel blushed, and replied: "We have been so used to him that I quite forgot." "So used--then he has been long here." "Nearly three months." "Three months ago, Ethel, I was lying in Tom Bartelot's cabin, off the Bonny River, in hourly expectation of death, and with little hope of being where I am to-night, by your side, dearest, and listening to that old air again. And he has been here three months?" "Yes, ever since his return from California." "Is he rich--this captain--what horse-marine corps is he captain of?" continued Morley in an angry whisper. "Oh, Morley, hush! he is not rich, poor fellow!" "Poor devil!" muttered Morley. "But he has realised something; I know not what; though he asserts that he has come back to us poorer than when he went away." "To us," replied Morley, with growing displeasure, which he strove in vain to conceal. "Who is he?" "A second cousin, or something of that kind, to papa, and the son of his old friend, Mr. Thomas Hawkshaw, of Lincoln's-inn. But why all these questions?" asked Ethel, looking her lover fully and fondly in the face. Morley Ashton did not reply, for he felt an instinctive doubt and hatred of Hawkshaw: emotions that rose within his breast he scarcely knew why or wherefore; but, as a Scottish poet has it: "Men feel by instinct swift as light, The presence of the foe, Whom God has marked in after years To strike the mortal blow!" Hawkshaw, while talking apparently to Mr. Basset, had his keen and sinister eyes fixed on the couple at the piano. They seemed plainly enough to indicate similar emotions in his breast, and to say: "You are one too many in my diggings, Mr. Ashton. _Poco e poco_, I must get rid of you, my fine fellow, at whatever risk or cost!" CHAPTER IV. RIVALRY.