It all looked so straightforward and aboveboard: there was no apparent consciousness of conduct or intentions "unbecoming an officer and a gentleman." And yet the girl he was calmly proposing to treat with ignominy and indignity was her own cousin; the girl for whose sake he proposed so to dishonour himself actually a guest in her own charge! Mrs Dalrymple felt more and more perplexed. How could the young man have the audacity to send up his card in this brazen-faced way? Surely there must be some strange mistake. A sudden thought struck her. She turned to Eugenia, standing pale, and with great, wistful eyes, beside her. "He does mean it, you see," whispered the girl. "Yes, I see," replied the matron. Then turning to the servant: "Bertha, say to Captain Chancellor we shall see him immediately," and when Bertha had departed on her errand, "Eugenia, my love," she said gently, "I think it will be best for _me_ to see him." "Very well. Thank you very much," replied Eugenia, yet with a wild, unreasonable regret that she had been so taken at her word, that fate had not _forced_ her into seeing him again, into the very danger her better nature so dreaded and shrank from. VOLUME TWO, CHAPTER SIX. SUNSHINE. ... All hearts in love use their own tongues: Let every eye negotiate for itself, And trust no agent. _Much Ado about Nothing_. Captain Chancellor was standing by the window when Mrs Dalrymple entered the room. As the sound of the door opening caught his ear, he turned sharply round with a look of eager expectancy on his fair, handsome face, which did not escape the notice of Eugenia's self-constituted guardian, and notwithstanding his habitual good breeding and self-possession, he did not altogether succeed in concealing the disappointment which was caused him by the sight of his old friend's substantial proportions in the place of the girlish figure he had been watching for. He was eager to see Eugenia again. Unimpulsive though he was by nature, little as he had dreamt but three short hours before of ever again seeing her, of holding her in his arms and calling her his own, he was now almost passionately anxious for her presence. Away from her, he had found it difficult to realise, to justify to himself, this rash, unpremeditated deed he had done--a deed at variance with all his preconceived ideas, all the intentions of his life. But beside her, in the light of her sweet eyes, in the sense of her loveliness, of her delicate grace--above all, of her clinging trust in and entire devotion to himself, he felt that all his scruples and misgivings would vanish into air. He would feel satisfied then of what he tried to believe he felt satisfied of now, that being what he was, a man and not a statue, a "gentleman" who (in his own sense) held honour high, and would scorn to take advantage of a woman's weakness, he could not have acted otherwise. Fortified thus, he could brave all,--his