“I’d like to see the man who’d venture to style himself her master in my presence!” cried Onslow, forgetting his wound, and half rising from the sofa. “Soft!” said Vance. “We may be too hasty in our conclusion. There may be sleeve-buttons by the gross, precisely of this pattern, in the shops.” “No!” replied Kenrick. “Coral of that color is what you do not often meet with. Such a delicate flesh tint is unusual. You cannot convince me that the mate of this button is not the one worn by the young lady we knew as Perdita. Perhaps, too, it is marked like the other pair. If so, it ought to have on it the letters—” “What letters?” exclaimed Vance, fiercely, arresting Kenrick’s hand so he could not examine the button. “The letters C. A. B.,” replied Kenrick. “Good heavens, yes!” ejaculated Vance, releasing him, and sinking into an arm-chair. And then, after several seconds of profound sighing, he drew forth from his pocket-book an envelope, and said: “This contains the testimony of Hattie Davy in regard to certain personal marks that would go far to prove identity. One of these marks I distinctly remember as striking my attention in Clara, the child, and yet I never noticed it in the person we knew as Perdita. Could I have failed to remark it, had it existed?” “Why not?” answered Kenrick. “Your thoughts are too intent on public business for you to apply them very closely to an examination of the personal graces or defects of any young woman, however charming.” “Tell me, Captain,” said Vance to Onslow, “did you ever notice in Perdita any physical peculiarity, in which she differed from most other persons?” “I merely noticed she was peculiarly beautiful,” replied Onslow; “that she wore her own fine, rich, profuse hair exclusively, instead of borrowing tresses from the wig-maker, as nine tenths of our young ladies do now-a-days; that her features were not only handsome in themselves by those laws which a sculptor would acknowledge, but lovely from the expression that made them luminous; that her form was the most symmetrical; her—” “Enough, Captain!” interrupted Vance. “I see you did not detect the peculiarity to which I allude. Now tell me, cousin, how was it with _you_? Were you more penetrating?” “I think I know to what you refer,” replied Kenrick. “Her eyes were of different colors; one a rich dark blue, the other gray.” “Fate! yes!” exclaimed Vance, dashing one hand against the other. “Can you tell me which was blue?” “Yes, the left was blue.” Vance took from the envelope a paper, and unfolding it pointed to these lines which Onslow and Kenrick perused together:— _Vance._ “You tell me one of her eyes was dark blue, the other dark gray. Can you tell me which was blue?”