One thing was clear: if he could not explain his reasons for declining to accept what, while somewhat eccentric, was a fair and apparently tempting offer, he must be ready to take the place assigned to him. Not only was this self-evident, but also that no matter what time he must ask for reflection, his position could not be altered, and he could give no plausible excuse of any kind to his mother for rejecting such princely favors. “This young lady is not--is not, then, acquainted with the contents of this will?” he asked, raising his head, and speaking somewhat wearily. “Not as yet. We thought it best to wait until you could yourself make the communication.” He might as well face the girl now, and have it over, as leave it to a month, six months, a year hence. He was a soldier, yet a coward and afraid; but he shut his eyes, as he might if ordered to fire a train, and resolved to go through with the task, which, to any other one--taken at random from ten thousand men--must have been a pleasant duty. The lawyer regarded him with surprise, but could not, of course, make any remark. His wide experience had never supplied him with a parallel case to this: of a man receiving such rare and costly gifts from fortune with clouded brow and half-averted eye. The hopes, however, which had well-nigh died within his breast, of winning the one bright jewel he coveted, revived, if feebly. “There is something strangely amiss,” he thought; “but she will be doubly, trebly shielded from the slightest risk of harm.” Captain Desfrayne--his troubled gaze still on the open parchment, which he regarded as if it were his death-warrant--absolutely started when Mr. Amberley addressed him, after a short silence, inviting him to partake of some wine, which magically appeared from a dim, dusty-looking nook. After a little desultory conversation, having arranged the hour of meeting and other necessary details, Frank Amberley observed, an odd smile lurking at the corners of his handsome mouth: “This is not the first time we have met, though you have apparently forgotten me.” The captain looked at him. “I really do not remember you,” he said, with a puzzled expression. “You do not remember a certain moonlight night in Turin, when you shot a bandit dead, as his dagger was within five or six inches of an Englishman’s throat? Nor an excursion which took place some weeks previously, when you met the same compatriot in a diligence--myself, in fact? We wrote down one another’s names, and were going to swear an eternal friendship, when you were abruptly obliged to quit the city, in consequence of some business call, or regimental duties.” “The circumstances have by no means escaped my memory,” answered Captain Desfrayne, in an indefinable tone; “though I should have scarcely recognized you. Since then you have a little altered.”