“That is very unusual with you, having a headache,” said his mother. “What is the cause of it?” The young man shrugged his shoulders without replying in words. His mother urged him, only half-believing in his excuse, to escort her up-stairs. She had many reasons for desiring his company. Although it was a little vexatious, perhaps, for so young-looking a woman to be attended by a son who seemed nearly as old as she did herself, she always wished for his escort. He was so handsome, so dignified, so chivalrous, gallant, devoted, in his behavior--there was the mother’s pride and glory to atone in a measure for the beauty’s mortified vanity. At this moment she wished to see him with Miss Turquand, to judge how far affairs were likely to go; she wanted to hear Lady Quaintree’s opinion, and see how Miss Turquand carried herself beneath the golden blaze of her new prosperity. But it was in vain she urged him, and she was piqued by this odd refusal. He was determined to go at once. “Well, you must call to-morrow, Paul. I am dying with curiosity to hear all the rest, and your opinion, and so on.” Captain Desfrayne escaped. The balmy air cooled his fevered pulses, and he walked rapidly away into the darkness of the summer’s night. “Good heavens, what an escape!” he muttered. “I don’t know what earthly inducement could have impelled me to go up-stairs. My poor mother! What an ungrateful villain I feel in deceiving her! It was an accursed day when that brilliant butterfly crossed my path, and led me away as easily as ever schoolboy was lured into a mad chase on an idle afternoon, or peasant lout drawn into pursuit of a gleaming Jack-o’-lantern. There is no peace, no happiness for me henceforth. I sometimes wish my mother knew all. It would be an infinite weight lifted off my mind; and yet I dare not--I dare not tell her.” The desire to be rid of this painful secret rose so strongly within his breast, that when he had traversed several streets, he abruptly paused to reflect on the advisability of going to the house in Porchester Square, where his mother was staying, and awaiting her return, with the object of telling her precisely how he was situated. “No,” he at length decided. “I _cannot_ do so to-night. To-morrow, perhaps, I shall be more courageous. If this unlucky piece of ‘good fortune,’ as I suppose some folks would style it, had not occurred, I might have borne my secret some few years longer--maybe forever--safe locked within my breast, there to gnaw away my life at its ease. But this misguided old man’s absurd whim has been the fatal means of letting in a flood of misery now and in the future upon my most unhappy head. It is well that the girl is cold and seemingly impassive. It is also providential that she has powerful friends, who will render my duties merely nominal.” The sleepy quiet of the aristocratic street through which he was passing with slow, undecided steps was broken by swift-rolling wheels.