"No, sir, far from it--but I have not been a coachman all my life." Nothing could be plainer than this--it was a direct assertion of his degradation by the business in which he was then engaged. "In what manner did you lose your eye, Tony," said Charles, in a tone of sympathy that Julia blessed him for in her heart, although she knew that the member was uninjured, and only hidden to favour his disguise. Antonio hesitated a little in his answer, and stammered while giving it--"It was in the wars," at length he got out, and Julia admired the noble magnanimity which would not allow him, even in imagination, to suffer in a less glorious manner--notwithstanding his eye is safe and as beautiful as the other, he has suffered in the wars, thought our heroine, and it is pardonable for him to use the deception, situated as he is--it is nothing more than an equivoque. But this was touching Charles on a favourite chord. Little of a hero as Julia fancied him to be, he delighted in conversing about the war with those men, who, having acted in subordinate stations, would give a different view of the subject from the official accounts, in which he was deeply read. It was no wonder, therefore, that he eagerly seized on the present opportunity to relieve the tedium of a ride between Albany and Schenectady. {equivoque = double meaning, a pun} "In what battle," asked Charles, quickly; "by sea or by land?" "By sea," said Antonio, speaking to his horses, with an evident unwillingness to say any more on the subject. Ah! the deception, and the idea of his friend Lawrence, are too much for his sensibility, thought Julia; and to relieve him she addressed Charles herself. "How far are we from Schenectady, cousin Charles?" Antonio, certainly, was not her cousin Charles; but as if he thought the answering such questions to be his peculiar province, he replied immediately-- "Four miles, ma'am; there's the stone." There was nothing in the answer itself, or the manner of its delivery, to attract notice in an unsuspecting listener; but by Julia it was well understood--it was the first time he had ever spoken directly to herself--it was a new era in their lives--and his body turned half round toward her as he spoke, showed his manly form to great advantage; but the impressive and dignified manner in which he dropped his whip towards the mile-stone, Julia felt that she never could forget--it was intended to mark the spot where he had first addressed her. He had chosen it with taste. The stone stood under the shade of a solitary oak, and might easily be fancied to be a monument erected to commemorate some important event in the lives of our lovers. Julia ran over in her mind the time when she should pay an annual visit to that hallowed place, and leaning on the arm of her majestic husband, murmur in his ear, "Here, on this loved spot, did Antonio first address his happy, thrice happy Julia."