As she spoke, there was a bustle in the hall, a slamming door, a voice of command, the door opened, and a stranger stood among them, surveying the long antique room with its diamonded windows flickering in every pane, and the quaint hearth, whose leaping, crackling, fragrant blaze lighted the sombre little person sitting beside it, and sparkled on the half-bending form of that strange dark-haired girl, with her aquamarine eyes bent full on his. He was wrapped, from head to foot, in a great sweeping brigand's cloak, and a black, wide-brimmed hat, that had for an instant slouched its shadow down his face, hung now in his gloved hand. Dropping cloak and hat upon a chair with an invisible motion, he advanced, an air of surprise lifting the heavy eyebrows so that they strongly accented the contrast in hue between the lower half of his face, tanned with wind and sun, and the wide, low brow, smooth as marble itself, and above which swept one great wave of dark-brown hair. Altogether, it was an odd, fiery impression that he made,--whether from that golden-brown tint of skin that always seems full of slumbering light, or from the teeth that flashed so beneath the _triste_ moustache whenever the haughty lips parted and unbent their curve, or whether it were a habit the eyes seemed to have of accompanying all his thoughts with a play of flame. "Really," said he,--and it may have been a subtile inner musical trait of his tone that took everybody's will captive,--"I was not aware"--making a long step into the room, with a certain lordly bearing, yet almost at a loss to whom he should address himself. "I am Earl St. George Erne. May I inquire"-- "My name is Eloise Changarnier," said its owner, drawing herself up, it being incumbent on her to receive him. He bowed, and advanced. "Mrs. Arles, then, I presume,--my cousin Disbrowe Erne's cousin. I expected to find you here." Mrs. Arles, after a hurried acknowledgment, slipped over to Eloise. "I have heard your father speak of him," she murmured. "They had business-relations. He is Mr. Erne's legal heir, in default of sufficient testament, I believe. He must have come to claim the property." "He!" said Eloise, with sublime scorn. "The property is mine! My father left such commands!" "But he can have no other reason for being here. Strange the lawyer didn't write! He is certainly at home again." "I have not had time to open the mail to-day; it lies in the hall. Hazel! the mail-bag." And directly afterward its contents were before her. She hurriedly shifted and reshifted the letters of factors and agents, and broke the seal of one, while Earl St. George Erne deliberately warmed his long white hands at the blaze, and, supposing Eloise Changarnier to be a guest of the lonely Mrs. Arles, wondered with some angry amusement at her singular deportment.