He advanced to the centre window, which looked out upon the terrace beneath. He motioned to Wilton to gaze below. He pointed out Hal Vivian, who stood in an attitude of melancholy abstraction, his gaze seemingly fixed upon the beautiful landscape, stretching away to the horizon. “That is the man,” he exclaimed, emphatically. Wilton gazed upon him with distended orbs, and then gave utterance to a wild laugh of incredulity. “Preposterous!” he exclaimed. “Unquestionably,” remarked Mires; “but it yet is the fact.” Old Wilton pressed his hands to his temples, and tried to look back upon the past. The effort helped him to no solution of the enigma. That his daughter should have fallen in love with the goldsmith’s apprentice seemed incredible; but when he came to remember that he had saved her life, had been able to pay her many most acceptable attentions when she was in misery and distress, he began to believe that there might be something in it after all. He staggered rather than walked to his seat, and, pressing his hands again over his brow, once more went over the scenes in which, under his eye, they had taken part together. There was not enough to satisfy him yet that the Colonel’s assertion could be true. He turned sharply to him. “Pray inform me, Colonel,” he said, “how you came to alight upon this discovery?” The Colonel shrugged his shoulders. “I had a shrewd notion of it from the first,” he returned. “I observed his conduct when visiting you at the Regent’s Park. I detected his artful duplicity immediately after I had been, as your guest, called upon to endure his company. I noticed his obsequious deference to you, his readiness to coincide with your views, and to assent, without reflection, to all you said.” “I did not observe that,” remarked Wilton, thoughtfully. “No,” replied Colonel Mires; “nor did you notice his marked, though quiet, attentions to your daughter; his incessant gaze upon her eyes when she was present; his subdued, yet devoted, bearing to her; the cunning manner in which he turned every word from her lips into an acknowledgment of love, or asked for grateful remembrances of an act which the Royal Society’s fire-escape conductor would have done much better, and have expected scarcely scanty thanks for the able performance of his duty. You did not observe how he foisted his society upon her at every turn, because you never dreamed that he would be guilty of such presumption, any more than you could have any conception that he had induced her to consent to clandestine meetings, or of the number of such interviews which have taken place.” Old Wilton sprang to his feet, with a howl of wounded rage and pride. “Colonel Mires, this is a most grave charge,” he cried, with foaming lips. “It is one that compromises my daughter’s fair fame, as well as the honour of young Mr. Vivian, of whom, until you have spoken concerning him, I have heard nothing but what redounds to his credit.” Colonel Mires sneered.