In the end, however, Lady Anne sent him away from her, saying in a low voice-- "There--go and talk to somebody else. We have flirted together enough to-night--perhaps too much, Charles; and now I am going to flirt with Colonel Middleton to make up for it;" and her ladyship kept her word, for she took an opportunity, very soon after, of calling Henry to her side, and to the eyes of most people in the room seemed to be coquetting with him in a very determined manner. It were vain to deny that Charles Marston felt a little uncomfortable--I will not say exactly jealous, for that would imply more than he felt; but he wished that Lady Anne would be a little more cautious, and thought that she and Frank Middleton need not exactly talk in so low a tone, or with their heads quite so close together. He spoke worse Spanish than ever to the fair young countess, beside whom he had sat down; and he was going on step by step to make himself seriously uneasy, when Lady Anne's eyes were suddenly turned towards him, and found his fixed upon her face. A very grave look instantly came over it. It seemed to him like a look of reproach, and the words of warning which she had spoken to him the moment before instantly recurred to his mind. "There is some secret here," he said to himself: "she warned me of the very course she is now pursuing, and told me she had a motive for it. It is difficult to conceive what it can be, and yet it is strange how I myself have always felt towards Middleton ever since I knew him. From the first moment he seemed like an old friend, and his face, too, was familiar to me. If I had not known that he had been brought up all his life in Spain, I should have fancied we had been at Eton together." At that moment his uncle approached, and bending down his head, he said-- "I must have some conversation with you, Charles, about this friend of yours. Do you know much of his history?" "Oh, dear, yes!" replied his nephew. "I heard the whole of it from the Spanish ambassador at Rome, who is a relation of his. He is the son of Dona Eleanora Xamorça, the niece of Don Balthazar, a rich old grandee who died some time ago. During some of the troubles in Spain she was sent into a convent for protection, and thence ran away with and married an English gentleman of the name of Middleton. They soon quarrelled, however, and separated; and the old gentleman took her boy and brought him up as his own son." "Do you happen to recollect the face of your old schoolfellow Henry Hayley?" asked Mr. Scriven. "Good heaven! so he is!--very like indeed," said Charles. "I have often been puzzling myself to think who it is to whom he bears so great a resemblance." "Great indeed," said Mr. Scriven, drily; "so great that I do not understand it. It is impossible, I suppose, that they can be the same person?" Charles Marston laughed.