“I have already seen Luigi and sounded him in the matter,” resumed the Captain. “He fully agrees with me that the idea is a most admirable one, and one which, if carried out in all its details with that care and foresight which I should not fail to bestow on it, could not prove otherwise than brilliantly successful. In short, Luigi places himself unreservedly in my hands. So now, my dear Vanna, it only remains for you to follow your nephew’s excellent example.” It is not needful that we should recount in detail what further passed between uncle and niece either at this or subsequent interviews. Enough to say that when once she had been talked over into giving her consent, and had thoroughly mastered the details of the scheme as proposed to be carried out by her uncle, she entered fully into the affair, and seemed to have thrown whatever moral scruples might at one time have feebly held her back completely to the winds. But before all this came about Luigi Rispani and his aunt had been brought together. Although English blood on the female side ran in the veins of both, they might have been pure Italians for anything in their looks which proclaimed the contrary. In point of fact, there was a very marked family likeness between the two, so much so, indeed, that the Captain could not help saying to himself with a chuckle, “Nobody seeing them together, would take them for other than mother and son.” At length all the details of the scheme were so far elaborated and agreed upon by our three conspirators that Verinder felt the time had come for him to make his first important move, which was, to seek an interview with Sir Gilbert Clare, or, as he preferred to express it, to “beard the lion in his den.” CHAPTER XVI. HOW SIR GILBERT RECEIVED THE NEWS It is to be hoped that the reader has not quite forgotten the existence of Everard Lisle.