When she re-opened her eyes she found herself reclining on the shoulder of the man who had seized her. That man was her father, Gerald Leslie. CHAPTER XXIX. THE MEETING OF THE LOVERS. The two men whom Pauline Corsi had met on her way from the house of Silas Craig to the Villa Moraquitos are not entirely strangers to us. We saw them last in the solitude of California, living a life of labor, far from all civilized society. They only reached New Orleans upon the evening after the slave auction, and when Pauline Corsi met them they were in search of an hotel where they could spend the night. In outward appearance they were very much altered from the day when we last beheld them. Their rough garments were exchanged for the fashionable attire of gentlemen, and their bearing harmonized well with the change in their costume. Let us return to the moment when Pauline Corsi met these two gold-diggers. They entered the hotel, and were immediately conducted to a handsomely furnished and brilliantly lighted apartment upon the first floor. The elder of the two men, the one who had called himself Smith, flung himself into an easy-chair, after dismissing the waiter with an order for a couple of bottles of claret and seltzer water, and looked complacently round the room. The younger man walked to the open window, from which he watched the receding form of Pauline Corsi, who, after observing the two men enter the hotel, hurried onward toward the end of the deserted street. "This is a little better than the diggings, eh, Brown?" said Smith. His companion seemed scarcely to hear him. "That girl's figure reminds me--" he muttered, "but pshaw! what foolish fancies have addled my brain! She is far away on the shores of another continent." "What are you muttering about over there?" said Smith, who was evidently in high spirits; "Come here, and drink a tumbler of claret, and let's talk of our plans. To-night has brought us to the end of our journey. The time for silence is past, the hour has come in which we are to speak freely." "It has." "Remember; I ask your confidence from no spirit of idle curiosity, and, unless you can give it as freely as I shall give you mine, withhold it altogether." Brown held out his hand, and grasped that of his companion. "Friend, brother," he exclaimed, "there shall be no longer a secret between us. I will be the first to speak, light your cigar, and fill your glass, for the story I have to tell will be a long one." It was past three o'clock, when the two men retired to rest; they had talked long and earnestly, and the reader will soon learn the purport of their conversation. But late as they sat up overnight, the two friends breakfasted together early the next morning. They were too much excited to sleep long. A New Orleans paper, published that morning, lay on the breakfast table. Smith opened the journal, and ran his eye hastily over its columns.