“Sir Godfrey Etherton,” said the Lieutenant, speaking calmly, though he trembled with passion; “why I have not felled you to my feet, I cannot say! You are no longer on the quarter-deck of the Dauntless, where your passions found vent upon the victims your anger selected. You here, in your supposed triumph in ousting a poor child out of its parents’ heritage, hurl insult upon the head of an unfortunate lady, and dare to call your brother’s wife an impostor and an adventuress!” “I will listen no more to this tirade!” furiously exclaimed the Baronet, seizing his hat; and as he reached the door he turned, and shaking his clenched hand at O’Loughlin, he added: “You shall hear from me, Mr. O’Loughlin; and as to this farce of a niece, I disclaim all relationship, and leave to those who have trumped up this deception the right to make the most of their ill got-up project.” So saying, the Baronet slammed the door after him. The worthy solicitor leaned back in his chair, exclaiming— “God bless me, I’m glad he’s gone!” “Faith, so am I,” said O’Loughlin, wiping his brow; “for if he had remained only two minutes more, he should have vanished through the window!” “This is too bad,” exclaimed William Thornton. “What a heartless, worldly-minded man!” “Oh, confound him, don’t bother about him; we’ll defeat him yet; and by Jove, if he only gives me a chance, which I am afraid he will not, I’ll make him remember O’Loughlin.” Mr. Stanmore, who began to recover his presence of mind, and his thoughts reverting to the casket, and its strange contents of shavings, rags, and leads, said— “Now, Lieutenant O’Loughlin, that that peppery Baronet is gone—he quite bewildered me,” added the solicitor, “let us think about this strange affair. The poor little girl is now actually left without her natural protectors.” “Natural! do you call them?” replied O’Loughlin, who kept pacing the room to cool himself, whilst William Thornton was examining the casket and the lock. “I call him the most unnatural beast I ever met with; a dead match for a crocodile I once saw on the banks of the Nile, making a breakfast off half-a-dozen of his own progeny.” “But, O’Loughlin,” said William Thornton, “there is something very mysterious in all this. I am perfectly convinced that the Duchesse de Coulancourt never gave me this casket, knowing it to contain those articles on the table; but, indeed, Mr. Stanmore, we ought to beg your pardon for thus giving way to our hasty tempers.” “Why, so we ought,” said the Lieutenant; “but, tare and ouns, William, was I to stand silently by, hearing that Baronet calling you the son of a—hem—and I knowing you to be the son of Sir Oscar de Bracy.” Mr. Stanmore looked up amazed at hearing William Thornton called the son of Sir Oscar de Bracy; he, however, merely said— “Let us calmly look into this mysterious affair. I am satisfied myself that the original contents of that casket have been removed, and that rubbish substituted.”