Finding a necessity for speaking, the Countess thanked him for the service so promptly and gallantly rendered to her daughter, and expressed no small indignation at the daring of Maurice Morganstjern and his abettor; but while she spoke the General listened to her as one in a dream, while the sorely puzzled Dolores looked wonderingly on. The original of the miniature now concealed in a secret drawer of the Dutch cabinet before referred to, treasured for years through all his alleged misogyny, was again before him. 'It is long since we met,' said the Countess. 'And--parted,' replied the General, in a hard voice. 'You have attained high rank now.' 'I was but a lieutenant in Halkett-Craigie's Battalion, _then_,' said he pointedly. 'Sir, I pray you to be seated,' and he mechanically took the chair indicated by a motion of her pretty white hand; 'you are not much changed since--since----' 'And you are scarcely changed at all.' In the lovely matron, in ripe and full womanhood, he had recognised her in a moment--the girl of the hidden miniature, the early love of his youth, Mercedes who had deceived him, who had well-nigh broken his heart and embittered his whole existence. The golden-brown hair his hands had once loved to fondle and toy with, seemed now more golden than ever, as it was sprinkled a little with brown _marchale_, in the fashion of the day; but Dolores, in advance of it, wore her rich hair without any such doubtful accessory, and simply brushed backward over a low toupee that showed the contour of her low, broad, and beautiful forehead. Twenty years had come and twenty years had gone since he last looked on them, yet in the eyes of Mercedes was the old subtle influence, in her voice the old subtle power; and he felt both so keenly--so intensely--that the thrill which passed through the heart of Kinloch amounted to--if we may use a paradox--a joyous pain! Memories of the past time, by the Berbice river--memories sweet and sad and thrilling--were coming back with strange and curious force; the past returned, the present fled, and much that both had thought was long since dead, was reawakened within them. 'Mamma!' exclaimed Dolores, with irrepressible impatience and curiosity; 'you know General Kinloch! you have met before!' 'Yes, Dolores darling--my heart certainly tells me so,' replied the Countess, colouring deeply. 'Heart!' said the General; 'madame, the heart is an obsolete organ, in this our eighteenth century.' 'Perhaps it is too late in life to assume you can have any interest in me now; but if you will not, even once, take my hand kindly in yours, I shall think that it is not wounded love, but wounded pride, that inspires you still.' The Countess spoke sweetly, and with one of her brightest and most caressing smiles.