The Colonel stretched out his hand eagerly for the documents--thus quoted. He hurried his eye rapidly over the contents of the first paper he lit on, and then said, pulling out his watch: "Well, I have half an hour yet to spare in discussing these matters with you--may I order your coachman to drive round the Regent's Park?--better than keeping it thus at my door, with four old maids for opposite neighbours." The order was given, and the Colonel again returned to the papers. Suddenly he looked up--looked full into Lady Montfort's face, with a thoughtful, searching gaze, which made her drop her own eyes! and she saw that he had been reading Jasper's confession, relating to his device for breaking off her engagement to Darrell, which in her hurry and excitement she had neglected to abstract from the other documents. "Oh, not that paper--you are not to read that," she cried, quickly covering the writing with her hand. "Too late, my dear cousin. I have read it. All is now clear. Lionel was right; and I was right too, in my convictions, though Darrell put so coolly aside my questions when I was last at Fawley. I am justified now in all the pains I took to secure Lionel's marriage--in the cunning cruelty of my letter to George! Know, Lady Montfort, that if Lionel had sacrificed his happiness to respect for Guy's ancestor-worship, Guy Darrell would have held himself bound in honour never to marry again. He told me so--told me he should be a cheat if he took any step to rob one from whom he had exacted such an offering-of the name, and the heritage, for which the offering had been made. And I then resolved that County Guy should not thus irrevocably shut the door on his own happiness! Lady Montfort, you know that this man loves you--as, verily, I believe, never other man in our cold century loved woman;--through desertion--through change--amidst grief--amidst resentment--despite pride;--dead to all other love--shrinking from all other ties--on, constant on-carrying in the depth of his soul to the verge of age, secret and locked up, the hopeless passion of his manhood. Do you not see that it is through you, and you alone, that Guy Darrell has for seventeen years been lost to the country he was intended to serve and to adorn? Do you not feel that if he now reject this last opportunity to redeem years so wasted, and achieve a fame that may indeed link his Ancestral Name to the honours of Posterity, you, and you alone, are the cause?" "Alas--alas--but what can I do?" "Do!--ay, true. The poor fellow is old now; you cannot care for him!-- you still young, and so unluckily beautiful!--you, for whom young princes might vie. True; you can have no feeling for Guy Darrell, except pity!" "Pity! I hate the word!" cried Lady Montfort, with as much petulance as if she had still been the wayward lively Caroline of old. Again the Man of the World directed toward her face his shrewd eyes, and dropped out, "See him!"