’Charming girl! yes, she is charming:  of a truthful, noble, trusting nature; still too prononcee for a woman.  I scarcely think I love, much as I must admire that sort of girl; and as a wife, I should be afraid of her.  Yet she provokes me, interests me.  She is jealous of those Nugents, and if she doesn’t take care, they will cut her out, mother and daughter, with their manoeuvres and wax; and she will be heiress of Glanyravon no longer.  Better the waxen heiress, Miss Nugent, with thirty thousand pounds in possession in some thirty-six hours, than the iron heiress, Miss Gwynne, with Glanyravon in futuro.

’Moreover, the one may be moulded into any shape one pleases—­the other must have her own opinion, and her own way, unless a man beat her into subjection.  Certainly, few people were ever more fortunately, or perplexingly placed, than I am just now.

’Between two young women, handsome, rich, of good family; if I mistake not, in love with me, and to be had for the asking.  But if I married Freda, Mr Gwynne would marry Lady Nugent directly; and then one could tell what would become of the property.  If, on the other hand, I were to marry Miss Nugent, I should incur the utmost contempt of which Miss Gwynne is capable, and should not wholly esteem myself.  But why am I thinking of marrying at all?  Because I am forty years old, and found a grey hair in my whiskers yesterday; because I am tired of an unsettled life, and should like to clear off the old place, and end my days there; and because, after all, a married man has a better position than a single one.  If that girl Gladys were in the place of either heiress, I would not hesitate a moment.  I declare she would grace a coronet; no wonder all the young men round are in love with her.  And yet, meet her when I will, I can scarcely get more than ‘yes,’ and ‘no,’ out of her.

’It is utterly impossible she can be what she seems, or is supposed to be.  I never saw more thoroughly aristocratic beauty in our most aristocratic circles.  Miss Nugent is as handsome as a woman can well be, in form and feature; but her eyes are like two frozen pools, whereas this Gladys, are literally two deep blue lakes with stars shining into them, or out of them, or something or other that a poet would describe better than I do.  Well, what a fool I am!  “A dream of fair women,” in my fortieth year, just as I dreamt of them in my sixteenth.  The Fates must decide for me, only I wish they would clear up the mystery that hangs over that girl, and give her Miss Nugent’s thirty thousand pounds.’

Such were the thoughts that rushed through Colonel Vaughan’s mind, as he sat, apparently looking at Freda’s drawing in the place that she had vacated.  We have unveiled a portion of his mind, because he is too good a tactician to unveil it himself.  It is needless to say that this fascinating man, who has that nameless power which some men possess of making all women love him, has himself no heart to