their relative positions? And yet their relative
positions _were_ changed--he felt the truth in an instant. He had parted
with her less than two hours before--he the successful deceiver and she
the blind victim. They met again, and she had gone beyond his power and
his knowledge. We have often before had occasion, in the course of this
narration, to speak of sudden changes in the human face and demeanor, so
marked as to be absolutely startling. None of those changes could have
been more marked than that shown by the face and figure of this young
girl, as glanced at by the practiced eye of this man of the world. She
looked taller, straighter in form, and no longer drooping and inelastic.
Her glorious auburn hair was partially shaken loose from its
confinement, as it had become during the exciting interview with
Josephine Harris; and while the negligence added to the charm of her
appearance, the very fact that she had not displayed a woman's coquetry
in smoothing it rapidly into order before the glass when she threw off
her bonnet, betrayed that she was much more awake and excited than
usual. Was this on account of the near approach of the hour of her
marriage? Egbert Crawford scarcely thought so, for the eye was not that
of an expectant bride. That soft, sweet hazel eye still looked sad and
troubled, but there seemed to be a spark of something fiercer and
sharper than love, amid the trouble. Once more, what was it? Never
before had she seemed so handsome, but never so unapproachable; and if
the unscrupulous man had really held a true sentiment of love for her,
at the bottom of all his selfish and evil designs (and who shall say
that he had _not_?) there came the sharpest and deepest pang of his life
in the first awakening of the thought that she was _slipping away from
him_ even at the moment when he had apparently clutched her.

The Colonel, thoroughly mystified and a little alarmed, rose from his
seat and was advancing towards the young girl, when she moved a pace
towards him, her eyes first downcast and then even sternly raised to his
face. She did not call him by name, nor wait until he had so addressed
her, but held close to him, as if to avoid any possible observation, a
small sealed note--and said, her voice trembling and husky:

"A private note for you. Please read it at once."

Passing by him without another word and without waiting for any reply,
she advanced towards the end of the piazza where her father was