Punctually at eleven o\'clock next forenoon Captain Verinder, accompanied by his niece, alighted from the fly which had conveyed them from the railway station, at the foot of the flight of semi-circular steps leading to the portico which sheltered the main entrance to the mansion of Withington Chase.

So elated had the Captain been by the result of his interview with Sir Gilbert, that, after detailing to his niece on his return all that had passed between them, he had insisted that she, he and Luigi should all dine together in a private room at a certain popular restaurant (of course at Vanna\'s expense), when he did not fail to toast Sir Gilbert in a bumper of Clicquot. "Here\'s to your grandsire, my boy," he said to Luigi as he drained his glass; then, having refilled it, he added: "And here\'s to the coming lord of Withington Chase, and may he never forget all that his old uncle has done for him!"

A little later he remarked: "I don\'t think it will be long, my boy, before you come into your inheritance. The old man\'s breaking up, that\'s plainly to be seen. I shouldn\'t be surprised if the next winter tries him severely. He coughed several times during our interview, and a very hollow cough it was."

"And when he is dead and gone, shall I be Sir Luigi Clare?" asked the young man.

"Sir Luigi Clare!" echoed the Captain. "There\'s a point, now, which I had completely overlooked, while flattering myself that I had forgotten nothing. You will come into the title of course on Sir Gilbert\'s death. But Sir Luigi Clare will never do. It\'s altogether too outlandish. We must re-christen you, and that at once."

"Why not make English of the name by turning Luigi into Lewis?" demanded Giovanna.

"The very thing!" replied the Captain. "Which goes to prove that two heads are better than one--especially, my dear, when one of them happens to belong to your sex. Now I come to think, among other inscriptions in the little church at the Chase was one to the memory of a certain Colonel Lewis Clare who fell in some battle or other a long time ago. Now, what more natural," he went on with a meaning look at Luigi, "than that your father, instead of naming you after himself, should have preferred to call you after his brave ancestor? Yes, Lewis Clare will do very well indeed--Sir Lewis that will be later on."

Although Giovanna\'s only visible betrayal of the fact was by a touch of unwonted pallor in her cheeks, she was the prey of a dozen conflicting emotions as the doors of Withington Chase were flung wide and she and her uncle crossed the threshold. "And this was my husband\'s home when a boy," was her first thought as her gaze wandered round the entrance hall. "How little I suspected such a thing! There must have been some powerful motive at work to cause him to quit such a roof and to change his name and marry an innkeeper\'s daughter and seek a new home thousands of miles away. What was that motive, I wonder?"

"Will you come this way, please," said the trained voice of the man in livery a second later, and with that they were presently shown into the same morning-room into which the Captain had been ushered the day before.

"And now, my dear, the crucial moment is at hand," said the Captain to Vanna as soon as they were alone. "I hope you have forgotten none of the points in which I have so carefully coached you up."

"I don\'t think there is much fear of that. I never forget anything which it is essential that I should remember."

"One last caution, however. Take your time in answering Sir Gilbert\'s questions, and, above all things, don\'t get flurried."

"Did you ever know me to get flurried, Uncle Verinder?"

"No, \'pon my word, I don\'t think I ever did. But then I have known you such a very short while."

At this juncture the door opened and Sir Gilbert entered the room.

The Captain and Vanna both rose as he came slowly forward, his eyes fixed scrutinisingly on his daughter-in-law. Her stately presence and the classic beauty of her features impressed him at the first glance, and therewith came a sudden bouleversement of all his preconceived notions of what she would be like. On the spot he acknowledged to himself that he had done her an injustice in his thoughts. After favouring Verinder with a curt nod of recognition, he went up to Giovanna and held out his hand with an air of old-fashioned courtesy.

"Am I to presume, madam, that I see before me the widow of my late son, John Alexander Clare?"

"That was my husband\'s full name, Sir Gilbert--the name he was married in--although, for reasons of his own, he chose to be known to the world simply as Mr. John Alexander."

"To be sure--to be sure." The rich full contralto of her voice sounded pleasantly in his ears. "That was a fact well-known to me at the time. But pray be seated." A wave of his hand included Verinder in the invitation.

He had dropped Giovanna\'s hand, and there had been a sudden change in his tone as he spoke the last words. The fact was that he had caught the Captain smiling and rubbing one hand within the other with an air of supreme satisfaction, although the other had certainly not intended that he should do anything of the kind, and therewith he had chilled under a sudden breath of suspicion. "What, after all, if I am being victimised by a couple of schemers!" he said to himself. "And yet that any woman with such a face as that should lend herself---- No, no--I cannot believe it."

Both the others could see that some change had come over him, but were at a loss to guess the cause of it.

"And where was it, madam, if I may be allowed to ask, that you first made the acquaintance of my son?"

"At Catanzaro, Sir Gilbert."

"So--so. Alec\'s long stay in that, to me, detestable hole of a place is now explained." This was said half to himself. "And where, madam, were you and my son united in the bonds of matrimony?"

"We were married at Malta, at the English church there."

"Ah, then you are a Protestant!"

Giovanna gravely inclined her head. "My father was a Roman Catholic, but my mother was an Englishwoman and a Protestant. My only brother was brought up in the faith of his father, I in that of my mother."

"So much the better--so much the better," ejaculated Sir Gilbert, quite unaware that the words were spoken aloud.

It was a fact that Giovanna had been married at the English church at Valetta, but a prior ceremony had been gone through at Catanzaro, at which a Romish priest had been the celebrant, for Giuseppe Rispani was too good a Catholic, or had the reputation of being one, not to insist upon his daughter being married in accordance with the rites and ceremonies of his own church. That being done, he had raised no objection to accompanying the young couple as far as Malta (to him, indeed, it was a pleasure trip with all expenses paid), there to give away the bride when the ceremony was gone through for the second time. After that Rispani had bidden his daughter goodbye and gone back home, first, however, borrowing a couple of hundred pounds from his English son-in-law in order, as he averred, that he might have the means of carrying out certain much needed alterations and improvements in the osteria of the Golden Fig. It is to be feared, however, that the amount in question never got any further than his own pocket.

After the departure of Rispani the newly-wedded couple had made the best of their way to the United States.

To return.

"In that case, madam," resumed the baronet after a brief pause, "you have doubtless been at pains to preserve your marriage certificate."

Giovanna had preserved it, had, in fact, brought it with her this morning. She now produced it, a creased and faded-looking document, from the satchel suspended from her waist-belt, opened it and handed it to Sir Gilbert; who, having adjusted his pince-nez and drawn his chair up to the centre table, smoothed out the certificate upon it and proceeded to read it slowly and carefully from beginning to end, his lips shaping each word silently as he spoke it to himself. It purported to be, and was a duly certified copy of the entry in the register of the Protestant church at Valetta of the marriage solemnised on the date specified between John Alexander Clare and Giovanna Rispani. It would have been idle to dispute its genuineness, even had there been any inclination, which was far from being the case, on Sir Gilbert\'s part to do so.

"Madam, the document seems to me in every respect satisfactory," he said gravely as he refolded it and handed it back to Giovanna with a bow.

In return she put into his hands a framed photograph of herself and her husband, taken within a few days of their marriage. "Possibly, Sir Gilbert, this may not be without some interest for you," she said in her quiet, measured tones.

The old man took the photograph and carried it to the window. Scarcely was his back turned before the Captain flashed a look at Vanna which said, "Everything, so far, going on first-rate."

One, two, three minutes were ticked off by the clock on the chimney-piece before Sir Gilbert came back to his chair. His hand trembled a little as he returned the photograph to Giovanna. "Yes, that is Alec to the life," he said. "Poor boy! poor boy!" A deep sigh broke from him as he resumed his seat.

For a little space no one spoke.

It was Sir Gilbert who broke the silence. "Unless I am misinformed, madam, you and your husband found your way to the United States no long time after your marriage?"

"We did, Sir Gilbert............