CHAPTER XXXVII.

NOT

OT many weeks after the conversation (not altogether imaginary) at the White House, a young man in the uniform of a captain lay on the sofa in a room at Willard's Hotel in Washington. He lay reading a newspaper, but the paleness of his face showed that he had been suffering either from illness or a serious wound. This young man was Onslow. In a cavalry skirmish at Winchester, in which the Rebels had been handsomely routed, he had been shot through the lungs, the ball coming out at his back. There was one chance in a thousand that the direction taken by the ball would be such that the wound should not prove fatal; and this thousandth chance happened in his favor. Thanks to a naturally vigorous constitution, he was rapidly convalescing. He began to be impatient once more for action.

There was a knock at the door, and Vance entered.

"How is our cavalry captain to-day?" he asked cheerily. "Better and better, my dear Mr. Vance.”

"Let me feel of his pulse.

Appetite?"

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Excellent! Firm, regular!

Improving daily. He ate two boiled eggs and a lamb chop for breakfast, not to speak of a slice of aerated bread.”

"Come now,

that will do.

He will be ready soon for a

But he must not get restless.

bullet through his other lung.

There's plenty of fighting in store for him.”

"Mr. Vance, I've been pondering the strange story of your life; your interview with my father on board the Pontiac

the

loss of the Berwicks; the supposed loss of their child; the developments by which you were led to suspect that the child was kidnapped; Peek's unavailing search for the rascal Hyde; the interview with Quattles, confirming your suspicion of foul play; and finally your interview last week in New York with the mulatto woman, Hattie Davy. Let me ask if Hattie thinks she could still identify the lost child.”

Yes, by certain marks on her person.

She at once recog

nized the little sleeve-button I got from Quattles." "Please let me look at it.”

Vance took from his pocket a small circular box which he unscrewed, and there, in the centre of a circle of hair, lay the button. He handed the box to the wounded soldier. At this moment Kenrick entered the room.

"Ha, Lieutenant! What's the news?" exclaimed Vance. "Ask any one but me," returned Kenrick. "Have I not been all the morning trying guns at the navy-yard? What have you there, Robert! A lock of hair? Ah! I have seen that hair before."

"Impossible!" said Vance.

"Not at all!” replied Kenrick. “The color is too peculiar to be confounded. Miss Perdita Brown wore a bracelet of that hair the last evening we met her at the St. Charles."

"Again I say, impossible," quoth Vance. "Something like it perhaps, but not this. How could she have come by it?"

Cousin," replied Kenrick, "I'm quick to detect slight differences of color, and in this case I'm sure.”

Suddenly the Lieutenant noticed the little sleeve-button in Onslow's hand, and, while the blood mounted to his forehead, turning to him said, "How did you come by this, Robert?"

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Why do you ask with so much interest?" inquired Vance. "Because that same button I've seen worn by Perdita.” "Now I know you 're raving," said Vance; "for, till now, has n't been out of my pocket since Quattles gave it me.'

"Do you mean to say," exclaimed Kenrick, "that this is the jewel of which you told me; that which belonged to the lost infant of the Pontiac?"

“Yes; her nurse identifies it. Undoubtedly it is one of a pair worn by poor little Clara."

"Then," said Kenrick, with the emphasis of sudden conviction, “Clara and Perdita are one and the same!”

Startling as a severe blow was this declaration to Vance. It forced upon his consideration a possibility so new, so strange, so distressing, that he felt crushed by the thought that there was even a chance of its truth. Such an opportunity, thrust, as it were, by Fate under his eyes, had it been allowed to escape him? His emotions were those of a blind man, who being suddenly restored to sight, learns that he has passed by a treasure which another has picked up. He paced the room. He struck his arms out wildly. He pushed up the sleeves of his coat with an objectless energy, and then pulled them down. “O blind mole!" he groaned, "too intent on thy own little burrow to see the stars out-shining! O beast with blinders! looking neither on the right nor on the left, but only straight before thy nose !

And then, as if ashamed of his ranting, he sat down and said: "How strange that this possibility should never have occurred to me! I saw there was a mystery in the poor girl's fate, and I tried to make her disclose it. Had I only seen her that last day I called, I should have extorted her confidence. Once or twice during our interviews she seemed on the point of telling me something. Then she would check herself, as if from some prompting of delicacy or of caution. To think that I should have been so inconsiderate! To think, too, that I should have been duped by that heartless lay-figure for dressmakers and milliners, Miss Tremaine! Yes! I almost dread to look further lest I should be convinced that Charles is right, and that Clara Berwick and Perdita Brown are one and the same person. so, the poor girl we all so admired is a slave!"

If

"A slave!" gasped Kenrick, struck to the heart by the cruel word, and turning pale.

"I'd like to see the man who'd venture to style himself her master in my presence!" cried Onslow, forgetting his wound, and half rising from the sofa.

"Soft!" said Vance.

"We may be too hasty in our conclusion. There may be sleeve-buttons by the gross, precisely of

this pattern, in the shops."

"No!" replied Kenrick.

"Coral of that color is what you

do not often meet with. You cannot convince me that the mate of this button is not the one worn by the young lady we knew as Perdita. Perhaps, too, it is marked like the other pair. If so, it ought to have on it

Such a delicate flesh tint is unusual.

"What letters?" exclaimed Vance, fiercely, arresting Kenrick's hand so he could not examine the button.

"The letters C. A. B.,” replied Kenrick.

"Good heavens, yes!" ejaculated Vance, releasing him, and sinking into an arm-chair. And then, after several seconds of profound sighing, he drew forth from his pocket-book an envelope, and said: "This contains the testimony of Hattie Davy in regard to certain personal marks that would go far to prove identity. One of these marks I distinctly remember as striking my attention in Clara, the child, and yet I never noticed it in the person we knew as Perdita. Could I have failed to remark it, had it existed?”

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Why not?" answered Kenrick. "Your thoughts are too intent on public business for you to apply them very closely to an examination of the personal graces or defects of any young woman, however charming."

"Tell me, Captain," said Vance to Onslow, "did you ever notice in Perdita any physical peculiarity, in which she differed from most other persons?"

"I merely noticed she was peculiarly beautiful,” replied Onslow; "that she wore her own fine, rich, profuse hair exclusively, instead of borrowing tresses from the wig-maker, as nine tenths of our young ladies do now-a-days; that her features were not only handsome in themselves by those laws which a sculptor would acknowledge, but lovely from the expression that made them luminous; that her form was the most symmetrical; her"

Enough, Captain!" interrupted Vance. "I see you did not detect the peculiarity to which I allude. Now tell me, cousin, how was it with you? Were you more penetrating?"

“I think I know to what you refer,” replied Kenrick. "Her eyes were of different colors; one a rich dark blue, the other gray."

"Fate! yes!" exclaimed Vance, dashing one hand against the other. "Can you tell me which was blue?”

"Yes, the left was blue."

Vance took from the envelope a paper, and unfolding it pointed to these lines which Onslow and Kenrick perused together:

Vance. “You tell me one of her eyes was dark blue, the other dark gray. Can you tell me which was blue ?”

Hattie. "Yes; for I remember a talk about it between the father and the mother. The father had blue eyes, the mother gray. The mother playfully boasted that the eye of her color was the child's right eye; to which the father replied,' But the left is nearest the heart.' And so, sir, remembering that conversation, I can swear positively that the child's left eye was the blue one."

"Rather a striking concurrence of testimony!" said Onslow. "I wonder I should never have detected the oddity."

“Let me remark,” replied Kenrick, "that it required a near observation to note the difference in the hue of the eyes. Three feet off you would hardly discriminate. The depth of shade is nearly equal in both. You might be acquainted with Perdita a twelvemonth and never heed the peculiarity. not, cousin, take blame to yourself for inattention." "Do you remember, Charles," said Vance, our visit to the hospital the day after our landing in New York?

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So do

66 Yes, I shall never forget the scene,” replied Kenrick. “Do you remember," continued Vance, "among the nurses quite a young girl, who, while carrying a salver of food to a wounded soldier, was asked by you if you should not relieve her of the burden?”

"Yes; and her reply was, 'Where are your shoulder-straps ?' And she eyed me from head to foot with provoking coolness. 'I'm on my way to Washington for them,' answered I. Then you may take the salver,' said the little woman, graciously thrusting it into my hands."

"Well, Charles, when I was in New York last week, I saw that same little woman again, and found out who she is. How strangely, in this kaleidoscope of events which we call the world, we are brought in conjunction with those persons between whose fate and our own Chance or Providence seems to tender a significance which it would have us heed and solve!

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