She vanished within the gloomy portal, and Dr. Gay carried the message to Colonel Brand, who swore a great oath that the girl had both sense and spirit, and, with her castle to boot, would not make a bad speculation.
So his next visit was paid at the old castle, and Margaret led him through the length and breadth of it, and sought to trap him into blundering over its various rooms and he answered all her questions correctly, and comported himself with perfection as St. Udo Brand, and left her in the evening, still and moody, thinking out her next secret move to snare him.
CHAPTER XIV.
WILL HE BETRAY HIMSELF?
St. Udo Brand was walking with Margaret over the rustling leaves of the Norman oaks, and beguiling the time by recounting his adventures in the American war.
How minutely he described his small part in the great wild drama of carnage! How feelingly he touched on the sorrows of war; how enthusiastically he extolled the valor of his Vermont boys!
The whole tissue of events reproduced with such marvelous accuracy, that Margaret was dumb with secret wonder.
How could one living being rehearse so faithfully the part of another?
Events which had been minutely described in his letters to the executors were now detailed with the most copious explanations; while allusions to his former life as a guardsman, and to incidents of his youth, kept her in continual mind of his genuineness.