"No, no," she murmured, "you must not say that."

"But I do say it, and I mean it. I only ask to be forgiven for that wild dream—it lasted but for a moment, and there was nothing in it that could have offended even you, I think; nothing but the love itself. And I believe in a man's right to love the woman who is the best, the most beautiful, the noblest on earth for him, even if she were the Queen herself! If you think that I hoped where I ought to have despaired, forgive me; but don't say you forgive me for merely loving you; I had the right, to do that."

She altered her attitude as he spoke. Her hands were now before her face, and he saw that the tears were trickling between her fingers. All the generosity of the man's nature was stirred at the sight.

"I am very sorry that I have distressed you," he said. "I am sorry that I spoke so roughly—so hastily—at first. Trust me when I say that I will not offend in the same way again."

She lifted her face a little, and tried to wipe away her tears. "I am not offended, Mr. Stretton," she said. "You mistake me—I am only sorry—deeply sorry—that I—if I—have misled you in any way."

"Oh, you did not mislead me, Miss Murray," replied Brian, gently; "it was my own folly that was to blame. But since I have spoken, may I say something more? I should like, if possible, to justify myself a little in your eyes."

She bowed her head. "Will you not sit down?" she said, softly. "Say what you like; or, at least, what you think best."

He did not sit down exactly, but he came back to the stone on which he had been sitting at her feet, and dropped on one knee upon it.

"Let me speak to you in this way, as a culprit should speak," he said, with a faint smile which had in it a gleam of some slightly ironical feeling, "and then you can pardon or condemn me as you choose."

"If you feel like a culprit you condemn yourself," said Elizabeth, lifting her eyes to his.

"I do not feel like a culprit, Miss Murray. I have, as I said before, a perfect right to love you if I choose——" Elizabeth's eyes fell, and the colour stole into her cheeks—"I would maintain that right against all the world. But I want you to be merciful: I want you to listen for a little while——"

"Not to anything that I ought not to hear, Mr. Stretton."

"No: to nothing that would wrong Mr. Percival Heron even by a thought. Only—it is a selfish wish of mine; but I have been misjudged a good deal in my life, and I do not want you to misjudge me—I should like you to understand how it was that I dared—yes, I dared—to love you. May I speak?"

"I don't know whether I ought to listen. I think I ought to go," said Elizabeth, with an irrepressible little sob. "No, do not speak—I cannot bear it."

"But in justice to me you ought to listen," said Brian, gently, and yet firmly. He laid one hand upon hers, and prevented her from rising. "A few words only," he said, in pleading tones. "Forgive me if I say I must go on. Forgive me if I say you must listen. It is for the last—and the only—time."

With a great sigh she sank back upon the stone seat from which she had tried to rise. Brian still held her hand. She did not draw it away. The lines of her face were all soft and relaxed; her usual clearness of purpose had deserted her. She did not know what to do.

"If you had loved me, Elizabeth—let me call you Elizabeth just for once; I will not ask to do it again—or if you had even been free—I would have told you my whole history from beginning to end, and let you judge how far I was justified in taking another name and living the life I do. But I won't lay that burden upon you now. It would not be fair. I think that you would have agreed with me—but it is not worth while to tell you now."

"I am sure that you would not have acted as you did without a good and honourable motive," said Elizabeth, trembling, though she did not know why.

"I acted more on impulse than on principle, I am afraid,", he answered. "I was in great trouble, and it seemed easier—but I saw no reason afterwards to change my decision. Elizabeth, my friends think me dead, and I want them to think so still. I had been accused of a crime which I did not commit—not publicly accused, but accused in my own home by one—one who ought to have known me better; and I had inadvertently—by pure accident, remember—brought great misery and sorrow upon my house. In all this—I could swear it to you, Elizabeth—I was not to blame. Can you believe my word?"

"I can, I do."

"God bless you for saying so, my love—the one love of my life—Elizabeth! Forgive me: I will not say it again. To add to my troubles, then, I found reason to believe that I had no right to the name I bore, that I was of a different family, a different race, altogether; that it would simplify the disposal of certain property if I were dead; and so—I died. I disappeared. I can never again take the name that once was mine."

He said all this, but no suspicion of the truth crossed Elizabeth's mind. That she was the person who had benefited by his disappearance was as far from her thoughts as from Brian's at that moment. That he was the Brian Luttrell of whom she had so often heard, whose death in the Alps had seemed so certain that even the law courts had been satisfied that she might rightfully inherit his possessions, that he—John Stretton, the boys' tutor—could be this dead cousin of her's, was too incredible a thought ever to occur to her. She felt nothing but sorrow for his past troubles, and a conviction that he was perfectly in the right.

"But you are deceiving your friends," she said.

"For their good, as I firmly believe," answered Brian, sorrowfully. "If I went back to them, I should cause a great deal of confusion and distress: I should make my so-called heirs uncomfortable and unhappy, and, as far as I can see, I should have no right to the property that they would not consent to retain if I were living."

"Yes—if I am dead, and if no one else appears to claim it. It is a complicated business, and one that would take some time to explain. Let it suffice that I was utterly hopeless, utterly miserable, when I cast away what had always seemed to me to be my birthright; that I was then for many months very ill; and that, when you met me in Italy, I was just winning my way back to health, and repose of mind and body. And then—do you remember how you looked and spoke to me? Of course, you do not know. You were good, and sweet, and kind: you stretched out your hand to aid a fallen man, for I was poorer and more friendless than you knew; and from the moment when you said you trusted me, as we sat together on the bench upon the cliffs my whole soul went out to you, Elizabeth, and I loved you as I never had loved before—as I never shall love again."

"In time," she murmured, "you will learn to care for someone else, in time you will forget me."

"Forget you! I can never forget you, Elizabeth. Your trust in me—an unknown, friendless man, your goodness to me, your sweet pity for me, will never be forgotten. Can you wonder if I loved you, and if I thought that my love must surely have betrayed itself? I fancied that you guessed it——"

"No, no," she said, hurriedly. "I did not guess. I did not think. I only knew that you were a kind friend to me, and taught me and helped me in many ways. I have been often very lonely—I never had a friend."

"Is Percival Heron, then, no friend to you?" he asked, with something of indignant sternness in his voice.

"Ah, yes, he is a friend; but not—not—I cannot tell you what he is——"

"But you love him?" cried Brian, the sternness changing to anguish, as the doubt first presented itself to him. "Elizabeth, do not tell me that you have promised yourself to a man that you do not love! I may be miserable; but do not let me think that you will be miserable, too."

He caught both her hands in his and looked her steadily in the face. "I have heard them say that you never told a lie in all your life," he went on. "Speak the truth still, Elizabeth, and tell me whether you love Percival Heron as a woman should love a man! Tell me the truth."

She shrank a little at first, and tried to take her hands away. But when she found that Brian's clasp was firm, she drew herself up and looked him in the face with eyes that were full of an unutterable sadness, but also of a resolution which nothing on earth could shake.

"You have no right to ask me the question," she said; "and I have no right to give you any answer."

But something in her troubled face told him what that answer would have been.



CHAPTER XXIV.

"GOOD-BYE."

"I see," he said, dropping her hands and turning away with a heavy sigh. "I was too late."

"Don't misunderstand me," said Elizabeth, with an effort. "I shall be very happy. I owe a debt to my uncle and my cousins which scarcely anything can repay."

"Give them anything but yourself" he said, gravely. "It is not right—I do not speak for myself now, but for you—it is not right to marry a man whom you do not love."

"But I did not say that I do not love him," she cried, trying to shield herself behind this barrier of silence. "I said only that you had no right to ask the question."

Brian looked at her and paused.

"You are wrong," he said at last, but so gently that she could not take offence. "Surely one who cares for you as I do may know whether or not you love the man that you are going to marry. It is no unreasonable question, I think, Elizabeth. And if you do not love him, then again I say that you are wrong and that it is not like your brave and honest self to be silent."

"I cannot help it," she said, faintly. "I must keep my word."

"You are the best judge of that," he answered. But there was a little coldness in his tone.

"Yes, I am the best judge," she went on more firmly. "I have promised; and I will not break the promise that I have made. I told you before how much I consider that I owe to them. Now that I have the chance of doing a thing that will benefit, not only Percival, but all of them—from a worldly point of view, I mean—I cannot bear to think of drawing back from what I said I would do."

"How will it benefit them?"

"In a very small way, no doubt," she said, looking aside, so that she might not see the mute protest of his face; "because worldly prosperity is a small thing after all; but if you had seen, as I have, what it was to my uncle to live in a poverty-stricken, sordid way, hampered with duns and debts, and Percival harassing himself with vain endeavours to set things straight, and the children feeling the sting of poverty more and more as they grew older—and then to know that one has the power in one's hands of remedying everything, without giving pain or hurting any one's pride, or——"

"I am sorry," said Brian, as she hesitated for a word. "But I do not understand."

"Why not!"

"How can you set things straight? And how is it that things want setting straight? Mr. Heron is—surely—a rich man."

She laughed; even in the midst of her agitation, she laughed a soft, pleasant, little laugh.

"Oh, I forgot," she said, suddenly. "You do not know. I found out on the day you came that you did not know."

"Did not know—what?"

She raised her eyes to his face, and spoke with gravity, but great sweetness.

"Nobody meant to deceive you," she said; "in fact, I scarcely know how it is that you have not learnt the truth—partly; I suppose, because in Italy I begged them not to tell anybody the true state of the case; but, really, my uncle is not rich at all. He is a poor man. And Percival is poor, too—very poor," she added, with a lingering sigh over the last two words.

"Poor! But—how could a poor man travel in Italy, and rent the Villa Venturi, say nothing of Strathleckie?"

"He did not rent it. They were my guests."

"Your guests? And what are they now, then?"

"My guests still."

Brian rose to his feet.

"Then you are a rich woman?"

"Yes."

"It is you, perhaps, who have paid me for teaching these boys?"

"There is no disgrace in being paid for work that is worth doing and that is done well," said Elizabeth, flashing an indignant look at him.

He bowed his head to the rebuke.

"You are right, Miss Murray. But you will, I hope, do me the justice to see that I was perfectly ignorant of the state of affairs; that I was blind—foolishly blind——"

"Not foolishly. You could not help it."

"I might have seen. I might have known. I took you for——" And there Brian stopped, actually colouring at the thought of his mistake.

"For the poor relation; the penniless cousin. But it was most natural that you should, and two years ago it would have been perfectly true. I have not been a rich woman for very many months, and I do not love my riches very much."

"If I had known," began Brian; and then he burst out with a sudden change of tone. "Give them your riches, since they value them and you do not, and give yourself to me, Elizabeth. Surely your debt to them would then be paid."

"What! by recompensing kindness with treachery?" she said, glancing at him mournfully. "No, that plan would not answer. The money is a small part of what I owe them. But I do sometimes wish that it had gone to anybody but me; especially when I remember the sad circumstances under which it became mine. When I think of poor Mrs. Luttrell of Netherglen, I have never felt as if it were right to spend her sons' inheritance in what gave pleasure to myself alone."

"Mrs. Luttrell of —— But what have you to do with her?" said Brian, with a sudden fixity of feature and harshness of voice that alarmed Elizabeth. "Mrs. Luttrell of Netherglen! Good Heaven! It is not you—you—who inherited that property? The Luttrell-Murrays——"

"I am the only Luttrell-Murray living," said Elizabeth.

He stared at her dumbly, as if he could not believe his ears.

"And you have the Luttrell estate?" he said at last.

"I have."

"I am glad of it," he answered; and then he put his hand over his eyes for a second or two, as if to shut out the light of day. "Yes, I am very glad."

"What do you mean, Mr. Stretton?" said Elizabeth, who was watching him intently. "Do you know anything of my family? Do you know anything of the Luttrells?"

"I have met some of them," he answered, slowly. His face was paler than usual, and his eyes, after one hasty glance at her, fell to the ground. "It was a long time ago. I do not know them now."

"You said you had been here before. You——"

"Miss Murray, don't question me as to how I knew them. You cannot guess what a painful subject it is to me. I would rather not discuss it."

"But, Mr. Stretton——"

"Let me tell you something else," he said, hastily, as if anxious to change the subject. "Let me ask you—as you are the arbitress of my destiny, my employer, I may call you—when you will let me go. Could the boys do without me at once, do you think? You would soon find another tutor."

"Mr. Stretton! Why should you go? Do you mean to leave us?" exclaimed Elizabeth. "Oh, surely it is not necessary to do that!"

"Do you think it would be so easy for me, then, to take money from your hands after what has passed between us?"

"Money is a small thing," said she.

"Money! yes; but there are other things in the world beside money. And it is better that I should go away from you now. It is not for my peace to see you every day, and know that you are to marry Percival Heron. Cannot you guess what pain it is to me?"

"But the children: you have no love for them, then. I thought that you did love our little Jack—and they are so fond of you."

"Don't try to keep me," he said, hoarsely. "It is hard enough to say good-bye without having to refuse you anything. The one thing now for which I could almost thank God is that you never loved me, Elizabeth."

She shivered, and drew a long, sobbing breath. Her face looked pale and cold: her voice did not sound like itself as she murmured—

"Why?"

"Because—no, I can't tell you why. Think for yourself of a reason. It is not that I love you less; and yet—yet—not for the world would I marry you now that I know what I know."

"You would not marry me because I am rich: that is it, is it not?" she asked him. "I knew that some men were proud; but I did not think that you would be so proud."

"What does it signify? There is no chance of your marrying me; you are going to marry another man—whom you do not love; we may scarcely ever see each other again after to-day. It is better so."

"If I were free," she said, slowly, "and if—if—I loved you, you would be doing wrong to leave me because—only because—I was a little richer than you. I do not think that that is your only motive. It is since you heard that I was one of the Luttrell-Murrays that you have spoken in this way."

"What if it were? The fact remains," he said, gloomily. "You do not care for me; and I—I would give my very soul for you, Elizabeth. I had better go. Think of me kindly when I am away—that is all. I see Miss Heron and the boys on the brow of the hill signalling to us. Will you excuse me if I say good-bye to you now, and walk back towards Strathleckie?"

"Must it be now?" she said, scarcely knowing what the words implied. She turned her face towards him with a look that he never forgot—a look of inexpressible regret, of yearning sweetness, of something only too like the love that he thought he had failed to win. It caused him to turn back and to lean over her with a half-whispered question—

"Would it have been possible, Elizabeth, if we had met earlier, do you think that you ever could have loved me?"

"Do you think you ought to ask me?"

"Ah, give me one word of comfort before I go. Remember that I go for ever. It will do no one any harm. Could you have loved me, Elizabeth?"

"I think I could," she murmured in so low a tone that he could hardly hear the words. He seized her hands and pressed them closely in his own; he could do no more, for the Herons were very near. "Good-bye, my love, my own darling!" were the last words she heard. They rang in her ears as if they had been as loud as a trumpet-call; she could hardly believe that they had not re-echoed far and wide across the moor. She felt giddy and sick. The last sight of his face was lost in a strange, momentary darkness. When she saw clearly again he was walking away from her with long, hasty strides, and her cousins were close at hand. She watched him eagerly, but he did not turn round. She knew instinctively that he had resolved that she should never see his face again.

"What is the matter, Betty?" cried one of the children. "You look so white! And where is Mr. Stretton going? Mr. Stretton! Wait for us!"

"Don't call Mr. Stretton," said Elizabeth, collecting her forces, and speaking as nearly as possible in her ordinary tone. "He wants to get back to Strathleckie as quickly as possible. I am rather tired and am resting."

"You are not usually tired with so short a walk," said Kitty, glancing sharply at her cousin's pallid cheeks. "Are you not well?"

"Yes, I am quite well," Elizabeth answered. "But I am very, very tired."

And then she rose and made her way back to the loch-side, where Mr. and Mrs. Heron were still reposing. But her steps lagged, and her face did not recover its usual colour as she went home, for, as she had said, she was tired—strangely and unnaturally tired—and it was with a feeling of relief that she locked herself into her own room at Strathleckie, and gave way to the gathering tears which she had hitherto striven to restrain. She would willingly have stayed away from the dinner-table, but she was afraid of exciting remark. Her pale face and heavy eyelids excited remark as much as her absence would have done; but she did not think of that. Mr. Stretton, who usually dined with them, sent an excuse to Mrs. Heron. He had a headache, and preferred to remain in his own room.

"It must have been the sun," said Mrs. Heron. "Elizabeth has a headache, too. Have you a headache, Kitty?"

"Not at all, thank you," said Kitty.

There was something peculiar in her tone, thought Elizabeth. Or was it only that her conscience was guilty, and that she was becoming apt to suspect hidden meanings in words and tones that used to be harmless and innocent enough? The idea was a degrading one to her mind. She hated the notion of having anything to conceal—anything, at least, beyond what was lawful and right. Her inheritance, her engagement to Percival, had been to some extent kept secret; but not, as she now said passionately to herself, not because she was ashamed of them. Now, indeed, she was ashamed of her secret, and there was nothing on earth from which she shrank so much as the thought of its being discovered.

She went to bed early, but she could not sleep. The words that Brian had said to her, the answers that she had made to him, were rehearsed one after the other, turned over in her mind, commented on, and repeated again and again all through the night. She hardly knew the meaning of her own excitement of feeling, nor of the intense desire that possessed her to see him again and listen once more to his voice. She only knew that her brain was in a turmoil and that her heart seemed to be on fire. Sleep! She could not think of sleep. His face was before her, his voice was sounding in her ears, until the cock crew and the morning sunlight flooded all the room. And then for a little while, indeed, she slept, and dreamt of him.

She awoke late and unrefreshed. She dressed leisurely, wondering somewhat at the vehemence of last night's emotion, but not mistress enough of herself to understand its danger. In that last moment of her interview with Brian she had given way far more than he knew. If he had understood and taken advantage of that moment of weakness, she would not have been able to refuse him anything. At a word she would have given up all for him—friends, home, riches, even her promise to Percival—and gone forth into the world with the man she loved, happier in her poverty than she had ever been in wealth. "Ask me no more, for at a touch I yield," was the silent cry of her inmost soul. But Brian had not understood. He did not dream that with Elizabeth, as with most women, the very weakest time is that which immediately follows the moment of greatest apparent strength. She had refused to listen to him at all—and after that refusal she was not strong, but weak in heart and will as a wearied child.

Realising this, Elizabeth felt a sensation of relief and safety. She had escaped a great gulf—and yet—and yet—she had not reached that point of reasonableness and moderation at which she could be exactly glad that she had escaped.

She made her way downstairs, and reached the dining-room to find that everyone but herself had breakfasted and gone out. She was too feverish to do more than swallow a cup of coffee and a little toast, and she had scarcely concluded her scanty meal before Mr. Heron entered the room with a disconcerted expression upon his face.

"Do you know the reason of this freak of Stretton's, Elizabeth?" he asked almost immediately.

"What do you mean, Uncle Alfred?"

"I mean—has he taken a dislike to Strathleckie, or has anybody offended him? I can't understand it. Just when we were settling down so nicely, and found him such an excellent tutor for the boys! To run away after this fashion! It is too bad!"

"Does Mr. Stretton think of leaving Strathleckie?" said Elizabeth, with her eyes bent steadfastly upon the table-cloth.

"Think of leaving! My dear Lizzie, he has left! Gone: went this morning before any of us were down. Spoke to me last night about it; I tried to dissuade him, but his mind was quite made up."

"What reason did he give?"

"Well, he would not tell me the exact reason. I tried to find out, but he was as close as—as—wax," said Mr. Heron, trying to find a suitable simile. "He said he was much obliged to us all for our kindness to him; had no fault to find with anything or anybody; liked the place; but, all the same, he wanted to go, and go he must. I offered him double the salary—at least, I hinted as much: I knew you would not object, Lizzie dear, but it was no use. Partly family affairs; partly private reasons: that was all I could get out of him."

Mr. Heron's long speech left Elizabeth the time to consider what to say.

"It does not matter very much," she answered at length, indifferently: "we can find someone who will teach the boys quite as well, I have no doubt."

"Do you think so?" asked Mr. Heron. "Well, perhaps so. But, you see, it is not always easy to get a tutor at this time of the year, Elizabeth; and, besides, we shall not find one, perhaps, so ready to read Italian with you, as Mr. Stretton used to do——"

Oh, those Italian readings! How well she remembered them! How the interest which Mr. Stretton had from the first inspired in her had grown and strengthened in the hours that they spent together, with heads bent over the same page, and hearts throbbing in unison over the lines that spoke of Dante's Beatrice, or Petrarca's Laura! She shuddered at the remembrance, now fraught to her with keenest pain.

"I shall not want to read Italian again," she said, rising from the table. "We had better advertise for a tutor, Uncle Alfred, unless you think the boys might run wild for a little while, or unless Percival can find us one."

"Shall you be writing to Percival to-day, my dear?"

"I don't know."

"Because you might mention that Mr. Stretton has left us. I am afraid that Percival will be glad," said Mr. Heron, with a little laugh; "he had an unaccountable dislike to poor Stretton."

"Yes, Percival will be glad," said Elizabeth, turning mechanically to leave the room. At the door she paused. "Mr. Stretton left an address, I suppose?"

"No, he did not. He said he would write to me when his plans were settled. And I'm sorry to say he would not take a cheque. I pressed it upon him, and finally left it on the table for him—where I found it again this morning. He said that he had no right to it, leaving as suddenly as he did—some crochet of that kind. I should think that Stretton could be very Quixotic if he chose."

"When he writes," said Elizabeth, "you will send him the cheque, will you not, Uncle Alfred? I do not think that he is very well off; and it seems a pity that he should be in want of money for the sake of—of—a scruple."

She did not wait for a reply, but closed the door behind her, and stood for a few moments in the hall, silently wondering what to do and where to go. Finally she put on her garden hat and went out into the grounds. She felt that she must be alone.

A sort of numbness came over her. He had gone, without a word, without making any effort to see her again. His "Good-bye" had been spoken in solemn earnest. He had been stronger than Elizabeth; although in ordinary matters it might be thought that her nature was the stronger of the two. There was nothing, therefore, for her to say or do; she could not write to him, she could not call him back. If she could have done so she would. She had never known before what it was to hunger for the sight of a beloved face, to think of the words that she might have said, and long to say them. She did not as yet know by what name to call her misery. Only, little by little she woke up to the fact that it was what people meant when they spoke of love. Then she began to understand her position. She had promised to marry Percival Heron, but her heart was given to the penniless tutor who called himself John Stretton.



CHAPTER XXV.

A COVENANT.

Brian had no fixed notion of what he should do, but he thought it better to go to London, where he could more easily decide on his future movements. He was in no present difficulty, for the liberal salary which he had received from the Herons during the past few months was almost untouched, and although he had just now a morbid dislike to touching the money that had come to him through Elizabeth's generosity, he had the sense to see that he must make use of it, and turn it to the best possible account.

In the course of his journey he bought a newspaper. His eyes fell almost immediately upon a paragraph which caused him some amazement.

"Mysterious Case of Attempted Murder.—A young man of respectable appearance was discovered early this morning in a state of complete insensibility at the end of a passage leading out of Mill-street, Blackfriars. He was found to have received a severe wound, presumably with a knife, in the left side, and had lost a considerable amount of blood, but, although weak, was still living. His watch and purse had not been abstracted, a fact which points to the conclusion either that the wound was inflicted by a companion in a drunken brawl, or that the thief was disturbed in his operations before the completion of the work. The young man speaks a little English as well as Italian, but he has not yet been able to give a precise account of the assault committed upon him. It is thought that the police have a clue to the criminal. The name given in the gentleman's pocket-book is Vasari; and he has been removed to Guy's Hospital, where he is reported to be doing well."

"Vasari! Dino Vasari! can it be he?" said Brian, throwing down his newspaper. "What brings him to London?"

Then it occurred to him that Father Cristoforo's long letter might have contained information concerning Dino's visit to London: possibly he had been asked to do the young Italian some service, which, of course, he had been unable to render as he had not read the letter. He felt doubly vexed at his own carelessness as he thought of this possibility, and resolved to go to the hospital and see whether the man who had been wounded was Dino Vasari or not. And then he forgot all about the newspaper paragraph, and lost himself in sad reflections concerning the unexpected end of his connection with the Herons.

Arrived in London, he found out a modest lodging, and began to arrange his plans for the future. A fit of restlessness seemed to have come upon him. He could not bear to think of staying any longer in England. He paid a visit next morning to an Emigration Agency Office, asking whether the agents could direct him to the best way of obtaining suitable work in the Colonies. He did not care where he went or what he did; his preference was for work in the open air, because he still at times felt the effect of that brain-fever which had so nearly ended his existence at San Stefano; but his physique was not exactly of the kind which was most suited to bush-clearing and sheep-farming. This he was told, and informed, moreover, that so large a number of clerks arrived yearly in Australia and America, that the market in that sort of labour was over-stocked, and that, if he was a clerk, he had a better chance in the Old World than in the New.

"I am not a clerk; I have lately been a tutor," said Brian.

References?

He could refer them to his late employer.

A degree? Oxford or Cambridge?

And there the questions ceased to be answered satisfactorily. He could not tell them that he had been to Oxford, because he dared not refer them to the name under which he studied at Balliol. He hesitated, blundered a little—he certainly had never mastered the art of lying with ease and fluency—and created so unfavourable an impression in the mind of the emigration agent that that gentleman regarded him with suspicion from that moment, and apparently ceased to wish to afford him any aid.

"I am very sorry," he said, politely, "but I don't think that we have anything that would suit you. There is a college at Dunedin where they want a junior master, but there, a man with a good degree and—hum—unimpeachable antecedents would be required. People out there are in want of men with a trade: not of clerks, nor of poor professional men."

"Then I must go as a hodman or a breaker of stones," said Brian, "for I mean to go."

"I don't think that that employment is one for which you are especially fitted, Mr. Smith," said the agent, with a slight smile. Brian had impatiently given the name of Smith in making his application, and the agent, who was a man of wide experience, did not believe that it was his own; "but, of course, if you like to try it, you can look at these papers about 'assisted passages.'"

"Thank you, that is not necessary," answered Brian, rather curtly. "A steerage passage to Australia does not cost a fortune. If I go out as a labouring man I think I can manage it. But I am obliged to you for your kindness in answering my questions."

He had resumed his usual manner, which had been somewhat ruffled by the tone taken by the agent, and now asked one or two practical questions respecting the fares, the lines of steamers, and matters of that kind; after which he bade the agent a courteous good-morning and went upon his way.

He foresaw that the inevitable cloud hanging over his past story would prove a great obstacle to his obtaining employment in the way he desired. Any work requiring certificates or testimonials was utterly out of the question for him in England. In Australia or New Zealand things might be different. He had no great wish to go to America—he had once spent a summer holiday in the Eastern States, and did not fancy that they would be agreeable places of residence for him in his present circumstances, and he had no great desire to "go West;" besides, he had a wish to put as great a distance as possible between himself and England. As he walked away from the emigration office he made up his mind to take the first vessel that sailed for Sydney.

He had nothing to do. He wanted to divert his mind from thoughts of Elizabeth. It flashed across his mind that he would go to the hospital and inquire after the man who had been stabbed, and who called himself Vasari.

He made his request to see the patient, and was admitted with such readiness that he suspected the case to be a dangerous one. And, indeed, the house-surgeon acknowledged this to be so. The stab, he said, had gone wonderfully near the vital parts; a hair's-breadth deviation to the right or left, and Vasari would have been a dead man. It was still uncertain whether he would recover, and all agitation must be avoided, as he was not allowed either to move or speak.

"I am not sure whether he is the young man I used to know or not," said Brian, doubtfully. "Vasari—was there a Christian name given as well?"

"Yes: Bernardino, and in another place simply Dino. Was that the name of your friend?"

"Yes, it was. If I saw him I should be sure. I don't suppose that my appearance would agitate him," said Brian, little suspecting the deep interest and importance which would attach to his visit in Dino's mind.

"Come, then." And the surgeon led the way to the bed, hidden by a screen from the rest of the ward, where Dino lay.

Brian passed with the nurse inside the screen, and looked pityingly at the patient.

"Yes," he said, in a low tone, "it is the man I know."

He thought that Dino was unconscious, but at the sound of his voice—low though it was—the patient opened his eyes, and fixed them upon Brian's face. Brian had said that his appearance would produce no agitation, but he was mistaken. A sudden change passed over that pale countenance. Dino's great dark eyes seemed to grow larger than ever; his face assumed a still more deathly tinge; the look of mingled anguish and horror was unmistakable. He tried to speak, he tried to rise in his bed, but the effort was too great, and he sank back insensible. The indignant nurse hustled Brian away, and would not allow him to return; he ought to have known, she said, that the sight of him would excite the patient. Brian had not known, and was grieved to think that his visit had been unacceptable. But that did not prevent him from writing an account of the state in which he had found Dino Vasari to his friend, Padre Cristoforo; nor from calling at the hospital every day to inquire after the state of his Italian friend. He was glad to hear at last that Dino was out of danger; then, that he was growing a little stronger; and then that he had expressed a desire to see the English gentleman when he called again.

By this time he had, to some extent, changed his plans. Neither Australia nor New Zealand would be his destination. He had taken his passage in a vessel bound for Pernambuco, and a very short time remained to him in England. He was glad to think that he should see Dino before he went.

He found the young man greatly altered: his eyes gleamed in orbits of purple shadow: his face was white and wasted. But the greatest change of all lay in this—that there was no smile upon his lips, no pleasure in his eyes, when he saw Brian draw near his bed.

"Dino!" said Brian, holding out his hand. "How did you come here, amico mio?" And then he noticed the absence of any welcoming word or gesture on Dino's part. The large dark eyes were bent upon him questioningly, and yet with a proud reserve in their shadowy depths. And the blue-veined hands locked themselves together upon the coverlet instead of returning Brian's friendly grasp.

"Why have you come?" said Dino, in a loud whisper. "What do you want?"

"I want nothing save to ask how you are and to see you again," replied Brian, after a pause of astonishment.

"If you want to alter your decision it is not yet too late. I have taken no steps towards the claiming of my rights."

"His mind must be wandering," thought Brian to himself. He added aloud in a soothing tone, "I have made no decision about anything, Dino. Can I do anything for you?"

Dino looked at him long and meditatively. Brian's face expressed some surprise, but perfect tranquility of mind. He had seated himself at Dino's bed-side, and was leaning his chin upon his hand and his elbow upon his crossed knees.

"Why did you make Hugo Luttrell your messenger? Why not come to meet me yourself as Padre Cristoforo begged you to do?"

Brian shook his head. "I don't think you had better talk, Dino," he said. "You are feverish, surely. I will come and see you again to-morrow."

"No, no: answer my question first," said Dino, a slight flush rising to his thin cheeks. "Why could you not come yourself?"

"When?"

"When! You know."

"Upon my honour, Dino, I don't know what you mean."

"You—you—had a letter from Padre Cristoforo—about me?" said Dino, stammering with eagerness.

Brian looked guilty. "I was a great fool, Dino," he said, penitently. "I had a letter from him, and I managed to lose it before I had read more than the first sheet, in which there was nothing about you. I suppose he told me in that letter why you came to London, and asked me to meet you or something; and I wish I had met you, if it would have prevented this unfortunate accident of yours, or whatever it was. My own carelessness is always to blame," said Brian, with a heavy sigh, "and I don't wonder that you look coldly upon me, Dino, when I seem to have done you such an unfriendly turn. But I don't think I need say that I never meant to do it."

"How did you know that I was here?" asked Dino, with breathless interest.

"I saw in the papers an account of your being found insensible from a wound in your side. The name Vasari was mentioned, and I came to see if it could possibly be you."

Dino was silent for a few minutes. Then his face lighted up, his pale lips parted with a smile. "So you never read Father Cristoforo's letter?" he said. "And you sent me no message of reply?"

"Certainly not. How could I, when I did not know that you were in England?"

Dino held out his hands. "I misjudged you," he said, simply, "Will you forgive me and take my hand again?"

Brian clasped his hand. "You know there's nothing to forgive," he said, with a smile. "But I am glad you don't think I neglected you on purpose, Dino. I had not forgotten those pleasant days at San Stefano."

Dino smiled, too, but did not seem inclined to speak again. The nurse came to say that the interview had lasted long enough, and Brian took his leave, promising to come on the morrow, and struck with the look of perfect peace and quiet upon the placid face as it lay amongst the white pillows, almost as white as they.

He had only a couple of days left before he was to start for Pernambuco, where he had heard of work that was likely to suit him. He had made his arrangements, taken his passage in the steerage: he had nothing to do now but to write a farewell letter to Mr. Heron, telling him whither he was bound, and another—should he write that other or should he not?—to Elizabeth. He felt it hard to go without saying one last farewell to her. The discovery that she was the heiress of his property had finally decided him to leave England. He dared not risk the chance of being recognised and identified, if such recognition and identification would lead to her poverty. For even if, by a deed of gift in his supposed name of Brian Luttrell, he devised his wealth to her, he knew that she would never consent to take it if he were still alive. The doubt thrown on his birth and parentage would not be conclusive enough in her mind to justify her in despoiling him of what all the judges in the land would have said was his birthright. But then Brian did not know that Vincenza Vasari had been found. The existence of another claimant to the Luttrell estate never troubled him in the least. He wronged nobody, he thought, by allowing Elizabeth Murray to suppose that Brian Luttrell was dead.

He wrote a few lines to Mr. Heron, thanking him for his kindness, and informing him that he was leaving England for South America; and then he proceeded to the more difficult task of writing to Elizabeth. He destroyed many sheets of paper, and spent a great deal of time in the attempt, although the letter, as it stood at last, was a very simple affair, scarcely worthy of the pains that had been bestowed upon it.

"Dear Miss Murray," he wrote, "when you receive this note I shall have left England, but I cannot go without one word of farewell. You will never know how much you did for me in those early days of our acquaintance in Italy; how much hope you gave me back, how much interest in life you inspired in me; but for all that you did I thank you. Is it too much to ask you to remember me sometimes? I shall remember you until the hour of my death. Forgive me if I have said too much. God bless you, Elizabeth! Let me write that name once, for I shall never write to you nor see your face again."

He put no signature. He could not bear to use a false name when he wrote to her; and he was sure that she would know from whom the letter came.

He went out and dropped it with his own hands into a letter-box; then he came back to his dreary lodgings, never expecting to find there anything of interest. But he found something that interested him very much indeed. He found a long and closely written letter from the Prior of San Stefano.

Father Cristoforo could not resist the opportunity of lecturing his young friend a little. He gave him a good many moral maxims before he came to the story that he had to tell, and he pointed them by observing rather severely that if it were not for Brian's carelessness, his pupil might possibly have escaped the "accident" that had befallen him. For if Brian had met Dino in London on the appointed day, he would not have been wandering alone in the streets (as Father Cristoforo imagined him to have been) or fallen into the hands of thieves and murderers.

With which prologue the Padre once more began his story. And this time Brian read it all.

He put down the letter at last with a curious smile: the smile of a man who does not want to acknowledge that he suffers pain. "Dino," he said to himself, lingeringly. "Dino! It is he who is Brian Luttrell, then, after all. And what am I? And, oh, my poor Elizabeth! But she will only regret the loss of the money because she will no longer be able to help other people. The Herons will suffer more than she. And Percival Heron! How will it affect him? I think he will be pleased. Yes, I think he is disinterested enough to be thoroughly pleased that she is poor. I should be pleased, in his case.

"There is no doubt about it now, I suppose," he said, beginning to pace up and down the little room, with slow, uneven steps and bent head. "I am not a Luttrell. I am a Vasari. My mother's name was Vincenza Vasari—a woman who lied and cheated for the sake of her child. And I was the child! Good God! how can it be that I have that lying blood in my veins? Yet I have no right to say so; it was all done for me—for me—who never knew a mother's love. Oh, mother, mother, how much happier your son would have been if you had reared him in the place where he was born, amongst the vines and olive-yards of his native land.

"And I must see Dino to-morrow. So he knows the whole story. I understand now why he thought ill of me for not coming to meet him, poor fellow! I must go early to-morrow."

He went, but as soon as he reached Dino's bed-side he found that he knew not what to say, Dino looked up at him with eyes full of grave, wistful affection, and suddenly smiled, as if something unwontedly pleasant had dawned upon his mind.

"Ah," he said, "at last—you know."

"Yes, I know," said Brian.

"And you are sorry? I am sorry, too."

"No," said Brian, finding it rather difficult to express himself at that moment; "I am not sorry that you are the man who will bear the name of Luttrell, that I have wrongly borne so long. I suppose—from what the Prior says—that your claim can be proved; if I were in my old position I should be the first to beg you to prove it, and to give up my name and place to you if justice required it. As it is, I do not stand in your way, because the old Brian Luttrell—the one who killed his brother, you know—is dead."

"But if you were in your old position, could you still pardon me and be friendly with me, even if I claimed my rights?"

"I hope so," said Brian. "I hope that I should not be so ungenerous as to look upon you as an enemy because you wished to take your own place amongst your own kindred. You ought rather to look upon me as your enemy, because I have occupied your place so long."

"You are good—you are generous—you are noble!" said Dino, his eyes suddenly filling with tears. "If all the world were like you! And do you know what I shall do if the estate ever becomes mine? You shall take the half—you may take it all, if it please you better. But we will divide it, at any rate, and be to each other as brothers, shall we not? I have thought of you so often!"

He spoke ardently, eagerly; pressing Brian's hands between his own from time to time. It was from an impulse as strong and simple as any of Dino's own that Brian suddenly stooped down and kissed him on the forehead. The caress seemed natural enough to Dino; it was as the ratification of some sacred bond to the English-bred Brian Luttrell. Henceforth, the two became to each other as brothers, indeed; the interests of one became the interests of the other. Before long, Dino learnt from Brian himself the whole of his sad story. He lay with shining eyes and parted lips, his hand clasped in Brian's, listening to his account of the events of the last two years. The only thing that Brian did not touch upon was his love for Elizabeth. That wound was too recent to be shown, even to Dino, who had leaped all at once, as it seemed, into the position of his bosom friend. But Dino guessed it all.

As Brian walked back to his lodgings from the hospital, he was haunted by a verse of Scripture which had sprung up in his mind, and which he repeated with a certain sense of pleasure as soon as he recollected the exact words. "And it came to pass"—so ran the verse that he remembered—"when he had made an end of speaking unto Saul that the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul." He liked the words. He looked them out in a Bible belonging to his landlady when he reached home, and he found another verse that touched him, too. "Then Jonathan and David made a covenant, because he loved him as his own soul."

Had not Brian Luttrell and Dino Vasari made a covenant?

The practical result of their friendship was an important one to Brian. He sacrificed his passage money, and did not sail on the following day for Pernambuco.



CHAPTER XXVI.

ELIZABETH'S CONFESSION.

"I wonder what she wants with me," said Percival Heron, meditatively. He was sitting at his solitary breakfast-table, having pushed from him an empty coffee-cup and several newspapers: a letter from Elizabeth was in his hands. It consisted of a few lines only, and the words that had roused his wonderment were these:—

"I am very anxious to see you. Could you come down to Strathleckie at once? If not, pray come as soon as possible."

"I suppose she is too true a woman to say exactly what she wants," said Percival, a gay smile curling his lips beneath his black moustache. "Perhaps she won't be very angry with me this time if I press her a little on the subject of our marriage. We parted on not very good terms last time, rather en delicatesse, if I'm not mistaken, after quarrelling over our old subject of dispute, the tutor. Well, my lady's behests are to be obeyed. I'll wire an acceptance of the invitation and start to-night."

He made the long journey very comfortably, grumbling now and then in a good-tempered way at Elizabeth for sending for him in so abrupt a fashion; but on the whole he felt pleased that she had done so. It showed that she had confidence in him. And he was very anxious for the engagement to be made public: its announcement would be a sort of justification to him in allowing her to do as much as she had done for his family. Percival had, in truth, always protested against her generosity, but failed in persuading his father not to accept it. Mr. Heron was too simple-minded to see why he should not take Elizabeth's gifts, and Mrs. Heron did not see the force of Percival's arguments at all.

"Elizabeth is not here, then," he said to Kitty, who met him at the station.

"No," answered Kitty in rather a mysterious voice. "She wouldn't come."

"Why wouldn't she come?" said Percival, sharply. He followed his sister into the waggonette as he spoke: he did not care about driving, and gladly resigned the reins to the coachman.

"I can't tell you. I don't think she is well."

"Not well? What's the matter?"

"I don't know. She always has a headache. Did she want you to come, Percival?"

"She wrote to ask me."

"I'm glad of that."

"Kitty, will you have the goodness to say what you mean, instead of hinting?"

Kitty looked frightened.

"I don't mean anything," she said, hurriedly, while a warm wave of colour spread itself over her cheeks and brow.

"Don't mean anything? That's nonsense. You should not say anything then. Out with it, Kitty. What do you think is wrong with Elizabeth?"

"Oh, Percival, don't be so angry with me," said Kitty, with the tears in her eyes. "Indeed, I scarcely meant to speak; but I did wish you to understand beforehand——"

"What?"

"I don't think she wants to marry you." And then Kitty glanced up from under her thick, curling lashes, and was startled at the set and rigid change which suddenly came over her brother's features. She dared not say any more, and for some minutes they drove on in silence. Presently, Percival turned round to her with an icy sternness in his voice.

"You should not say such things unless you have authority from Elizabeth to say them. Did she tell you to do so?"

"No, no, indeed she did not," cried Kitty, "and, of course, I may be mistaken; but I came to see you, Percival, on purpose to tell you."

"No woman is happy unless she is making mischief," said her brother, grimly.

"You ought not to say that, Percival; it is not fair. And I must say what I came to say. Elizabeth is very unhappy about something. I don't know what; and after all her goodness to us you ought to be careful that you are not making her do anything against her will."

"Did you ever know Elizabeth do anything against her will?"

"Against her wishes, then," said Kitty, firmly, "and against the dictates of her heart."

"'These be fine words, indeed!'" quoted Percival, with a savage laugh. "And who has taught you to talk about the 'dictates of her heart?' Leave Elizabeth and me to settle our affairs between ourselves, if you please. We know our duty to each other without taking advice from a little schoolgirl."

Kitty stifled a sob. "If you break Elizabeth's heart," she said, vehemently, "you can't say I didn't warn you."

Percival looked at her, stifled a question at the tip of his tongue, and clutched his newspaper viciously. It occurred to him that Kitty knew something, that she would never have uttered a mere vague suspicion; but he would not ask her a direct question. No, Elizabeth's face and voice would soon tell him whether she was unhappy.

He was right. Kitty had seen the parting between Brian and Elizabeth; and she had guessed a great deal more than she saw. She spoke out of no desire to make mischief, but from very love for her cousin and care for her happiness; but when she noted Percival's black brows she doubted whether she had done right.

Percival did not speak again throughout the drive. He sat with his eyes bent on his newspaper, his hand playing with his moustache, a frown on his handsome face. It was not until the carriage stopped at the door of Strathleckie, and he had given his hand to Kitty to help her down that he opened his lips.

"Don't repeat what you have said to me to any other person, please."

"Of course not, Percival."

There was no time for more. The barking of dogs, the shouts of children, the greeting of Mr. Heron, prevented anything further. Percival looked round impatiently. But Elizabeth was not there.

He was tired, although he would not confess it, with his night journey; and a bath, breakfast, and change of clothes did not produce their usual exhilarating effect. He found it difficult to talk to his father or to support the noise made by the children. Kitty's hint had put his mind into a ferment.

"Can these boys not be sent to their lessons?" he said, at last, knitting his brows.

"Oh, don't you know?" said Harry, cutting a delighted caper. "We have holidays now. Mr. Stretton has gone away. He went away a fortnight ago, or nearly three weeks now."

Percival looked suddenly at Kitty, who coloured vividly.

"Why did he go?" he asked.

"I'm sure I can't tell you," said Mr. Heron, almost peevishly. "Family affairs, he said. And now he has gone to South America. I don't understand it at all."

Neither did Percival.

"Where is Elizabeth?" said Mr. Heron, looking round the room as if in search of her. "She can't know that Percival has come: go and tell her, one of you boys."

"No, never mind," said Percival, quickly; but it was too late, the boy was gone.

There was a little silence. Percival sat at one side of the whitely-draped table, with a luxurious breakfast before him and a great bowl of autumn flowers. The sunshine streamed in brightly through the broad, low windows; the pleasant room was fragrant with the scent of the burning wood upon the fire; the dogs wandered in and out, and stretched themselves comfortably upon the polished oak floor. Kitty sat in a cushioned window-seat and looked anxious; Mr. Heron stood by the fireplace and moved one of the burning logs in the grate with his foot. A sort of constraint had fallen over the little party, though nobody quite knew why; and it was not dispelled, even when Harry's footsteps were heard upon the stairs, and he threw open the door for Elizabeth.

Percival threw down his serviette and started up to meet her. And then he knew why his father and sister looked uncomfortable. Elizabeth was changed; it was plain enough that Elizabeth must be ill.

She was thinner than he had ever seen her, and her face had grown pale. But the fixed gravity and mournfulness of her expression struck him even more than the sharpened contour of her features or the dark lines beneath her eyes. She looked as if she suffered: as if she was suffering still.

"You are ill!" he said, abruptly, holding her by the hand and looking down into her face.

"That's what I've been saying all along!" muttered Mr. Heron. "I knew he would be shocked by her looks. You should have prepared him, Kitty."

"I have had neuralgia, that is all," said Elizabeth, quietly.

"Strathleckie does not suit you; you ought to go away," remarked Percival, devouring her with his eyes. "What have you been doing to yourself?"

"Nothing: I am perfectly well; except for this neuralgia," she said, with a faint, vexed smile. "Did you have a comfortable journey, and have you breakfasted?"

"Yes, thank you."

"Then you will come out with me for a little stroll? I want to show you the grounds; and the others can spare you to me for a little while," she went on, with perfect ease and fluency. The only change in her manner was its unusual gravity, and the fact that she did not seem able to meet Percival's eye. "Are you too tired?"

"Not at all." And they left the room together.

She took him down the hill on which the house stood, by a narrow, winding path, to the side of a picturesque stream in the valley below. He had seen the place before, but he followed her without a word until they reached a wooden seat close to the water's edge, with its back fixed to the steep bank behind it. The rowan trees, with their clusters of scarlet berries, hung over it, and great clumps of ferns stood on either hand. It was an absolutely lonely place, and Percival knew instinctively that Elizabeth had brought him to it because she could here speak without fear of interruption.

"It is a beautiful place, is it not?" she said, as he took his seat beside her.

He did not answer. He rather disdained the trivial question. He was silent for a few minutes, and then said briefly:—

"Tell me why you wanted me."

"I have been unhappy," she said, simply.

"That is easy to be seen."

"Is it? Oh, I am sorry for that. But I have had neuralgia. I have, indeed. That makes me look pale and tired."

Percival threw his arm over the back of the seat with an impatient motion, and looked at the river. "Nothing else?" he asked, drily. "It seems hardly worth while to send for me if that was all. The doctor would have done better."

"There is something else," said Elizabeth, in so quiet and even a voice as to sound almost indifferent.

"Well, I supposed so. What is it?"

"You are making it very hard for me to tell you, Percival," said she, with one of her old, straight glances. "What is it you know? What is it you suspect?"

"Excuse me, Elizabeth, I have not said that I know or suspect anything. Everybody seems a little uncomfortable, but that is nothing. What is the matter?"

As she did not answer, he turned and looked at her. Her face was pale, but there was a look of indomitable resolve about her which made him flinch from his purpose of maintaining a cold and reserved manner. A sudden fear ran through his heart lest Kitty's warning should be true!

"Elizabeth," he said, quickly and passionately, "forgive me for the way in which I have spoken. I am an ill-tempered brute. It is my anxiety for you that makes me seem so savage. I cannot bear to see you look as you do: it breaks my heart!"

Her lip trembled at this. She would rather that he had preserved his hard, sullen manner: it would have made it more easy for her to tell her story. She locked her hands closely together, and answered in low, hesitating tones:—

"I am not worth your anxiety. I did not mean to be—untrue—to you, Percival. I suffered a great deal before I made up my mind that I had better tell you—everything."

A tear fell down her pale cheek unheeded. Percival rose to his feet.

"I don't think there is much to tell, is there?" he said. "You mean that you wish to give me up, to throw me over? Is that all?"

His words were calm, but the tone of ironical bitterness in which they were uttered cut Elizabeth to the quick. She lifted her head proudly.

"No," she said, "you are wrong. I wish nothing of the kind."

He stood in an attitude of profound attention, waiting for her to explain. His face wore its old, rigid look: the upright line between his brows was very marked indeed. But he would not speak again.

"Percival," she said—and her tone expressed great pain and profound self-abasement—"when I promised to marry you—someday, you will remember that I never said I loved you. I thought that I should learn to love in time. And so I did—but not—not you."

"And who taught you the lesson that I failed to impart?" asked Percival, with the sneer in his voice which she knew and dreaded.

"Don't ask me," she said, painfully. "It is not fair to ask me that. I did not know until it was too late."

"Until he—whoever he was—asked you to marry him, I suppose? Well, when is the ceremony to take place? Do you expect me to dance at the wedding? Do you think I am going tamely to resign my rights? My God, Elizabeth, is it you who can treat me in this way? Are all women as false as you?"

He struck his foot fiercely against the ground, and walked away from her. When he came back he found her in the same position; white as a statue, with her hands clasped together upon her knee, and her eyes fixed upon the running water.

"Do you think that I am a stone," he said, violently, "that you tell me the story of your falseness so quietly, as if it were a tale that I should like to hear? Do you think that I feel nothing, or do you care so little what I feel? You had better have refused me outright at once than kept me dangling at your feet for a couple of years, only to throw me over at the last!"

"I have not thrown you over," she said, raising her blue-grey eyes steadily to his agitated face. "I wanted to tell you; that was all. If you like to marry me now, knowing the truth, you may do so."

"What!"

"I may have been false to you in heart," she said, the hot blood tinting her cheeks with carnation as she spoke, "but I will not break my word."

"And what did your lover say to that?" he asked, roughly, as he stood before her. "Did he not say that you were as false to him as you were to me? Did he not say that he would come back again and again, and force you to be true, at least, to him? For that is what I should have done in his place."

"Then," Elizabeth said, with a touch of antagonism in her tones, "he was nobler than you."

"Oh, no doubt," said Percival, tossing aside his head. "No doubt he is a finer fellow in every way. Am I to have the pleasure of making his acquaintance?"

His scorn, his intolerance, were rousing her spirit at last. She spoke firmly, with a new light in her eyes, a new self-possession in her manner.

"You are unjust, Percival. I think that you do not understand what I mean to tell you. He accepted my decision, and I shall never see him again. I thought at first that I would not tell you, but let our engagement go on quietly; and then again I thought that it would be unfair to you not to tell you the whole truth. I leave it to you to say what we should do. I have no love to give you—but you knew that from the first. The difference now is that I—I love another."

Her voice sank almost to a whisper as she uttered the last few words, and she covered her face with her hands. Percival's brow cleared a little; the irony disappeared from his lips, the flash of scorn from his eye. He advanced to her side, and stood looking down at her for several minutes before he attempted any answer to her speech.

"You mean to say," he began, in a softer tone, "that you rejected this man because you had given your promise to me?"

"Yes."

"You sent him away?"

"Yes."

"And he knew the reason? Did he know that you loved him, Elizabeth?"

The answer was given reluctantly, after a long pause. "I do not know. I am afraid—he did."

Percival drew a short, impatient breath. "You must forgive me if I was violent just now, Elizabeth. This is very hard to bear."

"I dare not ask your pardon," she murmured, with her face still between her hands.

"Oh, my pardon? That will do you little good," he said, contemptuously. "The question is—what is to be done? I suppose this man—this lover of yours—is within call, as it were, Elizabeth? You could summon him with your little finger? If I released you from this engagement to me, you could whistle him back to you next day?"

"Oh, no," she said, looking up at him wonderingly. "He is gone away from England. I do not know where he is."

"It is this man Stretton, then?" said Percival, quietly.

A sudden rush of colour to her face assured him that he had guessed the truth. "I always suspected him," he muttered.

"You had no need. He behaved as honourably as possibly. He did not know of my engagement to you."

"Honourably? A penniless adventurer making love to one of the richest women in Scotland!"

"You mistake, Percival. He did not know that I was rich."

"A likely story!"

"You insult him—and me," said Elizabeth, in a very low tone. "If you have no pity, have some respect—for him—if you have none for me." And then she burst into an agony of tears, such as he had never seen her shed before. But he was pitiless still. The wound was very deep: his pain very sharp and keen.

"Have you had any pity for me?" he said. "Why should I pity him? To my mind, he is the most enviable man on earth, because he has your love. Respect him, when he has stolen from me the thing that I value more than my life! You do not know what you say."

She still wept, and presently he sat down beside her and leaned his head on his hand, looking at her from out of the shadow made by his bent fingers above his eyes.

"Let me understand matters clearly," he said. "You sent him away, and he has gone to America, never to return. Is that it? And you will marry me, although you do not love me, because you have promised to do so, if I ask you? What do you expect me to say?"

She shook her head. She could not speak.

"I am not generous," he went on deliberately. "You have known me long enough to be aware that I am a very selfish man. I will not give you up to Stretton. He is not the right husband for you. He is a man whom you picked up in the streets, without a character, without antecedents, with a history which he dares not tell. So much I gathered from my father. I say nothing about his behaviour in this case; he may have acted well, or he may have acted badly; I have no opinion to give. But you shall never be his wife."

Elizabeth's tears were dried as if by magic. She sat erect, listening with set lips and startled eyes to the fierce energy of his tones.

"I accept your sacrifice," he said. "You will thank me in the end that I did so. No, I do not release you from your engagement, Elizabeth. You have said that you would keep your word, and I hold you to it."

He drew her to him with his arm, and kissed her cheek with passionate determination. She shrank away, but he would not let her go.

"No," he proceeded, "you are my promised wife, Elizabeth. I have no intention of giving you up for Stretton or anybody else. I love you more than ever now that I see how brave and honest you can be. We will have no more concealments. When we go back to the house we will tell all the world of our engagement. It was the secrecy that worked this mischief."

She wrenched herself away from him with a look of mingled pain and anger. "Percival!" she cried, "do you want to make me hate you?"

"I would rather have hate than indifference," he answered. "And whether you hate me or not, Elizabeth, you shall be my wife before the year is out. I shall not let you go."



CHAPTER XXVII.

PERCIVAL'S OWN WAY.

Percival had his way. He came back to the house looking stern and grim, but with a resolute determination to carry his point. In half-an-hour it was known throughout the whole household that Miss Murray was engaged to be married to young Mr. Heron, and that the marriage would probably take place before Christmas.

Kitty cast a frightened glance at Elizabeth's face when the announcement was made, but gathered little from its expression. A sort of dull apathy had come over the girl—a reaction, perhaps, from the excitement of feeling through which she had lately passed. It gave her no pain when Percival insisted upon demonstrations of affection which were very contrary to her former habits. She allowed him to hold her hand, to kiss her lips, to call her by endearing names, in a way that would ordinarily have roused her indignation. She seemed incapable of resistance to his will. And this passiveness was so unusual with her that it alarmed and irritated Percival by turns.

Anger rather than affection was the motive of his conduct. As he himself had said, he was rather a selfish man, and he would not willingly sacrifice his own happiness unless he was very sure that hers depended upon the sacrifice. He was enraged with the man who had won Elizabeth's love, and believed him to be a scheming adventurer. Neither patience nor tolerance belonged to Percival's character; and although he loved Elizabeth, he was bitterly indignant with her, and not indisposed to punish her for her faithlessness by forcing her to submit to caresses which she neither liked nor returned. If he had any magnanimity in him he deliberately put it on one side; he knew that he was taking a revenge upon her for which she might never forgive him, which was neither delicate nor generous, but he told himself that he had been too much injured to show mercy. It was Elizabeth's own fault if he assumed the airs of a sultan with a favourite slave, instead of kneeling at her feet. So he argued with himself; and yet a little grain of conscience made him feel from time to time that he was wrong, and that he might live to repent what he was doing now.

"We will be married before Christmas, Elizabeth," he said one day, when he had been at Strathleckie nearly a week. He spoke in a tone of cool insistence.

"As you think best," she answered, sadly.

"Would you prefer a later date?"

"Oh, no," said Elizabeth, smiling a little. "It is all the same to me. 'If 'twere done at all, 'twere well done quickly,' you know."

"Do you mean that?"

"Yes."

"Then why delay it at all? Why not next week—next month, at latest? What is there to wait for?"

They were sitting in the little school-room, or study, as it was called, near the front door—the very room in which Elizabeth had talked with Brian on the night of his arrival at Strathleckie. The remembrance of that conversation prompted her reply.

"Oh, no," she said, in a tone of almost agonised entreaty. "Percival, have a little mercy. Not yet—not yet."

His face hardened: his keen eyes fixed themselves relentlessly upon her white face. He was sitting upon the sofa: she standing by the fireplace with her hands clasped tightly before her. For a minute he looked at her thus, and then he spoke.

"You said just now that it was all the same to you. May I ask what you mean?"

"There is no need to ask me," she said, resolutely, although, her pale lips quivered. "You know what I mean. I will marry you before Christmas, if you like; but not with such—such indecent haste as you propose. Not this month, nor next."

"In December then?"

"Yes."

"You promise? Even if this man—this tutor—should come back?"

"I suppose I have given you a right to doubt me, Percival," she said. "But I have never broken my word—never! From the first, I only promised to try to love you; and, indeed, I tried."

"Oh, of course, I know that I am not a lovable individual," said Percival, throwing himself back on the cushions with a savage scowl.

She looked up quickly: there was a bitter word upon her tongue, but she refrained from uttering it. The struggle lasted for a moment only; then she went over to him, and laid her hand softly upon his arm.

"Percival, are you always going to be so hard upon me?" she said. "I know you do not easily forgive, and I have wronged you. Can I do more than be sorry for my wrong-doing? I was wrong to object to your wishes. I will marry you when you like: you shall decide everything for me now!"

His face had been gloomily averted, but he turned and looked at her as she said the last few words, and took both her hands in his.

"I'm not quite such a brute as you think me, Elizabeth," he answered, with some emotion in his voice. "I don't want to make you do what you find painful."

"That is nonsense," she said, more decidedly than he had heard her speak for many days. "The whole matter is very painful to both of us at present. The only alleviation——"

"Well, what is the only alleviation? Why do you hesitate?"

She lifted her serious, clear eyes to his face.

"I hesitated," she said, "because I did not feel sure whether I had the right to speak of it as an alleviation. I meant—the only thing that makes life bearable at all is the trying to do right; and, when one has failed in doing it, to get back to the right path as soon as possible, leaving the sin and misery behind."

He still held her hands, and he looked down at the slender wrists (where the blue veins showed so much more distinctly than they used to do) with something like a sigh.

"If one failure grieves you in this way, Elizabeth, what would you do if you had chosen a path from which you could not turn back, although you knew that it was wrong? There are many men and women whose lives are based upon what you would call, I suppose, wrong-doing."

There was little of his usual sneering emphasis in the words. His face had fallen into an expression of trouble and sadness which it did not often wear; but there was so much less hardness in its lines than there had been of late that Elizabeth felt that she might answer him freely and frankly.

"I don't think there is any path of wrong-doing from which one might not turn back, Percival. And it seems to me that the worst misery one could go through would be the continuing in any such path; because the consciousness of wrong would spoil all the beauty of life and take the flavour out of every enjoyment. It would end, I think, by breaking ones heart altogether."

"A true woman's view," said Percival, starting up and releasing her hands, "but not one that is practicable in the world of men. I suppose you think you know one man, at least, who would come up to your ideal in that respect?"

"I know several; you amongst them," she replied. "I am sure you would not deliberately do a wicked, dishonourable action for the world."

"You have more faith in me than I deserve," he said, walking restlessly up and down the room. "I am not so sure—but of one thing I am quite sure, Elizabeth," and he came up to her and put his hands on her shoulders, "I am quite sure that you are the best and truest woman that ever lived, and I beg your pardon if I seemed for one moment to doubt you. Will you grant it to me, darling?"

For the first time since the beginning of the visit, she looked at him gratefully, and even affectionately.

"I have nothing to forgive you," she said. "If only I could forgive myself!" And then she burst into tears, and Percival forgot his ill-humour and his sense of wrong in trying to soothe her into calmness again.

This conversation made them both happier. Elizabeth lost her unnatural passiveness of demeanour, and looked more like her clear-headed, energetic self; and Percival was less exacting and overbearing than he had been during the past week. He went back to London with a strong conviction that time would give him Elizabeth's heart as well as her hand; and that she would learn to forget the unprincipled scoundrel—so Percival termed him—who had dared to aspire to her love.

The Herons were to return to London in November, and the purchase of Elizabeth's trousseau was postponed until then. But other preparations were immediately begun: there was a great talk of "settlements" and "entail" in the house; and Mr. Colquhoun had some very long and serious interviews with his fair client. It need hardly be stated that Mr. Colquhoun greatly objected to Miss Murray's marriage with her cousin, and applied to him (in strict privacy) not a few of the adjectives which Percival had bestowed upon the tutor. But the lawyer was driven to admit that Mr. Percival Heron, poor though he might be, showed a very disinterested spirit when consulted upon money matters, and that he stood firm in his determination that Elizabeth's whole fortune should be settled upon herself. He declared also that he was not going to live upon his wife's money, and that he should continue to pursue his profession of journalism and literature in general after his marriage; but at this assertion Mr. Colquhoun shook his head.

"It shows a very independent spirit in ye, Mr. Heron," he said, when Percival announced his resolve in a somewhat lordly manner; "but I think that in six months' time after the marriage, ye'll just agree with me that your determination was one that could not be entirely carried out."

"I usually do carry out my determinations, Mr. Colquhoun," said Percival, hotly.

"No doubt, no doubt. It's a determination that reflects credit upon ye, Mr. Heron. Ye'll observe that I'm not saying a word against your determination," replied Mr. Colquhoun, warily, but with emphasis. "It's highly creditable both to Miss Murray and to yourself."

And although Percival felt himself insulted, he could not well say more.

The continuation of his connection with the daily press was the proof which he intended to offer to the world of his disinterestedness in marrying Elizabeth Murray. He disliked the thought of her wealth, but he was of too robust a nature, in spite of his sensitiveness on many points, to refuse to marry a woman simply because she was richer than himself. In fact, that is a piece of Quixotism not often practised, and though Percival would perhaps have been capable of refusing to make an offer of marriage to Elizabeth after she had come into her fortune, he was not disposed to withdraw that offer because it had turned out a more advantageous one for himself than he had expected. It is only fair to say that he did not hold Elizabeth to her word on account of her wealth; he never once thought of it in that interview with her on the river-bank. Selfish as he might be in some things, he was liberal and generous to a fault when money was in the question.

It was Mr. Colquhoun who told Mrs. Luttrell of Miss Murray's engagement. He was amazed at the look of anger and disappointment that crossed her face. "Ay!" she said, bitterly, "I am too late, as I always am. This will be a sore blow to Hugo."

"Hugo!" said the old lawyer. "Was he after Miss Murray too? Not a bad notion, either. It would have been a good thing to get the property back to the Luttrells. He could have called himself Murray-Luttrell then."

"Too late for that," said Mrs. Luttrell, grimly. "Well, he shall have Netherglen."

"Are you quite decided in your mind on that point?" queried Mr. Colquhoun.

"Quite so. I'll give you my instructions about the will as soon as you like."

"Take time! take time!" said the lawyer.

"I have taken time. I have thought the matter over in every light, and I am quite convinced that what I possess ought to go to Hugo. There is no other Luttrell to take Netherglen—and to a Luttrell Netherglen must go."

"I should have thought that you would like better to leave it to Miss Murray, who is of your own father's blood," said Mr. Colquhoun, cautiously. "She is your second cousin, ye'll remember; and a good girl into the bargain."

"A good girl she may be, and a handsome one; and I would gladly have seen her the mistress of Netherglen if she were Hugo's wife; but Netherglen was never mine, it was my husband's, and though it came to me at his death, it shall stay in the Luttrell family, as he meant it to do. Elizabeth Murray has the Strathleckie property; that ought to be enough for her, especially as she is going to marry a penniless cousin, who will perhaps make ducks and drakes of it all."

"Hugo's a fortunate lad," said Mr. Colquhoun, drily, as he seated himself at a writing-table, in order to take Mrs. Luttrell's instructions. "I hope he may be worthy of his good luck."

Hugo did not seem to consider himself very fortunate when he heard the news of Miss Murray's approaching marriage. He looked thoroughly disconcerted. Mrs. Luttrell was inclined to think that his affections had been engaged more deeply than she knew, and in her hard, unemotional way, tried to express some sympathy with him in his loss. It was not a matter of the affections with Hugo, however, but his purse. His money affairs were much embarrassed: he was beginning to calculate the amount that he could wring out of Mrs. Luttrell, and, if she failed him, he had made up his mind to marry Elizabeth.

"Heron!" he exclaimed, in a tone of surprise and disgust, "I don't believe she cares a rap for Heron."

"How can you tell?" said his aunt.

Hugo looked at her, looked down, and said nothing.

"If you think she liked you better than Mr. Heron," said Mrs. Luttrell, in a meditative tone, "something might yet be done to change the course of affairs."

"No, no," said Hugo, hastily. "Dear Aunt Margaret, you are too kind. No, if she is happy, it is all I ask. I will go to Strathleckie this afternoon; perhaps I can then judge better."

"I don't want you to do anything dishonourable," said his aunt, "but, if Elizabeth likes you best, Hugo, I could speak to Mr. Heron—the father, I mean—and ascertain whether the engagement is absolutely irrevocable. I should like to see you happy as well as Elizabeth Murray."

Hugo sighed, kissed his aunt's hand, and departed—not to see Elizabeth, but Kitty Heron. He felt that if his money difficulties could only be settled, he was well out of that proposed marriage with Elizabeth; but then money difficulties were not easily settled when one had no money. In the meantime, he was free to make love to Kitty.

Percival spent two or three busy weeks in London, and found that hard work was the best specific for the low spirits from which he had suffered during his stay in Scotland. He heard regularly from Elizabeth, and her letters, though not long, and somewhat coldly expressed, gave him complete satisfaction. He noticed with some surprise that she spoke a good deal of Hugo Luttrell; he seemed to be always with them, and the distant cousinship existing between him and Elizabeth had been made the pretext for a good deal of apparent familiarity. He was "Hugo" now to the whole family; he had been "Mr. Luttrell" only when Percival left Strathleckie.

He was sitting alone in his "den," as he nicknamed it, late in the afternoon of a November day, when a low knock at the door made itself faintly heard. Percival was smoking; having come in cold and tired, he had wheeled an arm-chair in front of the fire, and was sitting with his feet on the bars of the grate, whereby a faint odour of singed leather was gradually mingling with the fumes of the very strong tobacco that he loved. His green shaded lamp stood on a small table beside him, throwing its light full upon the pages of the French novel that he had taken up to read (it was "Spiridion" and he was reading it for about the twentieth time); books and newspapers, as usual, strewed the floor, the tables, and the chairs; well-filled book-shelves lined three of the walls; the only ornaments were the photographs of two or three actors and actresses, some political caricatures pinned to the walls, a couple of foils and boxing-gloves, and on the mantelpiece a choice collection of pipes. The atmosphere was thick, the aspect of the furniture dusty: Percival Heron's own appearance was not at that moment calculated to insure admiration. His hair was absolutely dishevelled; truth compels us to admit that he had not shaved that day, and that his chin was consequently of a blue-black colour and bristly surface, which could not be called attractive: his clothes were shabby to the last degree, frayed at the cuffs, and very shiny on the shoulders. Heron was a poor man, and had a good deal of the Bohemian in his constitution: hence came a certain contempt for appearances, which sometimes offended his friend Vivian, as well as a real inability to spend money on clothes and furniture without getting into debt. And Percival, extravagant as he sometimes seemed, was never in debt: he had seen too much of it in his father's house not to be alive to its inconveniences, and he had had the moral courage to keep a resolution made in early boyhood, that he would never owe money to any man. Hence came the shabbiness—and also, perhaps, some of the arrogance—of which his friends complained.

Owing partly therefore to the shabbiness, partly to the untidiness, partly to the very comfort of the slightly overheated room, the visitor who entered it did not form a very high opinion of its occupant. Percival's frown, and momentary stare of astonishment, were, perhaps, enough to disconcert a person not already very sure of his reception.

"Am I dreaming?" muttered Heron to himself, as he cast the book to the ground, and rose to his feet. "One would think that George Sand's visionary young monk had walked straight out of the book into my room. Begging, I suppose. Good evening. You have called on behalf of some charity, I suppose? Come nearer to the fire; it is a cold night."

The stranger—a young man in a black cassock—bowed courteously, and seated himself in the chair that Percival pointed out. He then spoke in English, but with a foreign accent, which did not sound unpleasantly in Heron's ears.

"I have not come on behalf of any charity," he said, "but I come in the interests of justice."

"The same thing, I suppose, in the long run," Percival remarked to himself. "But what a fine face the beggar has! He's been ill lately, or else he is half-starved—shall I give him some whisky and a pipe? I suppose he would feel insulted!"

While he made these reflections, he replied politely that he was always pleased to serve the interests of justice, offered his guest a glass of wine (chiefly because he looked so thin and pale)—an offer which was smilingly rejected—then crossed his legs, looked up to the ceiling, and awaited in silent resignation the pitiful story which he was sure that this young monk had come to tell.

But, after a troubled glance at Mr. Heron's face, (which had a peculiarly reckless and defiant expression by reason of the tossed hair, the habitual frown and the bristles on his chin), the visitor began to speak in a very different strain from the one which Percival had expected.

"I have come," he said, "on affairs which concern yourself and your family; and, therefore, I most heartily beg your pardon if I appear to you an insolent intruder, speaking of matters which it does not concern me to know."

His formal English sentences were correct enough, but seemed to be constructed with some difficulty. Percival's eyes came down from the ceiling and rested upon his thin, pale face with lazy curiosity.

"I should not have thought that my affairs would be particularly interesting to you," he said.

"But there you are wrong, they interest me very much," said the young man, with much vivacity. His dark eyes glowed like coals of fire as he proceeded. "There is scarcely anyone whose fortunes are of so much significance to me."

"I am much obliged to you," murmured Percival, with lifted eyebrows; "but I hardly understand——"

"You will understand quite soon enough, Mr. Heron," said the visitor, quietly. "I have news for you that may not be agreeable. I believe that you have a cousin, a Miss Murray, who lately succeeded to a great fortune."

"Yes, but what has that to do with you, if you please?" demanded Heron, his amiability vanishing into space.

The stranger lifted his hand.

"Allow me one moment. She inherited this fortune on the death of a Mr. Brian Luttrell, I think?"

"Exactly—but what——"

"Excuse me, Mr. Heron. I come to my piece of news at last. Miss Murray has no right to the property which she is enjoying. Mr. Brian Luttrell is alive!"



CHAPTER XXVIII.

A REVELATION.

Percival started from his chair. His first exclamation was a rather profane one, for which the monk immediately reproved him. He did not take much notice of the reproof: he stared hard at the young man for a minute or two, unconsciously repeated the objectionable expression, and then took one or two turns up and down the room. After which he came to a standstill, thrust his hands into his pockets, and allowed his features to relax into a sardonically-triumphant smile.

"You couldn't tell me a thing which I should be better pleased to hear," he said. "But I don't believe it's true."

This was rude, but the visitor was not disconcerted. He looked at Percival's masterful face with interest, and a little suspicion, and answered quietly:—

"I do not know exactly what evidence will satisfy you, sir. Of course, you will require evidence. I, myself, Bernardino Vasari of San Stefano, can testify that I saw Brian Luttrell in our monastery on the 27th day of November, some days after his reputed death. I can account for all his time after that date, and I can tell you where he is to be found at present. His cousin, Hugo Luttrell, has already recognised him, and, although he is much changed, I fancy that there would be small doubt about his identification."

"But why, in Heaven's name, did he allow himself to be thought dead?" cried Percival.

"You know, probably, the circumstances attending his brother's death?" said Dino, gently. "These, and a cruel letter from Mrs. Luttrell, made him resolve to take advantage of an accident in which his companions were killed. He made his way to a little inn on the southern side of the Alps, and thence to our monastery, where I recognised him as the gentleman whom I had previously seen travelling in Germany. I had had some conversation with him, and he had interested me—I remembered him well."

"Did he give his name as Brian Luttrell then?"

"I accosted him by it, and he begged me at once not to do so, but to give him another name."

"What name?"

"I will tell you the name presently, Mr. Heron. He remained in the monastery for some months: first ill of a fever on the brain, then, after his recovery, as a teacher to our young pupils. When he grew stronger he became tired of our peaceful life; he left the monastery and wandered from place to place in Italy. But he had no money: he began to think of work. He was learned: he could teach: he thought that he might be a tutor. Shall I go on?"

"Good God!" said Percival, below his breath. He had actually turned pale, and was biting his moustache savagely. "Go on, sir!" he thundered, looking at Dino from beneath his knitted brows. "Tell me the rest as quickly as you can."

"He met with an English family," Dino continued, watching with keen interest the effect of his words. "They were kind to him: they took him, without character, without recommendations, and allowed him to teach their children. He did not know who they were: he thought that they were rich people, and that the young lady who was so dutiful to them, and cared so tenderly for their children, was poor like himself, a dependent like himself. He dared, therefore——"

"He lies and you lie!" Percival burst out, furiously. "How dare you come to me with a tale of this sort? He must have known! It was simply a base deception in order to get back his estate. If I had him here——"

"If you had him here you would listen to him, Mr. Heron," said Dino, in a perfectly unmoved voice, "as you will listen to me when the first shock of your surprise is over."

"Your garb, I suppose, protects you," said Percival, sharply. "Else I would throw you out of the window to join your accomplice outside. I daresay he is there. I don't believe a word of your story. May I trouble you to go?"

"This conduct is unworthy of you, sir," said Dino. "Brian Luttrell's identity will not be disproved by bluster. There is not the least doubt about it. Mr. Brian Luttrell is alive and has been teaching in your father's family for the last few months under the name of John Stretton."

"Then he is a scoundrel," said Percival. He threw himself into his chair again, with his feet stretched out before him, and his hands still thrust deep into his trousers' pockets. His face was white with rage. "I always thought that he was a rogue; and, if this story is true, he has proved himself one."

"How?" said Dino, quietly. "By living in poverty when he might have been rich? By allowing others to take what was legally his own, because he had a scruple about his moral right to it? If you knew all Brian Luttrell's story you would know that his only fault has been that of over-conscientiousness, over-scrupulousness. But you do not know the story, perhaps you never will, and, therefore, you cannot judge."

"I do not want to judge. I have nothing to do with Mr. Stretton and his story," said Percival.

"I will tell you——"

"I will not hear. You are impostors, the pair of you."

Dino's eyes flashed and his lips compressed themselves. His face, thin from his late illness, assumed a wonderful sternness of expression.

"This is folly," he said, with a cold serenity of tone which impressed Percival in spite of himself. "You will have to hear part of his story sooner or later, Mr. Heron; for your own sake, for Miss Murray's sake, you had better hear it now."

"Look here, my good man," said Percival, sitting up, and regarding his visitor with contemptuous disgust, "don't go bringing Miss Murray's name into this business, for, if you do, I'll call a policeman and give you in charge for trying to extort money on false pretences, and you may thank your priest's dress, or whatever it is, that I don't kick you out of the house. Do you hear?"

"Sir," said Dino, mildly, but with great dignity, "have I asked you for a single penny?"

Heron looked at him as if he would like to carry out the latter part of his threat, but the young man was so frail, so thin, so feeble, that he felt suddenly ashamed of having threatened him. He rose, planted his back firmly against the mantelpiece, and pointed significantly to the door. "Go!" he said, briefly. "And don't come back."

"If I go," said Dino, rising from his chair, "I shall take the express train to Scotland at eight o'clock to-night, and I shall see Miss Murray to-morrow morning."

The shot told. A sort of quiver passed over Percival's set face. He muttered an angry ejaculation. "I'll see you d——d first," he said. "You'll do nothing of the kind."

"Then will you hear my story?"

Heron paused. He could have ground his teeth with fury; but he was quite alive to the difficulties of the situation. If this young monk went with his story to Elizabeth, and Elizabeth believed it, what would become of her fidelity to him? With his habitual cynicism, he told himself that no woman would keep her word, if by doing so she lost a fortune and a lover both. He must hear this story, if only to prevent its being told to her.

"Well," he said at last, taking his pipe from the mantelshelf, "I'll listen. Be so good as to make your story short. I have no time to waste." And then he rammed the tobacco into the bowl with his thumb in a suggestively decisive manner, lighted it, and proceeded to puff at his pipe with a sort of savage vigour. He sent out great clouds of smoke, which speedily filled the air and rendered speaking difficult to Dino, whose lungs had become delicate in consequence of his wound. But Percival was rather pleased than otherwise to inconvenience him.

"There are several reasons," the young man began, "why Brian Luttrell wished to be thought dead. He had killed his brother by accident, and Mrs. Luttrell thought that there had been malice as well as carelessness in the deed. That was one reason. His mother's harshness preyed upon his mind and drove him almost to melancholy madness. Mrs. Luttrell made another statement, and made it in a way that convinced him that she had reasons for making it——"

"Can't you cut it short?" said Percival. "It's all very interesting, no doubt: but as I don't care a hang what Brian Luttrell said, or thought, or did, I should prefer to have as little of it as possible."

"I am sorry to inconvenience you, but I must tell my story in my own way," answered Dino. The flash of his eye and the increased colour in his cheek showed that Heron's words irritated him, but his voice was carefully calm and cool. "Mrs. Luttrell's statement was this: that Brian Luttrell was not her son at all. I have in my possession the letter that she wrote to him on the subject, assuring him confidently that he was the child of her Italian nurse, Vincenza Vasari, and that her own child had died in infancy, and was buried in the churchyard of San Stefano. Here is the letter, if you like to assure yourself that what I have said is true."

Percival made a satirical little bow of refusal. But a look of attention had come into his eyes.

"Brian believed this story absolutely, although he had then no proof of its truth," continued Dino. "She told him that the Vasari family lived at San Stefano——"

"Vasari! Relations of your own, I presume," interposed Percival, with ironical politeness.

"And to San Stefano, therefore, he was making his way when the accident on the mountain occurred," said Dino, utterly disregarding the interruption. "There were inquiries made about him at San Stefano soon after the news of his supposed death arrived in England, for Mrs. Luttrell guessed that he would go thither if he were still living; but he had not then appeared at the monastery. He did not arrive at San Stefano, as I said before, until a fortnight after the date of the accident; he had been ill, and was footsore and weary. When he recovered from the brain-fever which prostrated him as soon as he reached the monastery, he told his whole story to the Prior, Padre Cristoforo of San Stefano, a man whose character is far beyond suspicion. I have also Padre Cristoforo's statement, if you would like to see it."

Percival shook his head. But his pipe had gone out; he was listening now with interest.

"As it happened," the narrator went on, "Padre Cristoforo was already interested in the matter, because the mother of Mrs. Luttrell's nurse, Vincenza, had, before her death, confided to him her suspicions, and those of Vincenza's husband concerning the child that she had nursed. There was a child living in the village of San Stefano, a child who had been brought up as Vincenza's child, but Vincenza had told her this boy was the true Brian Luttrell, and that her son had been taken back to Scotland as Mrs. Luttrell's child."