Hugh Ritson was content that Greta should think she had been the victim of a delusion. He was not unwilling that she should be tortured by suggestions of the supernatural. If she concluded that Paul had deceived her as to his departure from Newlands, he would not be unlikely to foster the delusion. The one thing of all others which Hugh Ritson was anxious to prevent was that Greta should be led to draw the purely matter-of-fact inference that when she thought she saw Paul she had really seen another man.

But that was his own conviction. He was now sure beyond the hope of doubt that there was a man alive who resembled Paul Ritson so closely that he had thrice before, and now once again, been mistaken for him by unsuspecting persons. That other man was to be the living power in his own life, in his brother's life, in his mother's life, in Greta's life. Who was he?

Left alone in the court-yard when the trap drove away, Hugh Ritson shuddered and looked round. He had laughed with the easy grace of a man no longer puzzled as he bid Greta good-night, but suspense was gnawing at his heart. He returned hastily to his room, sat down at the table, picked up the paper which Parson Christian had sent him, and read it with eager eyes.

He read it and reread it; he seemed to devour it line by line, word by word. When he would have set it down his fingers so trembled that he let it fall, and he rose from his chair with rigid limbs.

What he had dreaded he now knew for certainty. He had stumbled into an empty grave. He opened a drawer and took out three copies of certificates that Mr. Bonnithorne had brought him. Selecting the earliest of these in order of date, he set it side by side with the copy of the extract from Parson Christian's diary.

By the one—Paul, the son of Grace Ormerod, by her husband Robert Lowther, was born August 14, 1845.

By the other—Paul, the reputed son of Grace Ormerod by her husband, Allan Ritson, was an infant still in arms on November 19, 1847.

Paul Ritson could not be Paul Lowther.

Paul Ritson could not be the half-brother of Greta Lowther.

Hugh Ritson fell back as one who had been dealt a blow. For months he had been idly hatching an addled villainy. The revenge that he had promised himself for spurned and outraged love—the revenge that he had named retribution—was but an impotent mockery.

For an hour he strode up and down the room with flushed face and limbs that shook beneath him. Natt came home from the vicarage, put in his horse, and turned into the kitchen—now long deserted for the night. He heard the restless footstep backward and forward, and began to wonder if anything further had gone wrong. At last he ventured upstairs, opened noiselessly the door, and found his master with a face aflame and a look of frenzy. But the curious young rascal with the sleepy eyes had not time to proffer his disinterested services before he was hunted out with an oath. He returned to the kitchen with a settled conviction that somewhere in that mysterious chamber his master kept a capacious cupboard for strong drink.

Like master, like man: Natt brewed himself an ample pint of hot ale, pulled off his great boots, and drew up to warm himself before the remains of a huge fire.

Hugh Ritson's bedroom opened off his sitting-room. He went to bed; he tried to sleep, but no sleep came near him; he tossed about for an hour, rose, walked the room again, then went to bed once more.

He was feeling the first pangs of honest remorse. A worse man would have accommodated himself more speedily to the altered conditions when he found that he had pursued a phantasm. To do this erring man justice, he writhed under it. A better man would have fled from it. If, at the outset, if when the first step in the descent had been taken, he had seen clearly that villainy lay that way, he would not have gone further. But now he had gone too far. To go on were as easy as to go back; and go on he must.

While he honestly believed that Greta was half-sister to the man known to the world as Paul Ritson and his brother, he could have stood aside and witnessed without flinching the ceremony that was to hold them forever together and apart. Then without remorse he could have come down and separated them, and seen that woman die of heart's hunger who had starved to death the great love he bore her. There would have been a stern retribution in that, and the voice of nature would have whispered him that he did well.

But when it was no longer possible to believe that Greta and Paul were anything to each other, the power of sophistry collapsed, and retribution sunk to revenge.

He might go on, but there could be no self-deception. The blind earthworms of malice might delude themselves if they liked, but he could see, and he must face the truth. If ever he did what he had proposed to do, then he was a scoundrel, and a conscious scoundrel!

Hugh Ritson leaped out of his bed. The perspiration rolled in big beads from his forehead. His tongue grew thick and stiff in his mouth. The great veins in his neck swelled.

Without knowing whither he went, he walked out of his own into his mother's room. A candle still burned on the table. The fire had smoldered out. A servant-maid sat by the bedside with head aslant, sleeping the innocent sleep. He approached the bed. His mother was breathing softly. She had fallen into a doze; the pale face was very quiet; the weary look of the worn cheeks was smoothed out; the absent eyes were lightly closed. Closed, too, on the rough world was the poor soul that was vexed by it.

Hugh Ritson was touched. Somewhere deep down in that frozen nature the angel of love troubled the still waters.

Bending his head, he would have touched the cold forehead with his feverish lips. But he drew back. No, no, no! Tenderness was not for him. The good God gave it to some as manna from heaven. But here and there a man, stretched on the rack of life, had not the drop of water that would cool his tongue.

With stealthy steps, as of one who had violated the chamber of chastity, Hugh Ritson crept back to his own room. He took brandy from a cupboard and drank a glass of it. Then he lay down and composed himself afresh to sleep. Thoughts of Greta came back to him. Even his love for her was without tenderness. It was a fiery passion. It made him weep, nevertheless. Galling tears, hot, bitter, smarting tears, rolled from his eyes. And down in that deep and hidden well of feeling, where he, too, was a man like other men, Hugh Ritson's strong heart bled. He would have thought that love like his must have subdued the whole world to its will; that when a woman could reject it the very stones must cry out. Pshaw!

Would sleep never come? He leaped up, and laughed mockingly, drank another glass of brandy, and laughed again. His door was open, and the hollow voice echoed through the house.

He put on a dressing-gown, took his lamp in his hand, and walked down-stairs and into the hall. The wind had risen. It moaned around the house, then licked it with hissing tongues. Hugh Ritson walked to the ingle, where no fire burned. There he stood, scarcely knowing why. The lamp in his hand cast its reflection into the mirror on the wall. Behind it was a flushed face, haggard, with hollow eyes and parted lips.

The sight recalled another scene. He stepped into the little room at the back. It was in that room his father died. Now it was empty; a bare mattress, a chair, a table—no more.

Hugh Ritson lifted the lamp above his head and looked down. He was enacting the whole terrible tragedy afresh. He crept noiselessly to the door, opened it slightly, and looked cautiously out. Then, leaving it ajar, he stood behind it with bent head and inclining ear. His face wore a ghastly smile.

The wind soughed and wept without.

Hugh Ritson threw the door open and stepped back into the hall. There he stood some minutes with eyes riveted on one spot. Then he hurried away to his room. As he went up the stairs he laughed again.

Back at his bedside he poured himself another glass of brandy, and once more lay down to sleep. He certainly slept this time, and his sleep was deep.

Natt's dreamy ear heard a voice in the hall. He had drunk his hot ale, and from the same potent cause as his master, he also had slept, but with somewhat less struggle. Awakened in his chair by the unaccustomed sound, he stole on tiptoe to the kitchen door. He was in time to see from behind the figure of a man ascending the stairs carrying a lamp before him. Natt's eyes were a shade hazy at the moment, but he was cock-sure of what he saw. Of course it was Mister Paul, sneaking off to bed after more "straitforrad" folk had got into their nightcaps and their second sleep. That was where Natt soon put himself.

When all was still in that troubled house, the moon's white face peered through a rack of flying cloud and looked in at the dark windows.