When Brian Luttrell left England he had no very clear idea of the places that he meant to visit, or the things that he wished to do. He wished only to leave old associations behind him—to forget, and, if possible to be forgotten.

He was conscious of a curious lack of interest in life; it seemed to him as though the very springs of his being were dried up at their source. As a matter of fact, he was thoroughly out of health, as well as out of spirits; he had been over-working himself in London, and was scarcely out of the doctor's hands before he went to Scotland; then the shock of his brother's death and the harshness of his mother toward him had contributed their share to the utter disorganisation of his faculties. In short, Brian was not himself at all; it might even be said that he was out of his right mind. He had attacks of headache, generally terminating in a kind of stupor rather than sleep, during which he could scarcely be held responsible for the things he said or did. At other times, a feverish restlessness came upon him; he could not sleep, and he could not eat; he would then go out and walk for miles and miles, until he was thoroughly exhausted. It was a wonder that his mind did not give way altogether. His sanity hung upon a thread.

It was in this state that he found himself one day upon a Rhine boat, bound for Mainz. He had a very vague notion of how he had managed to get there; he had no notion at all of his reason for travelling in that direction. It dawned upon him by degrees that he had chosen the very same route, and made the same stoppages, as he had done when he was a mere boy, travelling with his father upon the Continent. Richard and his mother had not been there; Brian and Mr. Luttrell had spent a particularly happy time together, and the remembrance of it soothed his troubled brain, and caused his eye to rest with a sort of dreamy pleasure upon the scene around him.

It was rather late for a Rhine expedition, and the boat was not at all full. Brian rather thought that the journey with his father had been taken at about the same time of the year—perhaps even a little later. He had a special memory of the wealth of Virginian creeper which covered the buildings near Coblentz. He looked out for it when the boat stopped at the landing-stage, and thought of the time when he had wandered hand-in-hand with his father in the pleasant Anlagen on the river banks, and gathered a scarlet trail of leaves from the castle walls. The leaves were in their full autumnal glory now; he must have been there at about the same season when he was a boy.

After determining this fact to his satisfaction, Brian went back to the seat that he had found for himself at the end of the boat, and began once more to watch the gliding panorama of "castled crag" and vine-clad slope, which was hardly as familiar to him as it is to most of us. But, after all, Drachenfels and Ehrenbreitstein had no great interest for him. He had no great interest in anything. Perhaps the little excitement and bustle at the landing-places pleased him more than the scenery itself—the peasants shouting to each other from the banks, the baskets of grapes handed in one after another, the patient oxen waiting in the roads between the shafts; these were sights which made no great claim upon his attention and were curiously soothing to his jaded nerves. He watched them languidly, but was not sorry from time to time to close his eyes and shut out his surroundings altogether.

The worst of it was, that when he had closed his eyes for a little time, the scene in the wood always came back to him with terrible distinctness, or else there rose up before his eyes a picture of that darkened room, with Richard's white face upon the pillow and his mother's dark form and outstretched hand. These were the memories that would not let him sleep at night or take his ease in the world by day. He could not forget the past.

There was another passenger on the boat who passed and repassed Brian several times, and looked at him with curious attention. Brian's face was one which was always apt to excite interest. It had grown thin and pallid during the past fortnight; the eyes were set in deep hollows, and wore a painfully sad expression. He looked as if he had passed through some period of illness or sorrow of which the traces could never be wholly obliterated. There was a pathetic hopelessness in his face which was somewhat remarkable in so young a man.

The passenger who regarded him with so much interest was also a young man, not more than Brian's own age, but apparently not an Englishman. He spoke English a little, though with a foreign accent, but his French was remarkably good and pure. He stopped short at last in front of Brian and eyed him attentively, evidently believing that the young man was asleep. But Brian was not asleep; he knew that the regular footstep of his travelling companion had ceased, and was hardly surprised, when he opened his eyes, to find the Frenchman—if such he were—standing before him.

Brian looked at him attentively for a moment, and recognised the fact that the young foreigner wore an ecclesiastical habit, a black soutane or cassock, such as is worn in Roman Catholic seminaries, not necessarily denoting that the person who wears it has taken priest's vows upon him. Brian was not sufficiently well versed in the subject to know what grade was signified by the dress of the young ecclesiastic, but he conjectured (chiefly from its plainness and extreme shabbiness) that it was not a very high one. The young man's face pleased him. It was intellectual and refined in contour, rather of the ascetic type; with that faint redness about the heavy eyelids which suggests an insufficiency of sleep or a too great amount of study; large, penetrating, dark eyes, underneath a broad, white brow; a firm mouth and chin. There was something about his face which seemed vaguely familiar to Brian; and yet he could not in the least remember where he had seen it before, or what associations it called up in his mind.

The young man courteously raised his broad, felt hat.

"Pardon me," he said, "you are ill—suffering—can I do nothing for you?"

"I am not ill, thank you. You are very good, but I want nothing," said Brian, with a feeling of annoyance which showed itself in the coldness of his manner. And yet he was attracted rather than repelled by the stranger's voice and manner. The voice was musical, the manner decidedly prepossessing. He was not sorry that the young ecclesiastic did not seem ready to accept the rebuff, but took a seat on the bench by his side, and made a remark upon the scenery through which they were passing. Brian responded slightly enough, but with less coldness; and in a few minutes—he did not know how it happened—he was talking to the stranger more freely than he had done to anyone since he left England. Their conversation was certainly confined to trivial topics; but there was a frankness and a delicacy of perception about the young foreigner which made him a very attractive companion. He gave Brian in a few words an outline of the chief events of his life, and seemed to expect no confidence from Brian in return. He had been brought up in a Roman Catholic seminary, and was destined to become a Benedictine monk. He was on his way to join an elder priest in Mainz; thence he expected to proceed to Italy, but was not sure of his destination.

"I shall perhaps meet you again, then?" said Brian. "I am perhaps going to Italy myself."

The young man smiled and shook his head. "You are scarcely likely to encounter me, monsieur," he answered. "I shall be busy amongst the poor and sick, or at work within the monastery. I shall remember you—but I do not think that we shall meet again."

"By what name should I ask for you if I came across any of your order?" said Brian.

"I am generally known as Dino Vasari, or Brother Dino, at your service, monsieur," replied the Italian, cheerfully. "If, in your goodness, you wished to inquire after me, you should ask at the monastery of San Stefano, where I spend a few weeks every year in retreat. The Prior, Father Cristoforo, is an old friend of mine, and he will always welcome you if you should pass that way. There is good sleeping accommodation for visitors."

Brian took the trouble to make an entry in his note-book to this effect. It turned out to be a singularly useful one. As they were reaching Mainz something prompted Brian to ask a question. "Why did you speak to me this afternoon?" he said, the morbid suspiciousness of a man who is sick in mind as well as body returning full upon him. "You do not know me?"

"No, monsieur, I do not know you." The ecclesiastic's pale brow flushed; he even looked embarrassed. "Monsieur," he said at last, "you had the appearance—you will pardon my saying so—of one who was either ill or bore about with him some unspoken trouble; it is the privilege of the Order to which I hope one day to belong to offer help when help is needed; and for a moment I hoped it might be my special privilege to give some help to you."

"Why did you think so?" Brian asked, hastily. "You did not know my name?"

The Italian cast down his eyes. "Yes, monsieur," he said in a low tone, "I did know your name."

Brian started up. He did not stop to weigh probabilities; he forgot how little likely a young foreign seminarist would be to hear news of an accident in Scotland; he felt foolishly certain that his name—as that of the man who had killed his brother—must be known to all the world! It was the wildest possible delusion, such as could occur only to a man whose mind was off its balance—and even he could not retain it for more than a minute or two; but in that space of time he uttered a few wild words, which caused the young monk to raise his dark eyes to his face with a look of sorrowful compassion.

"Does everyone know my wretched story, then? Do I carry a mark about with me—like Cain?" Brian cried aloud.

"I know nothing of your story, monsieur," said Brother Dino, as he called himself, after a little pause, "When I said that I knew your name, I should more properly have said the name of your family. A gentleman of your name once visited the little town where I was brought up." He paused again and added gently, "I have peculiar reasons for remembering him. He was very good to a member of my family."

Brian had recovered his self-possession before the end of the young priest's speech, and was heartily ashamed of his own weakness.

"I beg your pardon," he said, sinking back into his seat with an air of weariness and discouragement that would have touched the heart of a tender-natured man, such as was Brother Dino of San Stefano. "I must be an utter fool to have spoken as I did. You knew my father, did you? That must be long ago."

"Many years." Brother Dino looked at the Englishman with some expression in his eyes which Brian did not remark at the moment, but which recurred afterwards to his memory as being singular. There was sympathy in it, pity, perhaps, and, above all, an intense curiosity. "Many years ago my friends knew him; not I. The Signor Luttrell—he lives still in your country?"

"No. He died eight years ago."

"And——"

A question evidently trembled on the Italian's lips, but he restrained himself. He could not ask it when he saw the pain and the dread in Brian's face. But Brian answered the question that he had meant to ask.

"My brother is dead, also. My mother is living and well."

Then he wheeled round and looked at the landing-stage, to which they were now very close. The stranger respected his emotion; he glanced once at the band of crape on Brian's arm, and then walked quietly away. When he returned it was only to say good-bye.

"I should like to see you again," Brian said to him. "Perhaps I may find you out and visit you some day. You find your life peaceful and happy, no doubt?"

"Perfectly."

"I envy you," said Brian.

They parted. Brian went away to his hotel, leaving the young seminarist still standing on the deck—a black figure with his pale hands crossed upon his breast in the glow of the evening sunshine, awaiting the arrival of his superior as a soldier waits for his commanding officer. Brian looked back at him once and waved his hand: he had not been so much interested in anyone for what seemed to him almost an eternity of time.

Sitting sadly and alone in the hotel that night, he fell to pondering over some of the words that the young Italian had spoken, and the questions that he had asked. He wondered greatly what was the service that his father had rendered to these Italians, and blamed himself a little for not asking more about the young man's history. He knew well enough that his parents had once spent two or three years abroad—chiefly in Italy; he himself had been born in an Italian town, and had spent almost the whole of the first year of his life in a little village at the foot of the Apennines. Was it not near a place called San Stefano, indeed, that he had been nursed by an Italian peasant woman? Brian determined, in a vague and dreamy way, that at some future time he would visit San Stefano, find out the history of his new acquaintance, and see the place where he had been born at the same time. That is if ever he felt inclined to do anything of the sort again. At present—and especially as the temporary interest inspired by the young Italian died away—he felt as if he cared too little for his future to resolve upon doing anything. There was a letter waiting for him, addressed in Mr. Colquhoun's handwriting. He had not even the heart to open it and see what the lawyer had to say. Something drew him next morning towards that wonderful old building of red stone, which looks as if it were hourly crumbling away, and yet has lasted so many hundred years, the cathedral of Mainz. The service was just over; the organ still murmured soft, harmonious cadences. The incense was wafted to his nostrils as he walked down the echoing nave. There had been a mass for the dead and a funeral that morning; part of the cathedral was draped in black cloth and ornamented by hundreds of wax candles, which flared in the sunlight and dropped wax on the uneven pavement below. There was an oppressiveness in the atmosphere to Brian; everything spoke to him of death and decay in that strange, old city, which might veritably be called a city of the dead. He turned aside into the cloisters, and listened mechanically while an old man discoursed to him in crabbed German concerning Fastrada's tomb and the carved face of the minstrel Frauenlob upon the cloister wall. Presently, however, the guide showed him a little door, and led him out into the pleasant grassy space round which the cloisters had been built. He was conscious of a great feeling of relief. The blue sky was above him again, and his feet were on the soft, green grass. There were tombstones amongst the grass, but they were overgrown with ivy and blossoming rose-trees. Brian sat down with a great sigh upon one of the old blocks of marble that strewed the ground, and told the guide to leave him there awhile. The man thought that he wanted to sketch the place, as many English artists did, and retired peacefully enough. Brian had no intention of sketching: he wanted only to feel himself alone, to watch the gay, little sparrows as they leaped from spray to spray of the monthly rose-trees, the waving of the long grass between the tombstones, and the glimpse of blue sky beyond the mouldering reddish walls on either hand.

As he sat there, almost as though he were waiting for some expected visitor, the cloister doors opened once more, and two or three men in black gowns came out. They were all priests except one, and this one was the young Italian whose acquaintance Brian had made upon the steamer. They were talking rapidly together; one of them seemed to be questioning the young man, and he was replying with the serene yet earnest expression of countenance which had impressed Brian so favourably. At first they stood still; by-and-bye they crossed the quadrangle, and here Brother Dino fell somewhat behind the others. Following a sudden impulse, Brian suddenly rose as he came near, and addressed him.

"Can you speak to me? I want to ask you about my father——"

He spoke in English, but the young priest replied in Italian.

"I cannot speak to you now. Wait till we meet at San Stefano."

The words might be abrupt, but the smile which followed them was so sweet, so benign, that Brian was only struck with a sudden sense of the beauty of the expression upon that keen Italian face. "God be with you!" said Brother Dino, as he passed on. He stretched out his hand; it held one of the faintly-pink, sweet roses, which he had plucked near the cloister door. He almost thrust it into Brian's passive fingers. "God be with you," he said, in his native tongue once more. "Farewell, brother." In another moment he was gone. Brian had the green enclosure, the birds and the roses to himself once more.

He looked down at the little overblown flower in his hand and carried it mechanically to his nostrils. It was very sweet.

"Why does he think that I shall go to San Stefano?" he asked himself. "What is San Stefano to me? Why should I meet him there?"

He sat down again, holding the flower loosely in one hand, and resting his head upon the other. The old langour and sickness of heart were coming back upon him; the momentary excitement had passed away. He would have given a great deal to be able to rouse himself from the depression which had taken such firm hold of his mind; but he failed to discover any means of doing so. He had a vague, morbid fancy that Brother Dino could help him to master his own trouble—he knew not how; but this hope had failed him. He did not even care to go to San Stefano.

After a little time he remembered the letter in his pocket, addressed to him in Mr. Colquhoun's handwriting. He took it out and looked at it for a few minutes. Why should Mr. Colquhoun write to him unless he had something unpleasant to say? Perhaps he was only forwarding some letters. This quiet, grassy quadrangle was a good place in which to read letters, he thought. He would open the envelope and see what Colquhoun had to say.

He opened it very slowly.

Then he started, and his hand began to tremble. The only letter enclosed was one in his mother's handwriting. Upon a slip of blue paper were a few words from the lawyer. "Forwarded to Mr. Brian Luttrell at Mrs. Luttrell's request on the 25th of October, 1877, by James Colquhoun."

Brian opened the letter. It had no formal opening, but it was carefully signed and dated, and ran as follows:—

"They tell me that I have done you an injury by doubting your word, and that I am an unnatural mother in saying—even in my own chamber—what I thought. I have an excuse, which no one knows but myself and James Colquhoun. I think it is well under present circumstances to tell you what it is.

"I am a strong believer in race. I think that the influence of blood is far more powerful than those of training or education, how strong soever they may be. Therefore, I was never astonished although I was grieved, to see that your love for Richard was not so great as that of brothers should have been——"

"It is false!" said Brian, with a groan, crushing the letter in his hand, and letting it fall to his side. "No brother could have loved Richard more than I."

Presently he took up the letter again and read.

"Because I knew," it went on, "though many a woman in my position would not have guessed the truth, that you were not Richard's brother at all: that you were not my son."

Again Brian paused, this time in utter bewilderment.

"Is my mother mad" he said to himself. "I—not her son? Who am I, then?"

"I repeat what I have said,"—so ran Mrs. Luttrell's letter—"with all the emphasis which I can lay upon the words. The matter may not be capable of proof, but the truth remains. You are not my son, not Edward Luttrell's son, not Richard Luttrell's brother—no relation of ours at all; not even of English or Scottish blood. Your parents were Italian peasant-folk; and my son, Brian Luttrell, lies buried in the churchyard of an Italian village at the foot of the Western Apennines. You are a native of San Stefano, and your mother was my nurse."