"When my child Brian was born we were renting a villa near San Stefano, and were somewhat far removed from any English doctor. My doctor was, therefore, an Italian; and what was worse, he was an Italian monk. I hate foreigners, and I hate monks; so you may imagine for yourself the way in which I looked upon him. No doubt he had a hand in the plot that has ended so miserably for me and mine, so fortunately for you.

"My Brian was nursed by our gardener's wife, a young Italian woman called Vincenza, whose child was about the age of mine. I saw Vincenza's child several times. Its eyes were brown (like yours); my baby's eyes were blue. It was when they were both about two months old that I was seized with a malarious fever, then very prevalent. They kept the children away from me for months. At last I insisted upon seeing them. The baby had been ill, they told me; I must be prepared for a great change in him. Even then my heart misgave me, I knew not why.

"Vincenza brought a child and laid it in my lap, I looked at it, and then I looked at her. She was deadly white, and her eyes were red with tears. I did not know why. Of course I see now that she had enough of the mother's heart in her to be loath to give up her child. For it was her child that she had placed upon my knee. I knew it from the very first.

"'Take this child away and give me my own,' I said. 'This is not mine.'

"The woman threw up her hands and ran out of the room. I thought she had gone to fetch my baby, and I remained with her child—a puny, crying thing—upon my knees. But she did not return. Presently my husband came in, and I appealed to him. 'Tell Vincenza to take her wretched, little baby away,' I said. 'I want my own. This is her child; not mine.'

"My husband looked at me, pityingly, as it seemed to my eyes. Suddenly the truth burst upon me. I sprang to my feet and threw the baby away from me upon the bed. 'My child is dead,' I cried. 'Tell me the truth; my child is dead.' And then I knew no more for days and weeks.

"When I recovered, I found, to my utter horror, that Vincenza and her child had not left the house. My words had been taken for the ravings of a mad woman. Every one believed the story of this wicked Italian woman who declared that it was her child who had died, mine that had lived! I knew better. Could I be mistaken in the features of my own child? Had my Brian those great, dark, brown eyes? I saw how it was. The Italians had plotted to put their child in my Brian's place; they had forgotten that a mother's instinct would know her own amongst a thousand. I accused them openly of their wickedness; and, in spite of their tears and protestations, I saw from their guilty looks that it was true. My own Brian was dead, and I was left with Vincenza's child, and expected to love it as my own.

"For nobody believed me. My husband never believed me. He maintained to the very last that you were his child and mine. I fought like a wild beast for my dead child's rights; but even I was mastered in the end. They threatened me—yes, James Colquhoun, in my husband's name, threatened me—with a madhouse, if I did not put away from me the suspicion that I had conceived. They assured me that Brian was not dead; that it was Vincenza's child that had died; that I was incapable of distinguishing one baby from another—and so on. They said that I should be separated from my own boy—my Richard, whom I tenderly loved—unless I put away from me this 'insane fancy,' and treated that Italian baby as my son. Oh, they were cruel to me—very cruel. But they got their way. I yielded because I could not bear to leave my husband and my boy. I let them place the child in my arms, and I learnt to call it Brian. I buried the secret in my own heart, but I was never once moved from my opinion. My own child was buried at San Stefano, and the boy that I took back with me to England was the gardener's son. You were that boy.

"I was silent about your parentage, but I never loved you, and my husband knew that I did not. For that reason, I suppose, he made you his favourite. He petted you, caressed you more than was reasonable or right. Only once did any conversation on the subject pass between us. He had refused to punish you when you were a boy of ten, and had quarrelled with Richard. 'Mark my words,' I said to him, 'there will be more quarrelling, and with worse results, if you do not put a stop to it now. I should never trust a lad of Italian blood.' He looked at me, turning pale as he looked. 'Have you not forgotten that unhappy delusion, then?' he said. 'It is no delusion,' I answered him, composedly, 'to remind myself sometimes that this boy—Brian, as you call him—is the son of Giovanni Vasari and his wife.' 'Margaret,' he said, 'you are a mad woman!' He went out, shutting the door hastily behind him. But he never misunderstood me again. Do you know what were his last words to me upon his death-bed? 'Don't tell him,' he said, pointing to you with his weak, dying hand, 'If you ever loved me, Margaret, don't tell him.' And then he died, before I had promised not to tell. If I had promised then, I would have kept my word.

"I knew what he meant. I resolved that I would never tell you. And but for Richard's death I would have held my tongue. But to see you in Richard's place, with Richard's money and Richard's lands, is more than I can bear. I will not tell this story to the world, but I refuse to keep you in ignorance any longer. If you like to possess Richard's wealth dishonestly, you are at liberty to do so. Any court of law would give it to you, and say that it was legally yours. There is, I imagine, no proof possible of the truth of my suspicions. Your mother and father are, I believe, both dead. I do not remember the name of the monk who acted as my doctor. There may be relations of your parents at San Stefano, but they are not likely to know the story of Vincenza's child. At any rate, you are not ignorant any longer of the reasons for which I believe it possible that you knew what you were doing when you were guilty of Richard Luttrell's death. There is not a drop of honest Scotch or English blood in your veins. You are an Italian, and I have always seen in your character the faults of the race to which by birth and parentage you belong. If I had not been weak enough to yield to the threats and the entreaties with which my husband and his tools assailed me, you would now be living, as your forefathers lived, a rude and hardy peasant on the North Italian plains; and I—I might have been a happy woman still."

The letter bore the signature "Margaret Luttrell," and that was all.

The custodian of the place wondered what had come to the English gentleman; he sat so still, with his face buried in his hands, and some open sheets of paper at his feet. The old man had a pretty, fair-haired daughter who could speak English a little. He called her and pointed out the stranger's bowed figure from one of the cloister windows.

"He looks as if he had had some bad news," said the girl. "Do you think that he is ill, father? Shall I take him a glass of water, and ask him to walk into the house?"

Brian was aroused from a maze of wretched, confused thought by the touch of Gretchen's light hand upon his arm. She had a glass of water in her hand.

"Would the gentleman not drink?" she asked him, with a look of pity that startled him from his absorption. "The sun was hot that day, and the gentleman had chosen the hottest place to sit in; would he not rather choose the cool cloister, or her father's house, for one little hour or two?"

Brian stammered out some words of thanks, and drank the water eagerly. He would not stay, however; he had bad news which compelled him to move on quickly—as quickly as possible. And then, with a certain whiteness about the lips, and a look of perplexed pain in his eyes, he picked up the papers as they lay strewn upon the grass, bowed to Gretchen with mechanical politeness, and made his way to the door by which he had come in. One thing he forgot; he never thought of it until long afterwards; the sweet, frail rose that Brother Dino had placed within his hand when he bade him God-speed. In less than an hour he was in the train; he hardly knew why or whither he was bound; he knew only that one of his restless fits had seized him and was driving him from the town in the way that it was wont to do.

Mrs. Luttrell's letter was a great shock to him. He never dreamt at first of questioning the truth of her assertions. He thought it very likely that she had been perfectly able to judge, and that her husband had been mistaken in treating the matter as a delusion. At any time, this conviction would have been a sore trouble to him, for he had loved her and her husband and Richard very tenderly, but just now it seemed to him almost more than he could bear. He had divested himself of nearly the whole of what had been considered his inheritance, because he disliked so much the thought of profiting by Richard's death; was he also now to divest himself of the only name that he had known, of the country that he loved, of the nation that he had been proud to call his own? If his mother's story were true, he was, as she had said, the son of an Italian gardener called Vasari; his name then must be Vasari; his baptismal name he did not know. And Brian Luttrell did not exist; or rather, Brian Luttrell had been buried as a baby in the little churchyard of San Stefano. It was a bitter thought to him.

But it could not be true. His whole being rose up in revolt against the suggestion that the father whom he had loved so well had not been his own father; that Richard had been of no kin to him. Surely his mother's mind must have been disordered when she refused to acknowledge him. It could not possibly be true that he was not her son. At any rate, one duty was plain to him. He must go to San Stefano and ascertain, as far as he could, the true history of the Vasari family. And in the meantime he could write to Mr. Colquhoun. He was obliged to go on to Geneva, as he knew that letters and remittances were to await him there. As soon as he had received the answer that Mr. Colquhoun would send to his letter of inquiry, he would proceed to Italy at once.

Some delay in obtaining the expected remittances kept Brian for more than a week at Geneva. And there, in spite of the seclusion in which he chose to live, and his resolute avoidance of all society, it happened that before he had been in the place three days he met an old University acquaintance—a strong, cheery, good-natured fellow called Gunston, whose passion for climbing Swiss mountains seemed to be unappeasable. He tried hard to make Brian accompany him on his next expedition, but failed. Both strength and energy were wanting to him at this time.

Mr. Colquhoun's answers to Brian's communications were short, and, to the young-man's mind, unsatisfactory. "At the time when Mrs. Luttrell first made the statement that she believed you to be Vincenza Vasari's son, her mind was in a very unsettled state. Medical evidence went to show that mothers did at times conceive a violent dislike to one or other of their children. This was probably a case in point. The Vasaris were honest, respectable people, and there was no reason to suppose that any fraud had been perpetrated. At the same time, it was impossible to convince Mrs. Luttrell that her own child had not died; and Mr. Colquhoun was of opinion that she would never acknowledge Brian as her son again, or consent to hold any personal intercourse with him."

"It would be better if I were dead and out of all this uncertainty," said Brian, bitterly, when he had read the letter. Yet, something in it gave him a sort of stimulus. He took several long excursions, late though the season was; and in a few days he again encountered Gunston, who was delighted to welcome him as a companion. Brian was a practised mountaineer; and though his health had lately been impaired, he seemed to regain it in the cold, clear air of the Swiss Alps. Gunston did not find him a genial companion; he was silent and even grim; but he was a daring climber, and exposed his life sometimes with a hardihood which approached temerity.

But a day arrived on which Brian's climbing feats came to an end. They had made an easy ascent, and were descending the mountain on the southern side, when an accident took place. It was one which often occurs, and which can be easily pictured to oneself. They were crossing some loose snow when the whole mass began to move, slowly first, then rapidly, down the slope of the mountain-side.

Brian sank almost immediately up to his waist in the snow. He noticed that the guide had turned his face to the descent and stretched out his arms, and he imitated this action as well as he was able, hoping in that manner to keep them free. But he was too deeply sunk in the snow to be able to turn round, and as he was in the rear of the others he could not see what became of his companions. He heard one shout from Gunston, and that was all—"Good God, Luttrell, we're lost!" And then the avalanche swept them onwards, first with a sharp, hissing sound, and then with a grinding roar as of thunder, and Brian gave himself up for lost, indeed.

He was not sorry. Death was the easiest possible solution of all his difficulties. He had looked for it many times; but he was glad to think that on this day, at least, he had not sought it of his own free will. He thought of his mother—he could not call her otherwise in this last hour—he thought of the father and the brother who had been dear to him in this world, and would not, he believed, be less dear to him in the next; he thought of Angela, who would be a little sorry for him, and Hugo, whom he could no longer help out of his numerous difficulties. All these memories of his old home and friends flashed over his mind in less than a second of time. He even thought of the estate, and of the Miss Murray who would inherit it. And then he tried to say a little prayer, but could not fix his mind sufficiently to put any petition into words.

And at this point he became aware that he was descending less rapidly.

His head and arms were fortunately still free. By a side glance he saw that the snow at some distance before him had stopped sliding altogether. Then it ceased to move at a still higher point, until at the spot where he lay it also became motionless, although above him it was still rushing down as if to bury him in a living grave. He threw his hands up above his head, and made a furious effort to extricate himself before the snow should freeze around him. And in this effort he was more successful than he had even hoped to be. But the pressure of the snow upon him was so great that he thought at first that it would break his ribs. When the motion had ceased, however, this pressure became less powerful; by the help of his ice-axe he managed to free himself, and knew that he was as yet unhurt, if not yet safe.

He looked round for his friend and for the guides. They had all been roped together, but the rope had broken between himself and his companions. He saw only one prostrate form, and, at some little distance, the hand of a man protruding from the white waste of snow.

The thought of affording help to the other members of the party stimulated Brian to efforts which he would not, perhaps, have made on his own account. In a short time he was able to make his way to the man lying face downwards in the snow. He had already recognised him as one of the guides. It needed but a slight examination to convince him that this man was dead—not from suffocation or cold, but from the effects of a wound inflicted in the fall. The hand, sticking out of the snow belonged to the other guide; it was cold and stiff, and with all his efforts Brian could not succeed in extricating the body from the snow in which it was tightly wedged. Of the young Englishman, Gunston, and the other guide, there was absolutely nothing to be seen.

Brian turned sick and faint when the conviction was forced upon him that he would see his friend no more. His limbs failed him; he could not go on. He was born to misfortune, he said to himself; born to bring trouble and sorrow upon his companions and friends. Without him, Gunston would not, perhaps, have attempted this ascent. And how could he carry home to Gunston's family the story of his death?

After all, it was very unlikely that he would reach the bottom of the mountain in safety. He had no guide; he was utterly ignorant of the way. There were pitfalls without number in his path—crevasses, precipices, treacherous ice-bridges, and slippery, loose snow. He would struggle on until the end came, however; better to move, even towards death, than to lie down and perish miserably of cold.

It is said sometimes that providence keeps a special watch over children and drunken men; that is to say, that those who are absolutely incapable of caring for themselves do sometimes, by wonderful good fortune, escape the dangers into which sager persons are apt to fall. So it seemed with Brian Luttrell. For hours he struggled onwards, sore pressed by cold, and fatigue, and pain; but at last, long after night had fallen, he staggered into a little hamlet on the southern side of the mountain, footsore and fainting, indeed, but otherwise unharmed.

Nobody noticed his arrival very much. The villagers took him in, put him to bed, and gave him food and drink, but they did not seem to think that he was one of "the rich Englishmen" who sometimes visited their village, and they did not at all realise what he had done. To make the descent that Brian had done without a guide would have appeared to them little short of miraculous.

Brian had no opportunity of explaining to them how he had come. He was carried insensible into the one small inn that the village contained and put to bed, where he woke up delirious and quite unable to give any account of himself. When his mind was again clear, he remembered that it was his duty to tell the story of the accident on the mountain, but as soon as he uttered a few words on the subject he was met by an animated and circumstantial account of the affair in all its details. Two Englishmen, and two guides, and a porter had been crossing the mountain when the avalanche took place; a guide and a porter had been killed, and their bodies had been recovered. One Englishman had been killed also, and the other——

"Yes, the other," began Brian, hurriedly, but the innkeeper stolidly continued his story. The other had made his way back with the guide to the nearest town. He was there still, and had been making expeditions every day upon the mountain to find the dead body of his friend. But he had given up the search now, and was returning to England on the morrow. He had done all he could, poor gentleman, and it was more than a week since the accident took place.

Brian suddenly put his head down on his pillow and lay still. Here was the chance for which his soul had yearned! If the innkeeper spoke the truth, he—Brian Luttrell—was already numbered amongst the dead. Why should he take the trouble to come back to life?

"Were none of the Englishman's clothes or effects found?" he asked, presently.

"Oh, yes, monsieur. His pocket-book—his hat. They were close to a dangerous crevasse. A guide was lowered down it for fifty, eighty, feet, but nothing of the unfortunate Englishman was to be seen. If he did not fall into the crevasse his body may be recovered in the spring—but hardly before. Yes, his pocket-book and his hat, monsieur." A sudden gleam came into the little innkeeper's eyes, and he spoke somewhat interrogatively—"Monsieur arrived here also without his hat?"

For the first time the possibility occurred to the innkeeper's mind of his guest's identity with the missing Englishman. Brian answered with a certain reluctance; he did not like the part that he would have to play.

"I lost my way in walking from V——," he said, mentioning a town at some distance from the mountain-pass by which he had really come; "and my hat was blown off by a gust of wind. The weather was not good. I lost my way."

"True, monsieur. There was rain and there was wind: doubtless monsieur wandered from the right track," said the innkeeper, accepting the explanation in all good faith.

When he left the room, Brian examined his belongings with care. Nothing in his possession was marked, owing to the fact that his clothes were mostly new ones, purchased with a view to mountaineering requirements. His pocket-book was lost. Mrs. Luttrell's letter and one or two other papers, however, remained with him, and he had sufficient money in his pockets to pay the innkeeper and preserve him from starvation for a time. He wondered that nobody had reported an unknown traveller to be lying ill in the village; but it was plain that his escape had been thought impossible. Even Gunston had given him up for lost. As he learnt afterwards, it was believed that he had not been able to sever the rope, and that he, with one of the guides, had fallen into a crevasse. The rope went straight down into the cleft, and he was believed to be at the end of it. There was not the faintest doubt in the mind of the survivors but that Brian Luttrell was dead. It remained for Brian himself to decide whether he should go back to the town, reclaim his luggage, and take up life again at the point where he seemed to have let it drop—or go forth into the world, penniless and homeless, without a name, without a hope for the future, and without a friend.

Which should he do?