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.