There had been solemn council in the house of Netherglen. Mrs. Luttrell and Mr. Colquhoun had held long interviews; letters and papers of all sorts had been produced and compared; the dressing-room door was closed against all comers, and even Angela was excluded. Hugo was once summoned, and came away from the conference with the air of a desperate man at once baffled and fierce. He lurked about the dark corners of the house, as if he were afraid to appear in the light of the day; but he took no one into his confidence. Fortune, character, life itself, perhaps, seemed to him to be hanging on a thread. For, if Dino Vasari remembered his treachery and exposed it, he knew that he should be ruined and disgraced. And he was resolved not to survive any such public exposure. He would die by his own hand rather than stand in the dock as a would-be murderer.

Even if things were not so bad as that, he did not see how he was to exonerate himself from another charge; a minor one, indeed, but one which might make him look very black in some people's eyes. He had known of Dino's claims for many weeks, as well as of Brian's existence. Why had he told no one of his discoveries? What if Dino spoke of the tissue of lies which he had concocted, the forgery of Brian's handwriting, in the interview which they had had in Tarragon-street? Fortunately, Dino had burned the letter, and there had been no auditor of the conversation. Of course, he must deny that he had known anything of the matter. Dino could prove nothing against him; he could only make assertions. But assertions were awkward things sometimes.

So Hugo skulked and frowned and listened, and was told nothing definite; but saw by the light of previous knowledge that there was great excitement in the bosoms of his aunt and the family lawyer. There were letters and telegrams sent off, and Hugo was disgusted to find that he could not catch sight of their addresses, much less of their contents. Mr. Colquhoun looked gloomy; Mrs. Luttrell sternly exultant. What was going on? Was Brian coming home; or was Dino to be recognised in Brian's place?

Hugo knew nothing. But one fine autumn morning, as he was standing in the garden at Netherglen, he saw a dog-cart turn in at the gate, a dog-cart in which four men had with some difficulty squeezed themselves—the driver, Mr. Colquhoun, Dino Vasari, and a red-faced man, whom Hugo recognised, after a minute's hesitation, as the well-known solicitor, Mr. Brett.

Hugo drew back into the shrubbery and waited. He dared not show himself. He was trembling in every limb. The hour of his disgrace was drawing near.

Should he take advantage of the moment, and leave Netherglen at once, or should he wait and face it out? After a little reflection he determined to wait. From what he had seen of Dino Vasari he fancied that it would not be easy to manage him. Yet he seemed to be a simple-minded youth, fresh from the precincts of a monastery: he could surely by degrees be cajoled or bullied into silence. If he did accuse Hugo of treachery, it was better, perhaps, that the accused should be on the spot to justify himself. If only Hugo could see him before the story had been told to Mrs. Luttrell!

He loitered about the house for some time, then went to his own room, and began to pack up various articles which he should wish to take away with him, if Mrs. Luttrell expelled him from the house. At every sound upon the stairs, he paused in his occupation and looked around nervously. When the luncheon-bell rang he actually dared not go down to the dining-room. He summoned a servant, and ordered brandy and water and a biscuit, alleging I an attack of illness as an excuse for his non-appearance. And, indeed, the suspense and anxiety which he was enduring made him feel and look really ill. He was sick with the agony of his dread.

The afternoon wore on. His window commanded a view of the drive: he was sure that the guests had not yet left the house. It was four o'clock when somebody at length approached his door, knocked, and then shook the door-handle.

"Hugo! Are you there?" It was Mr. Colquhoun's voice. "Can't you open the door?"

Hugo hesitated a moment: then turned the key, leaving Mr. Colquhoun to enter if he pleased. He came in looking rather astonished at this mode of admittance.

"So! It's sick, you are, is it? Well, I don't exactly wonder at that. You've lost your chance of Netherglen, Mr. Hugo Luttrell."

Hugo's face grew livid. He looked to Mr. Colquhoun for explanation, but did not speak.

"It's just the most remarkable coincidence I ever heard of," said Mr. Colquhoun, seating himself in the least comfortable chair the room afforded, and rubbing his forehead with a great, red silk-handkerchief. "Brian alive, and meeting with the very man who had a claim to the estate! Though, of course, if one thinks of it, it is only natural they should meet, when Mrs. Luttrell, poor body, had been fool enough to send Brian to San Stefano, the very place where the child was brought up. You know the story?"

"No," said Hugo. His heart began to beat wildly. Had Dino kept silence after all?

Mr. Colquhoun launched forth upon the whole history, to which Hugo listened without a word of comment. He was leaning against the window-frame, in a position from which he could still see the drive, and his face was so white that Mr. Colquhoun at last was struck by its pallor.

"Man alive, are you going to faint, Hugo? What's wrong?"

"Nothing. I've had a headache. Then my aunt is satisfied as to the genuineness of this claim?"

"Satisfied! She's more than satisfied," said the old lawyer, with a groan. "I doubt myself whether the court will see the matter in the same light. If Miss Murray, or if Brian Luttrell, would make a good fight, I don't believe this Italian fellow would win the case. He might. Brett says he would; But Brian—God bless him! he might have told me he was living still—Brian has gone off to America, poor lad! and Elizabeth Murray—well, I'll make her fight, if I can, but I doubt—I doubt."

"My aunt wants this fellow to have Strathleckie and Netherglen, too, then?"

"Yes, she does; so you are cut out there, Hugo. Don't build on Netherglen, if Margaret Luttrell's own son is living. I must be going: Brett's to dine with me. I used to know him in London."

"Is Dino Vasari staying here, then?"

Mr. Colquhoun raised a warning finger. "You'll have to learn to call him by another name, if he stays in this house, young man," he said. "He declines to be called Brian—he has that much good sense—but it seems that Dino is short for Bernardino, or some such mouthful, and we're to call him Bernard to avoid confusion. Bernard Luttrell—humph!—I don't know whether he will stay the night or not. We met Miss Murray on our way up. The young man looked at her uncommonly hard, and asked who she was. I think he was rather struck with her. Good-bye, Hugo; take care of yourself, and don't be too downhearted. Poor Brian always told me to look after you, and I will." But the assurance did not carry the consolation to Hugo's mind which Mr. Colquhoun intended.

The two lawyers drove away to Dunmuir together. Hugo watched the red lamps of the dog-cart down the road, and then turned away from the window with a gnawing sense of anxiety, which grew more imperious every moment. He felt that he must do something to relieve it. He knew where the interview with Dino was taking place. Mrs. Luttrell had lately been growing somewhat infirm: a slight stroke of paralysis, dangerous only in that it was probably the precursor of other attacks, had rendered locomotion particularly distasteful to her. She did not like to feel that she was dependent upon others for aid, and, therefore, sat usually in a wheeled chair in her dressing-room, and it was the most easily accessible room from her sleeping apartment. She was in her dressing-room now, and Dino Vasari was with her.

Hugo stole quietly through the passage until he reached the door of Mrs. Luttrell's bed-room, which was ajar. He slipped into the room and looked round. It was dimly lighted by the red glow of the fire, and by this dim light he saw that the door into the dressing-room was also not quite closed. He could hear the sound of voices. He paused a moment, and then advanced. There was a high screen near the door, of which one fold was so close to the wall that only a slight figure could slip behind it, though, when once behind there, it would be entirely hidden. Hugo measured it with his eye: he would have to pass the aperture of the door to reach it, but a cautious glance from a distance assured him that both Mrs. Luttrell and Dino had their backs to him and could not see. He ensconced himself, therefore, between the screen and the wall: he could see nothing, but every word fell distinctly upon his ear.

"Sit down beside me," Mrs. Luttrell was saying—how could her voice have grown so tender?—"and tell me everything about your past life. I knew—I always knew—that that other child was not my son. I have my own Brian now. Call me mother: it is long since I have heard the word."

"Mother!" Dino's musical tones were tremulous. "My mother! I have thought of her all my life."

"Ay, my poor son, and but for the wickedness of others, I might have seen and known you years ago. I had an interloper in my house throughout all those years, and he worked me the bitterest sorrow of my life."

"Do not speak so of Brian, mother," said Dino, gently. "He loved you—and he loved Richard. His loss—his grief—has been greater even than yours."

"How dare you say so to me?" said Mrs. Luttrell, with a momentary return to her old, grim tones. Then, immediately softening them—"But you may say anything you like. It is pleasure enough to hear your voice. You must stay with me, Brian, and let me feast my eyes on you for a time. I have no patience, no moderation left: 'my son was dead and is alive again, he was lost and is found.'"

He raised his mother's hand and kissed it silently. The action would, of course, have been lost upon Hugo, as he could not see the pair, but for Mrs. Luttrell's next words.

"Nay," she said, "kiss me on the cheek, not on the hand, Brian. I let Hugo Luttrell do it, because of his foreign blood; but you have only a foreign training which you must forget. They said something about your wearing a priest's dress: I am glad you did not wear it here, for you would have been mobbed in Dunmuir. It's a sad pity that you're a Papist, Brian; but we must set Mr. Drummond, our minister, to talk to you, and he'll soon show you the error of your ways."

"I shall be very glad to hear what Mr. Drummond has to say," said Dino, with all the courtesy which his monastic training had instilled; "but I fear that he will have his labour thrown away. And I have one or two things to tell you, mother, now that those gentlemen have gone. If I am to disappoint you, let me do it at once, so that you may understand."

"Disappoint me? and how can you do that?" asked Mrs. Luttrell, scornfully. "Perhaps you mean that you will winter in the South! If your health requires it, do you think I would stand in the way? You have a sickly air, but it makes you all the more like one whom I well remember—your father's brother, who died of a decline in early youth. No, go if you like; I will not tie you down. You can come back in the summer, and then we will think about your settling down and marrying. There are plenty of nice girls in the neighbourhood, though none so good as Angela, nor perhaps so handsome as Elizabeth Murray."

"Mother, I shall never marry."

"Not marry? and why not?" cried Mrs. Luttrell, indignantly. "But you say this to tease me only; being a Luttrell—the only Luttrell, indeed, save Hugo, that remains—you must marry and continue the family."

"I shall never marry," said Dino, with a firmness which at last seemed to make an impression upon Mrs. Luttrell, "because I am going to be a monk."

Hugo could not stifle a quick catching of his breath. Did Dino mean what he said? And what effect would this decision have upon the lives of the many persons whose future seemed to be bound up with his? What would Mrs. Luttrell say?

At first she said nothing. And then Dino's voice was heard again.

"Mother, my mother, do not look at me like that. I must follow my vocation. I would have given myself years ago, but I was not allowed. The Prior will receive me now. And nothing on earth will turn me from my resolution. I have made up my mind."

"What!" said Mrs. Luttrell, very slowly. "You will desert me too, after all these years!"

Dino answered by repeating in Latin the words—"He that loveth father or mother more than Me, is not worthy of Me." But Mrs. Luttrell interrupted him angrily.

"I want none of your Latin gibberish," she said. "I want plain commonsense. If you go into a monastery, do you intend to give the property to the monks? Perhaps you want to turn Netherglen into a convent, and establish a priory at Strathleckie? Well, I cannot prevent you. What fools we are to think that there is any happiness in this world!"

"Mother!" said Dino, and his voice was very gentle, "let me speak to you of another before we talk about the estates. Let me speak to you of Brian."

"Brian!" Her voice had a checked tone for a moment; then she recovered herself and spoke in her usual harsh way. "I know no one of that name but you."

"I mean my friend whom you thought to be your son for so many years, mother. Have you no tenderness for him? Do you not think of him with a little love and pity? Let me tell you what he suffered. When he came to us first at San Stefano he was nearly dying of grief. It was long before we nursed him back to health. When I think how we all learnt to love him, mother, I cannot but believe that you must love him, too."

"I never loved him," said Mrs. Luttrell. "He stood in your place. If you had a spark of proper pride in you, you would know that he was your enemy, and you will feel towards him as I do."

"He is an enemy that I have learned to love," answered Dino. "At any rate, mother"—his voice always softened when he called her by that name—"at any rate, you will try to love him now."

"Why now?" She asked the question sharply.

"Because I mean him to fill my place."

There was a little silence, in which the fall of a cinder from the grate could be distinctly heard. Then Mrs. Luttrell uttered a long, low moan. "Oh, my God!" she said. "What have I done that I should be tormented in this way?"

"Mother, mother, do not say so," said Dino, evidently with deep emotion. Then, in a lower and more earnest voice, he added—"Perhaps if you had tried to love the child that Vincenza placed within your arms that day, you would have felt joy and not sorrow now."

"Do you dare to rebuke your mother?" said Mrs. Luttrell, fiercely. "If I had loved that child, I would never have acknowledged you to-day. Not though all the witnesses in the world swore to your story."

"That perhaps would have been the better for me," said Dino, softly. "Mother, I am going away from you for ever; let me leave you another son. He has never grieved you willingly; forgive him for those misfortunes which he could not help; love him instead of me."

"Never!"

"He has gone to the other side of the world, but I think he would come back if he knew that you had need of him. Let me send him a line, a word, from you: make him the master of Netherglen, and let me go in peace."

"I will not hear his name, I will not tolerate his presence within these walls," cried Mrs. Luttrell, passionately. "He was never dear to me, never; and he is hateful to me now. He has robbed me of both my sons: his hand struck Richard down, and for twenty-three years he usurped your place. I will never see him again. I will never forgive him so long as my tongue can speak."

"Then may God forgive you," said Dino, in a strangely solemn voice, "for you are doing a worse injustice, a worse wrong, than that done by the poor woman who tried to put her child in your son's place. Have you held that child upon your knee, kissed his face, and seen him grow up to manhood, without a particle of love for him in your heart? Did you send him away from you with bitter reproaches, because of the accident which he would have given his own life to prevent? You have spoilt his life, and you do not care. Your heart is hard then, and God will not let that hardness go unpunished. Mother, pray that his judgments may not descend upon you for this."

"You have no right to talk to me in that way," said Mrs. Luttrell, with a great effort. "I have not been unjust. You are ungrateful. If you go away from me, I will leave all that I possess to Hugo, as I intended to do. Brian, as you call him—Vincenza Vasari's son—shall have nothing."

"And Brian is to be disinherited in favour of Hugo Luttrell, is he?" said Dino, in a still lower voice, but one which the listener felt instinctively had a dangerous sound. "Do you know what manner of man this Hugo Luttrell is, that you wish to enrich him with your wealth, and make him the master of Netherglen?"

"I know no harm of him," she answered.

He paused a little, and turned his face—was it consciously or unconsciously?—towards the open door, from which could be seen the screen, behind which the unhappy listener crouched and quivered in agony of fear. Willingly would Hugo have turned and fled, but flight was now impossible. The fire was blazing brightly, and threw a red glow over all the room. If he emerged from behind the screen, his figure would be distinctly visible to Dino, whose face was turned in that direction. What was he going to say?

"I know no harm of him," she answered.

"Then I will enlighten you. Hugo Luttrell knew that Brian was alive, that I was in England, two months ago. A letter from the Prior of San Stefano must have been in some way intercepted by him; he made use of his knowledge, however he obtained it, to bring the messages from Brian which were utterly false, to try and induce me to relinquish my claim on you; he forged a letter from Brian for that purpose; and finally——"

Mrs. Luttrell's voice, harsh and strident with emotion, against which she did her best to fight, broke the sudden silence.

"Do you call it fair and right," she said, "to accuse a man of such faults as these behind his back? If you want to tell me anything against Hugo, send for him and tell it to me in his presence. Then he can defend himself."

"He will try to defend himself, no doubt," said Dino, with a note of melancholy scorn in his grave, young voice. "But I will do nothing behind his back. You wish him to be summoned?"

"Yes, I do. Ring the bell instantly!" cried Mrs. Luttrell, whose loving ardour seemed to have given way to the most unmitigated resentment.

"Tell the servants to find him and bring him here."

"They would not have far to go," said Dino, coolly. "He is close to hand. Hugo Luttrell, come here and answer for yourself."

"What do you mean? Where is he?" exclaimed Mrs. Luttrell, struck with his tone of command. "He is not in this room!"

"No, but he is in the next, hiding behind that screen. He has been there for the last half-hour. You need play the spy no longer, sir. Have the goodness to step forward and show yourself."

The inexorable sternness of his voice struck the listeners with amaze. Pale as a ghost, trembling like an aspen leaf, Hugo emerged from his hiding-place, and confronted the mother and the son.