"Confess!" said Dino, whose stern voice and outstretched, pointing finger seemed terrible as those of some accusing and avenging angel to the wretched culprit. "Confess that I have only told the truth. Confess that you lied and forged and cheated " to gain your own ends. Confess that when other means failed you tried to kill me. Confess—and then"—with a sudden lowering of his tones to the most wonderful exquisite tenderness—"God knows that I shall be ready to forgive!"

But the last words passed unheeded. Hugo cowered before his eye, covered his ears with his hands, and made a sudden dash to the door, with a cry that was more like the howl of a hunted wild animal, than the utterance of a human being. Mrs. Luttrell called for help, and half-rose from her chair. But Dino laid his hand upon her arm.

"Let him go," said he. "I have no desire to punish him. But I must warn you."

The door clanged behind the flying figure, and awakened the echoes of the old house. Hugo was gone: whither they knew not: away, perhaps, into the world of darkness that reigned without. Mrs. Luttrell sank back into her chair, trembling from head to foot.

"Mother," said Dino, going up to her, and kneeling before her, "forgive me if I have spoken too violently. But I could not bear that you should never know what sort of man this Hugo Luttrell has grown to be."

Her hand closed convulsively on his. "How—how did you know—that he was there?"

"I saw his reflection in the mirror before me as he passed the open door. He was afraid, and he hid himself there to listen. Mother, never trust him again."

"Never—never," she stammered. "Stay with me—protect me."

"You will not need my protection," he said, looking at her with calm, surprised eyes. "You will have your friends: Mr. Colquhoun, and the beautiful lady that you call Angela. And, for my sake, let me think that you will have Brian, too."

"No, no!" Her voice took new strength as she answered him, and she snatched her hand angrily away from his close clasp. "I will never speak to him again."

"Not even when he returns?"

"You told me that he was gone to America!"

"I feel sure that some day he will come back. He will learn the truth—that I have withdrawn my claim; then he and Miss Murray must settle the matter of property between them. They may divide it; or they might even marry."

His voice was perfectly calm; he had brooded over this arrangement for so long that it scarcely struck him how terrible it would sound in Mrs. Luttrell's ears.

"Do you mean it?" she said, feebly. "You renounce your claim—to be—my son?"

"Oh, not your son, mother," he said, kissing the cold hand, which she immediately drew away from him. "Not your son! Not the claim to be loved, and the right to love you! But let that rest between ourselves. Why should the money that I do not want come between me and you, between me and my friend? Let Brian come home, and you will have two sons instead of one."

"Rather say that I shall have no son at all," said Mrs. Luttrell, with gathering anger. "If you do this thing I cast you off. I forbid you to give what is your own to Vincenza Vasari's son."

"You make it hard for me to act if you forbid me," said Dino, rising and standing before her with a pleading look upon his face. "But I hold to my intention, mother. I will not touch a penny of this fortune. It shall be Brian's, or Miss Murray's—never mine."

"The matter is in a lawyer's hands. Your rights will be proved in spite of you."

"I do not think they will. I hold the proofs in my hand. I can destroy them every one, if I choose."

"But you will not choose. Besides, these are the copies, not the originals."

"No, excuse me. I obtained the originals from Mr. Brett. He expects me to take them back to him to-night." Dino held out a roll of papers. "They're all here. I will not burn them, mother, if you will send for Brian back and let him have his share."

"They would be no use if he came back. You must have the whole or nothing. Let us make a bargain; give up your scheme of entering a monastery, and then I will consent to some arrangement with Brian about money matters. But I will never see him!"

Dino shook his head. He turned to the fireplace with the papers in his hand.

"I withdraw my claims," he said, simply.

Mrs. Luttrell was quivering with suppressed excitement, but she mastered herself sufficiently to speak with perfect coldness.

"Unless you consent to abandon a monastic life, I would rather that your claims were given up," she said. "Let Elizabeth Murray keep the property, and do you and the man Vasari go your separate ways."

"Mother——"

"Call me 'mother' no longer," she said, sternly, "you are no more my son than he was, if you can leave me, in my loneliness and widowhood, to be a monk."

"Then—this is the end," said Dino.

With a sudden movement of the hand he placed the roll of papers in the very centre of the glowing fire. Mrs. Luttrell uttered a faint cry, and struggled to rise to her feet, but she had not the strength to do so. Besides, it was too late. With the poker, Dino held down the blazing mass, until nothing but a charred and blackened ruin remained. Then he laid down the poker, and faced Mrs. Luttrell with a wavering but victorious smile.

"It is done," he said, with something of exultation in his tone. "Now I am free. I have long seen that this was the only thing to do. And now I can acknowledge that the temptation was very great."

With lifted head and kindling eye, he looked, in this hour of triumph over himself, as if no temptation had ever assailed, or ever could assail, him. But then his glance fell upon Mrs. Luttrell, whose hands fiercely clutched the arms of her chair, whose features worked with uncontrollable agitation. He fell on his knees before her.

"Mother!" he cried. "Forgive me. Perhaps I was wrong. I will—I will ... I will pray for you."

The last few words were spoken after a long pause, with a fall in his voice, which showed that they were not those which he had intended to say when he began the sentence. There was something solemn and pathetic in the sound. But Mrs. Luttrell would not hear.

"Go!" she said, hoarsely. "Go. You are no son of mine. Sooner Brian—or Hugo—than you. Go back to your monastery."

She thrust him away from her with her hands when he tried to plead. And at last he saw that there was no use in arguing, for she pulled a bell which hung within her reach, and, when the servant appeared, she placed the matter beyond dispute by saying sharply:—

"Show this gentleman out."

Dino looked at her face, clasped his hands in one last silent entreaty, and—went. There was no use in staying longer. The door closed behind him, and the woman who had thrust away from her the love that might have been hers, but for her selfishness and hardness of heart, was left alone.

A whirl of raging, angry thoughts made her brain throb and reel. She had put away from her what might have been the great joy of her life; her will, which had never been controlled by another, had been simply set aside and disregarded. What was there left for her to do? All the repentance in the world would not give her back the precious papers that her son had burnt before her eyes. And where had he gone? Back to his monastery? Should she never, never see him again? Was he tramping the long and weary way to the Dunmuir station, where the railway engine would presently come shrieking and sweeping out of the darkness, and, like a fabled monster in some old fairy tale, gather him into its embrace, and bear him away to a place whence he would never more return?

So grotesque this fancy appeared to her that her anger failed her, and she laughed a little to herself—laughed with bloodless lips that made no sound. A kind of numbness of thought came over her: she sat for a little time in blank unconsciousness of her sorrow, and yet she did not sleep. And then a host of vividly-pictured images began to succeed each other with frightful rapidity across the tabula rasa of her mind.

It seemed to her in that quiet hour she saw her son as he walked dawn the dark road to Dunmuir. The moon was just rising; the trees on either hand lifted their gaunt branches to a wild and starless sky. Whose face, white as that of a corpse, gleamed from between those leafless stems? Hugo's, surely. And what did he hold in his hand? Was it a knife on which a faint ray of moonlight was palely reflected? He was watching for that solitary traveller who came with heedless step and hanging head upon the lonely road. In another moment the spring would be taken, the thrust made, and a dying man's blood would well out upon the stones. Could she do nothing? "Brian! Brian!" she cried—or strove to cry; but the shriek seemed to be stifled before it left her lips. "Brian!" Three times she tried to call his name, with an agony of effort which, perhaps, brought her back to consciousness—for the dream, if dream it was, vanished, and she awoke.

Awoke—to the remembrance of what she had heard, concerning Hugo's attempt on Dino's life, and the fact that she had sent her son out of the house to walk to Dunmuir alone. She was not so blind to Hugo's inherited proclivities to passion and revenge as she pretended to be. She knew that he was a dangerous enemy, and that Dino had incurred his hatred. What might not happen on that lonely road between Netherglen and Dunmuir if Dino (Brian, she called him) traversed it unwarned, alone, unarmed? She must send servants after him at once, to guard him as he went upon his way. She heard her maid in the next room. Should she call Janet, or should she ring the bell?

What a curiously-helpless sensation had come over her! She did not seem able to rouse herself. She could not lift her hand. She was tired; that was it. She would call Janet. "Janet!" But Janet did not hear.

How was it that she could not speak? Her faculties were as clear as usual: her memory was as strong as ever it had been. She knew exactly what she wanted: she could arrange in her own mind the sentences that she wished to say. But, try as she would, she could not articulate a word, she could not raise a finger, or make a sign. And again the terrible dread of what would happen to the son she loved took possession of her mind.

Oh, if only he would return, she would let him have his way. What did it matter that the proof of his birth had been destroyed? She would acknowledge him as her son before all the world; and she would let him divide his heritage with whomsoever he chose. Netherglen should be his, and the three claimants might settle between themselves, whether the rest of the property should belong to one of them, or be divided amongst the three. He might even go back to San Stefano; she would love him and bless him throughout, if only she knew that his life was safe. She went further. She seemed to be pleading with fate—or rather with God—for the safety of her son. She would receive Brian with open arms; she would try to love him for Dino's sake. She would do all and everything that Dino required from her, if only she could conquer this terrible helplessness of feeling, this dumbness of tongue which had come over her. Surely it was but a passing phase: surely when someone came and stood before her the spell would be broken, and she would be able to speak once more.

The maid peeped in, thought she was sleeping, and quietly retired. No one ventured to disturb Mrs. Luttrell if she nodded, for at night she slept so little that even a few minutes' slumber in the daytime was a boon to her. A silent, motionless figure in her great arm-chair, with her hands folded before her in her lap, she sat—not sleeping—with all her senses unnaturally sharpened, it seemed to her; hearing every sound in the house, noting every change in the red embers of the fire in which the proof of her son's history had been consumed, and all the while picturing to herself some terrible tragedy going on outside the house, which a word from her might have averted. And she not able to pronounce that word!

Dino, meanwhile, had plunged into the darkness, without a thought of fear for himself. He walked away from the house just as she had seen him in her waking dream, with head bent and eyes fixed on the ground. He took the right road to Dunmuir, more by accident than by design, and walked beneath the rows of sheltering trees, through which the loch gleamed whitely on the one hand, while on the other the woods looked ominously black, without a thought of the revengeful ferocity which lurked beneath the velvet smoothness of Hugo Luttrell's outer demeanour. If something moved amongst the trees on his right hand, if something crouched amongst the brushwood, like a wild animal prepared to spring, he neither saw nor heard the tokens which might have moved him to suspicion. But suddenly it seemed to him that a wild cry rang out upon the stillness of the night air. His friend's name—or was it his own?—three times repeated, in tones of heartrending pain and terror. "Brian! Brian! Brian!" Whose voice had called him? Not that of anyone he knew. And yet, what stranger would use that name? He stopped, looked round, and answered:—

"Yes, I am here."

And then it struck him that the voice had been close beside him, and that, standing where he stood in the middle of the long, white road, it was quite impossible that any one could be so near, and yet remain unseen.

With a slight shudder he let his eyes explore the sides of the road: the hedgerows, and the bank that rose on his right hand towards the wood. Surely there was something that moved and stopped, and moved again amongst the bracken. With one bound Dino reached the moving object, and dragged it forth into the light. He knew whom he was touching before he saw the face. It was Hugo who lurked in the hedgerows, waiting—and for what?

"You heard it?" said Dino, as the young man crouched before him, scarcely daring to lift up his head, although at that moment, if he had had his wits about him, he could not have had a better chance for the accomplishment of any sinister design. "Who called?"

Hugo cast a quick startled glance at the wood behind him. "I heard nothing," he said, sullenly.

"I heard a voice that called me," said Dino. Then he looked at Hugo, and pressed his shoulder somewhat heavily with his hand. "What were you doing there? For whom were you waiting?"

"For nobody," muttered Hugo.

"Are you sure of that? I could almost believe that you were waiting for me; and should I be far wrong? When I think of that other time, when you deceived me, and trapped me, and left me dying, as you thought, in the streets, I can believe anything of you now."

Hugo's trembling lips refused to articulate a word. He could neither deny the charge nor plead for mercy.

Dino's exultation of mood led him to despise an appeal to any but the higher motives. He would not condescend to threaten Hugo with the police-court and the criminal cell. He loosed his hold on the young man's shoulder, and told him to rise from the half-kneeling posture, to which fear, rather than Dino's strength, had brought him. And when Hugo stood before him, he spoke in the tone of one to whom the spiritual side of life was more real, more important than any other, and it seemed to Hugo as if he spoke from out some other world.

"There is a day coming," he said, "when the secrets of all men's hearts will be revealed. And where will you be, what will you do in that dread day? When you stand before the Judge of all men on His great white Throne, how will you justify yourself to Him?"

The strong conviction, the deep penetrating accents of his words, carried a sting to Hugo's conscience. He felt as if Dino had a supernatural knowledge of his past life and his future, when he said solemnly:—

"Think of the secrets of your heart which shall then be made known to all men. What have you done? Have you not broken God's laws? Have you not in very truth committed murder?... There is a commandment in God's Word which says, 'Thou shalt not kill.'"

"Stop, stop, for Heaven's sake, stop!" gasped Hugo, covering his face with his hands. "How can you know all this? I did not mean to kill him. I meant only to have my revenge. I did not know——"

"Nay, do not try to excuse yourself," said Dino, who caught the words imperfectly, and did not understand that they referred to any crime but the one so nearly accomplished against himself. "God knows all. He saw what you did: He can make it manifest in His own way. Confess to Him now: not to me. I pardon you."

There was a great sob from behind Hugo's quivering fingers; but it was only of relief, not repentance. Dino waited a moment or two before he said, with the tone of quiet authority which was natural to him:—

"Now fetch me the knife which you dropped amongst the ferns by the hedge over there."

With the keen, quick sight that he possessed, he had caught a glimpse of it in the scuffle, and seen it drop from Hugo's hand. But the young Sicilian took the order as another proof of the sort of superhuman knowledge of his deeds and motives which he attributed to Dino Vasari, and went submissively to the place where the weapon was lying, picked it up, and with hanging head, presented it humbly to the man whose spiritual force had for the moment mastered him.

"You must not return to Netherglen," said Dino, looking at him as he spoke. "My mother will not see you again: she does not want you near her. You understand?"

Hugo assented, with a sort of stifled groan.

"I was forced to tell her, in order to put her on her guard. But if you obey me, I will tell no one else. I have not even told Brian. If I find that you return to your evil courses, I shall keep the secret of your conduct no longer. Then, when Brian comes home, he can reckon with you."

"Brian!" ejaculated Hugo.

"Yes: Brian. What I require from you is that you trouble Netherglen no more. I cannot think of you with peace in my mother's house. You will leave it to-night—at once."

"Yes," Hugo muttered. He had no desire to return to Netherglen.

"I am going to Dunmuir," said Dino. "You can walk on with me."

Hugo made no opposition. He turned his face vaguely in the specified direction, and moved onward; but the sound of Dino's voice, clear and cold, gave him a thrill of shame, amounting to positive physical pain.

"Walk before me, if you please. I cannot trust you."

They walked on: Hugo a pace or two in front, Dino behind. Not a word was spoken between them until they reached the chief street of Dunmuir, and then Dino called to him to pause. They were standing in front of Mr. Colquhoun's door.

"You are not going in here?" said Hugo, with a sharp note of terror in his voice. "You will not tell Colquhoun?"

"I will tell no one," said Dino, "so long as you fulfil the condition I have laid upon you. This is our last word on the subject. God forgive you, as I do."

They stood for a moment, face to face. The moon had risen, and its light fell peacefully upon the paved street, the old stone houses, the broad, beautiful river with its wooded banks, the distant sweep of hills. It fell also on the faces of the two men, not unlike in feature and colouring, but totally dissimilar in expression, and seemed to intensify every point of difference between them. There was a lofty serenity upon Dino Vasari's brow, while guilt and fear and misery were deeply imprinted on Hugo's boyish, beautiful face. For the first time the contrast between them struck forcibly on Hugo's mind. He leaned against the stone wall of Mr. Colquhoun's house, and gave vent to his emotion in one bitter, remorseful sob of pain.