"But we shall know where you are. You will write?"

His eyes sought his mother's face. She would not look at him. He spoke in an unnaturally quiet voice, "I do not know."

"Mother, will you not tell him to write to you?" said Angela.

The mother sat silent, unresponsive. It was plain that she cared for no letter from this son of hers.

"I will leave my address with Mr. Colquhoun, Angela," said Brian, forcing a slight, sad smile. "If there is business for me to transact, he will be able to let me know. I shall hear from him how you all are, from time to time."

"Will you not write to me, then?" said Angela.

Brian darted an inquiring glance at her. Oh, what divine pity, what sublime forgetfulness of self, gleamed out of those tender, tear-reddened eyes!

"Will you let me?" he said, almost timidly.

"I should like you to write. I shall look for your letters, Brian. Don't forget that I shall be anxious for news of you."

Almost without knowing what he did, he sank down on his knees before her, and touched her hand reverently with his lips. She bent forward and kissed his forehead as a sister might have done.

"God bless you, Angela!" he said. He could not utter another word.

"Mother," said the girl, taking in hers the passive hand of the woman, who had sat with face averted--perhaps so that she should not meet the eyes of the man whom she could not forgive--"mother, speak to him; say good-bye to him before he goes."

The mother's hand trembled and tried to withdraw itself, but Angela would not let it go.

"One kind word to him, mother," she said. "See, he is kneeling before you. Only look at him and you will see how he has suffered! Don't let him go away from you without one word."

She guided Mrs. Luttrell's hand to Brian's head; and there for a moment it rested heavily. Then she spoke.

"If I have been unjust, may God forgive me!" she said.

Then she withdrew her hand and rose from her seat. She did not even look behind her as she walked to the bed-room door, pushed it open, entered, and closed it, and turned the key in the old-fashioned lock. She had said all that she meant to say: no power, human or divine, should wrest another word from her just then. But in her heart she was crying over and over again the words that had been upon her lips a hundred times to say.

"He is no son of mine--no son of mine--this man by whose hand Richard Luttrell fell. I am childless. Both my sons are dead."

CHAPTER VII.

A FAREWELL.

There was a little, sunny, green walk opposite the dining-room windows, edged on either side by masses of white and crimson phlox and a row of sunflowers, where the gentlemen of the house were in the habit of taking their morning stroll and smoking their first cigar. It was here that Hugo was slowly pacing up and down when Brian Luttrell came out of the house in search of him.

Hugo gave him a searching glance as he approached, and was not reassured. Brian's face wore a curiously restrained expression, which gave it a look of sternness. Hugo's heart beat fast; he threw away the end of his cigar, and advanced to meet his cousin with an air of unconcern which was evidently assumed for the occasion. It passed unremarked, however. Brian was in no mood for considering Hugo's expression of countenance.

They took two or three turns up and down the garden walk without uttering a word. Brian was absorbed in thought, and Hugo had his own reasons for being afraid to open his mouth. It was Brian who spoke at last.

"Come away from the house," he said. "I want to speak to you, and we can't talk easily underneath all these windows. We'll go down to the loch."

"Not to the loch," said Hugo, hastily.

Brian considered a moment. "You are right," he said, in a low tone, "we won't go there. Come this way." For the moment he had forgotten that painful scene at the boat-house, which no doubt made Hugo shrink sensitively from the sight of the place. He was sorry that he had suggested it.

The day was calm and mild, but not brilliant. The leaves of the trees had taken on an additional tinge of autumnal yellow and red since Brian last looked at them with an observant eye. For the past week he had thought of nothing but of the intolerable grief and pain that had come upon him. But now the peace and quiet of the day stole upon him unawares; there was a restfulness in the sight of the steadfast hills, of the waving trees--a sense of tranquility even in the fall of the yellowing leaves and the flight of the migrating song-birds overhead.

His eye grew calmer, his brow more smooth, as he walked silently onward; he drew a long breath, almost like one of relief; then he stopped short, and leaned against the trunk of a tall fir tree, looking absently before him, as though he had forgotten the reason for his proposed interview with his cousin. Hugo grew impatient. They had left the garden, and were walking down a grassy little-trodden lane between two tracks of wooded ground; it led to the tiny hamlet at the head of the loch, and thence to the high road. Hugo wondered whether the conversation were to be held upon the public highway or in the lane. If it had to do with his own private affairs, he felt that he would prefer the lane. But he dared not precipitate matters by speaking.

Brian recollected his purpose at last, however. After a short interval of silence he turned his eyes upon Hugo, who was standing near him, and said, gently--

"Sit down, won't you?--then we can talk."

There was a fallen log on the ground. Hugo took his seat on it meekly enough, but continued his former occupation of digging up, with the point of a stick that he was carrying, the roots of all the plants within his reach. He was so much absorbed by this pursuit that he seemed hardly to attend to the next words that Brian spoke.

"I ought, perhaps, to have had a talk with you before," he said.

"Matters have been in a very unsettled state, as you well know. But there are one or two points that ought to be settled without delay."

Hugo ceased his work of destruction; and apparently disposed himself to listen.

"First, your own affairs. You have hitherto had an allowance, I believe--how much?"

"Two hundred," said Hugo, sulkily, "since I joined."

"And your pay. And you could not make that sufficient?"

Hugo's face flushed, he did not answer. He sat still, looking sullenly at the ground. Brian waited for a little while, and then went on.

"I don't want to preach, old fellow, but you know I can't help thinking that, by a little decent care and forethought, you ought to have made that do. Still, it's no good my saying so, is it? What is done cannot be undone--would God it could!"

He stopped short again: his voice had grown hoarse. Hugo, with the dusky red still tingeing his delicate, dark face, hung his head and made no reply.

"One can but try to do better for the future," said Brian, somewhat unsteadily, after that moment's pause. "Hugo, dear boy, will you promise that, at least?"

He put his hand on his cousin's shoulder. Hugo tried to shrink away, then, finding this impossible, averted his face and partly hid it with his hands.

"It's no good making vague promises," he said by-and-bye. "What do you mean? If you want me to promise to live on my pay or anything of that sort----"

"Nothing of that sort," Brian interrupted him. "Only, that you will act honourably and straightforwardly--that you will not touch what is not your own----"

Hugo shook off the kindly hand and started up with something like an oath upon his lips. "Why are you always talking about that affair! I thought it was past and done with," he said, turning his back upon his cousin, and switching the grass savagely with his cane.

"Always talking about it! Be reasonable, Hugo."

"It was only because I was at my wits' end for money," said the lad, irritably. "And that came in my way, and--I had never taken any before----"

"And never will again," said Brian. "That's what I want to hear you say."

But Hugo would say nothing. He stood, the impersonation of silent obstinacy, digging the end of his stick into the earth, or striking at the blue bells and the brambles within reach, resolved to utter no word which Brian could twist into any sort of promise for the future. He knew that his silence might injure his prospects, by lowering him in Brian's estimation--Brian being now the arbiter of his fate--but for all that he could not bring himself to make submission or to profess penitence.

Something made the words stick in his throat; no power on earth would at that moment have forced him to speak.