"Let me see him," repeated Brian gloomily. "I do not wish to be his enemy. I do not promise to be his friend."

"I will send him to you," said the Prior. "Wait here till he comes."

He left Brian alone; and the young man, thinking it likely that he would be undisturbed for sometime to come, bent his face upon his hands, and tried to [missing word] his position. The strange tangle of circumstances in which he found himself involved would never be easy of adjustment; he wished with all his heart that he had refused the Prior's offer to make his foster-brother known to him, but it was too late now.

Was it too late? Could he not send for Padre Cristoforo, and beg him to leave the Italian peasant in his own quiet home, ignorant of Brian's visit to the place where he was born? He would do it; and then he would leave San Stefano for ever; it was not yet too late.

He lifted up his head and rose to his feet. He was not alone in the room. To his surprise he saw before him his friend, Dino.

"You have come from Padre Cristoforo, have you?" said Brian, quickly and impetuously. He took no notice of the young man's manifest agitation and discomfort, which would have been clear to anybody less pre-occupied than Brian, at that moment. "Tell him from me that there is no need for me to see the man that he spoke of--that I do not wish to meet him. He will understand what I mean."

A change, like that produced by a sudden electric shock, passed over Dino's face. His hands fell to his sides. They had been outstretched before, as if in greeting.

"You do not want to see him?" he repeated.

"I will not see him," said Brian, harshly, almost violently. "Weak as I am, I'll go straight out of the house and village sooner than meet him.

Why does he want to see me? I have nothing to give him now."

Long afterwards he remembered the look on Dino's face. Pain, regret, yearning affection, seemed to struggle for the mastery; his eyes were filled with tears, his lips were pale. But he said nothing. He went away from the room, and took the message that had been given him to the Prior.

Brian felt that he had perhaps been selfish, but he consoled himself with the thought that the peasant lad would gain nothing by a meeting with him, and that such an embarrassing interview, as it must necessarily be, would be a pain to them both.

But he did not know that the foster-brother (brother or foster-brother, which could it be?) was sobbing on the floor of the Prior's cell, in a passion of vehement grief at Brian's rejection of Padre Cristoforo's proposition. He would scarcely have understood that grief if he had seen it. He would have found it difficult to realise that the boy, Dino, had grown from childhood with a strong but suppressed belief in his mother's strange story, and yet, that, as soon as he saw Brian Luttrell, his heart had gone out to him with the passionate tenderness that he had waited all his life to bestow upon a brother.

"Take it not so much to heart, Dino," said the Prior, looking down at him compassionately. "It was not to be expected that he would welcome the news. Thou art a fool, little one, to grieve over his coldness.

Come, these are a girl's tears, and thou should'st be a man by now."

The words were caressingly spoken, but they failed of their effect. Dino did not look up.

"For one reason," said the Prior, in a colder tone, half to himself and half to the novice, "I am glad that he has not seen you. Your course will, perhaps, be the easier. Because, Dino, although I may believe my theory to be the correct one, and that you and our guest are both the children of Vincenza Vasari, yet it is a theory which is as difficult to prove as any other; and our good friend, the Cardinal, who was here last week, you know, chooses to take the other view."

"What other view, Reverend Father?" said Dino.

"The view that you are, indeed, Brian Luttrell, and not Vincenza's son."

"But--you said--that it was impossible to prove----"

"I think so, my dear son. But the Cardinal does not agree with me. We shall hear from him further. I believe it is the general opinion at Rome that you ought to be sent to Scotland in order to claim your position and the Luttrell estates. The case might at any rate be tried."

Dino rose now, pale and trembling.

"I do not want a position. I do not want to claim anything. I want to be a monk," he said.

"You are not a monk yet," returned the Prior, calmly. "And it may not be your vocation to take the vows upon you. Now, do you see why you have been prevented from taking them hitherto? You may be called upon to act as a layman: to claim the estates, fight the battle with these Scotch heretics and come back to us a wealthy man! And in that case, you will act as a pious layman should do, and devote a portion of your wealth to Holy Church. But I do not say you would be successful; I think myself that you have little chance of success. Only let us feel that you are our obedient child, as you used to be."

"I will do anything you wish," cried Dino, passionately, "so long as I bring no unhappiness upon others. I do not wish to be rich at Brian's expense."

"He has renounced his birthright," said the Prior. "You will not have to fight him, my tender-hearted Dino. You will have a much harder foe--a woman. The estate has passed into the hands of a Miss Elizabeth Murray."

CHAPTER XV.

THE VILLA VENTURI.

An elderly English artist, with carefully-trimmed grey hair, a gold-rimmed eye-glass, and a velvet coat which was a little too hot as well as a little too picturesque for the occasion, had got into difficulties with his sketching apparatus on the banks of a lovely little river in North Italy. He had been followed for some distance by several children, who had never once ceased to whine for alms; and he had tried all arts in the hope of getting rid of them, and all in vain.

He had thrown small coins to them; they had picked them up and clamoured only the more loudly; he had threatened them with his sketching umbrella, whereat they had screamed and run away, only to return in the space of five seconds with derisive laughter and hands outstretched more greedily than ever. When he reached the spot where he intended to make a sketch, his tormentors felt that they had him at their mercy. They swarmed round him, they peeped under his umbrella, they even threw one or two small stones at his back; and when, in desperation, their victim sprang up and turned upon them, they made a wild dash at his umbrella, which sent it into the stream, far beyond the worthy artist's reach.

Then they took to their heels, leaving the good man to contemplate wofully the fate of his umbrella. It had drifted to the middle of the stream, had there been caught by a stone and a tuft of weed, and seemed destined to complete destruction. He tried to arrest its course, but could not reach it, and nearly over-balanced himself in the attempt; then he sat down upon the bank and gave vent to an ejaculation of mild impatience--"Oh, dear, dear, dear me! I wish Elizabeth were here."

It was so small a catastrophe, after all, and yet it called up a look of each unmistakable vexation to that naturally tranquil and abstracted countenance, that a spectator of the scene repressed a smile which had risen to his lips and came to the rescue.

"Can I be of any assistance to you, sir?" he said.

The artist gave a violent start. He had not previously seen the speaker, who had been lying on the grass at a few yards' distance, screened from sight by an intervening clump of brushwood. He came forward and stood by the water, looking at the opened umbrella.

"I think I could get it," he said. "The water is very shallow."

"But--my dear sir--pray do not trouble yourself; it is entirely unnecessary. I do not wish to give the slightest inconvenience,"

stammered the Englishman, secretly relieved, but very much embarrassed at the same time. "Pray, be careful--it's very wet. Good Heaven!" The last exclamation was caused by the fact that the new-comer had calmly divested himself of his boots and socks and was stepping into the water.

"Indeed, it's scarcely worth the trouble that you are taking."

"It is not much trouble to wade for a minute or two in this deliciously cool water," said the stranger, with a smile, as he returned from his expedition, umbrella in hand. "There, I think you will find it uninjured. It's a wonder that it was not broken. You would have been inconvenienced without it on this hot day."

He raised his hat slightly as he spoke and moved away. The artist received another shock. This young man--for he moved with the strength and lightness of one still young, and his face was a young face, too--this young man had grey hair--perfectly grey. There was not a black thread amongst it. For one moment the artist was so much astonished that he nearly forgot to thank the stranger for the service that he had rendered him.

"One moment," he said, hurriedly. "Pray allow me to thank you. I am very much obliged to you. You don't know how great a service you have done me. If I can be of any use to you in any way----"

"It was a very trifling service," said the young man, courteously. "I wish it had been my good fortune to do you a greater one. This was nothing."

"Foreign!" murmured the artist to himself, as the stranger returned to his lair behind the thicket, where he seemed to be occupying himself in putting on his socks and boots once more. "No Englishman would have answered in that way. I wish he had not disappeared so quickly. I should like to have made a sketch of his head. Hum! I shall not sketch much to-day, I fancy."

He shut up his paint-box with an air of resolution, and walked leisurely to the spot where the young man was completing his toilet. "I ought perhaps to explain," he began, with an air which he fancied was Machiavellian in its simplicity, "that the loss of that umbrella would have been a serious matter to me. It might have entailed another and more serious loss--the loss of my liberty."

The young man looked up with a puzzled and slightly doubtful expression.

"I beg your pardon," he said. "The loss of----"

"The loss of my liberty," said the Englishman, in a louder and rather triumphant tone of voice. "The fact is, my dear sir, that I have a very tender and careful wife, and an equally tender and careful daughter and niece, who have so little confidence in my power of caring for my own safety that they have at various times threatened to accompany me in all my sketching expeditions. Now, if I came home to them and confessed that I had been attacked by a troop of savage Italian children, who tossed my umbrella into the river, do you think I should ever be allowed to venture out alone again?"

The young man smiled, with a look of comprehension.

"Can I be of any further use to you?" he said. "Can I walk back to the town with you, or carry any of your things?"

"You can be of very great use to me, indeed," said the gentleman, opening his sketch-book in a great hurry, and then producing a card from some concealed pocket in his velvet coat. "I'm an artist--allow me to introduce myself--my name is Heron; you would be of the very greatest use to me if you would allow me to--to make a sketch of your head for a picture that I am doing just now. It is the very thing--if you will excuse the liberty that I am taking----"

He had his pencil ready, but he faltered a little as he saw the sudden change which came over his new acquaintance's face at the sound of his proposition. The young man flushed to his temples, and then turned suddenly pale. He did not speak, but Mr. Heron inferred offence from his silence, and became exceedingly profuse in his apologies.

"It is of no consequence," said the stranger, breaking in upon Mr.

Heron's incoherent sentences with some abruptness. "I was merely surprised for the moment; and, after all--I think I must ask you to excuse me; I have a great dislike--a sort of nervous dislike--to sitting for a portrait. I would rather that you did not sketch me, if you please."