To Hugo, Italian was as familiar as English, and a momentary glance showed him that this letter contained information that might be valuable to him. He could not read it on the road; the owner of the letter might discover his loss and turn back at any moment to look for it. He put it carefully into his pocket, mounted his horse again, and made the best of his way to Netherglen.

He was so late in arriving that he had little time to devote to the letter before dinner. But when Mrs. Luttrell had kissed him and said good-night, when he, with filial courtesy, had conducted her to the door of her bed-room, and taken his final leave of her and of Angela on the landing, then he made his way to the library, rang for more lights, more coal, spirits and hot water, and prepared to devote a little time to the deciphering of the letter which Mr. John Stretton had been careless enough to lose.

He was not fond of the library. It was next to the room in which they had laid Richard Luttrell when they brought him home after the "accident." It looked out on the same stretch of garden; the rose trees that had tapped mournfully at that other window, when Hugo was compelled by Brian to pay a last visit to the room where the dead man lay, had sent out long shoots that reached the panes of the library window, too.

When there was any breeze, those branches would go on tap, tapping against the glass like the sound of a human hand. Hugo hated the noise of that ghostly tapping: he hated the room itself, and the long, dark corridor upon which it opened, but it was the most convenient place in the house for his purpose, and he therefore made use of it.

"San Stefano!" he murmured to himself, as he looked at the name of the place from which the letter had been dated. "Why, I have heard my uncle mention San Stefano as the place where Brian was born. They lived there for some months. My aunt had an illness there, which nobody ever liked to talk about. Hum! What connection has Mr. John Stretton with San Stefano, I wonder? Let me see."

He spread the letter carefully out before him, turned up the lamp, and began to read. As he read, his face turned somewhat pale; he read certain passages twice, and then remained for a time in the same position, with his elbows upon the table and his face supported between his hands. He found matter for thought in that letter.

It ran as follows:--

"My Dear Mr. Stretton,--I will continue to address you by this name as you desire me to do, although I am at a loss to understand your motive in assuming it. You will excuse my making this remark; the confidence that you have hitherto reposed in me leads me to utter a criticism which might otherwise be deemed an impertinence. But it seems to me a pity that you either did not retain your old name and the advantages that this name placed in your way, or that you did not take up the appellation which, as I fear I must repeat, is the only one to which you have any legal right. If your name is not Luttrell, it is Vasari. If you object to retaining the name of Luttrell, why not adopt Vasari? Why complicate matters by taking a name (like that of Stretton) which has no meaning, no importance, no distinction? All unnecessary concealment of truth is foolish; and this is an unnecessary concealment.

"Secondly, may I ask why you propose to accompany your English friends to a place so near your old home? If you wish it to be thought that you are dead, why, in Heaven's name, do you go to a spot which is not ten miles from the house where you were brought up? True, your appearance is altered; your hair is grey and your beard has grown. But your voice: have you thought how easily your voice may betray you? And I have known cases where the eyes alone have revealed a person's identity. If you wish to keep your secret, let me entreat you not to go to Strathleckie.

If you wish to undo all that you have succeeded in doing, if you wish to deprive the lady who has inherited the Strathleckie property of her inheritance, then, indeed, you will go to Scotland, but in so doing you show a want of judgment and resolution which I cannot understand.

"You were at the monastery with us after your illness for many months.

We learned to know you well and to regard you with affection. We were sorry when you grew restless and wandered away from us to seek fresh work amongst English people--English and Protestant--for the sake of old associations and habit. But we did not think--or at least I did not think--that you were so illogical and so weak as your present conduct drives me to consider you.

"There is only one explanation possible. You risk discovery, you follow these people to Scotland because one of the ladies of the family has given you, or you hope that she will give you, some special marks of favour. In plain words, you are in love. I have partially gathered that from your letters. Perhaps she also is in love with you. There is a Miss Heron, who is said to be beautiful; there is also Miss Murray. Is it on account of either of these ladies that you have returned to Scotland?

"I speak very frankly, because I conceive that I have a certain claim upon your confidence. I do not merely allude to the kindness shown to you by the Brothers of San Stefano, which probably saved your life. I claim your regard because I know that you were born in this village, baptised by one of ourselves, that you are of Italian parentage, and that you have never had any right to the name that you have borne for four-and-twenty years. This was suspicion when I saw you last; it is certainty now. We have found the woman Vincenza, who is your mother. She has told us her story, and it is one which even your English courts of law will find it difficult to disprove. She acknowledges that she changed the two children; that, when one of her twins died, she thought that she could benefit the other by putting it in the place of the English child. Her own baby, Bernardino, was brought up by the Luttrell family and called Brian Luttrell. That was yourself.

"How about the English boy, the real heir to the property? I told you about him when you were with us; I offered to let you see him: I wanted you to know him. You declined; I think you were wrong. You did see him many a time; you were friendly with him, although you did not know the connection that existed between you. I believe that you will remember him when I tell you that he was known in the monastery as Brother Dino.

Dino Vasari was the name by which he had been known; but I think that you never learnt his surname. He had a romantic affection for you, and was grieved when you refused to meet the man who had so curious a claim upon your notice. I sent him away from the monastery in a few days, as you will perhaps remember; I knew that if he saw much of you, not even my authority, my influence, would induce him to keep the secret of his birth--from you. You are rivals, certainly; you might be enemies; and, just because that cause of rivalry and enmity subsists, Dino Vasari loves you with his whole soul. If you stood in your old position, even I could not persuade him to dispossess you; but you have voluntarily given it up. Your property has gone to your cousin, and Dino has now no scruple about claiming his rights. Now that Vincenza Vasari's evidence has been obtained, it is thought well that he should make the story public, and try to get his position acknowledged. Therefore he is starting for England, where he will arrive on the eighteenth of the month. He has his orders, and he will obey them. It is perhaps well that you should know what they are. He is to proceed at once to Scotland, and obtain interviews as soon as possible with Mr. Colquhoun and Mrs.

Luttrell. He will submit his claims to them, and ascertain the line that they will take. After that, he will put the law in motion, and take steps towards dispossessing Miss Murray.

"I write all this to you at Dino's own request. I grieve to say that he is occasionally headstrong to a degree which gives us pain and anxiety.

He refused to take any steps in the matter until I had communicated with you, because he says that if you intend to make yourself known by your former name, and take back the property which accrued to you upon Mr.

Richard Luttrell's death, he will not stand in your way. I have pointed out to him, as I now point out to you, that this line of action would be dishonest, and practically impossible, because, in his interests, we should then take the matter up and make the facts public, but he insists upon my mentioning the proposal. I mention it in full confidence that your generosity and sense of honour will alike prevent you from putting obstacles in the way of my pupil's recognition by his mother and succession to his inheritance.

"If you wish that Dino (as for the sake of convenience I will still call him) should be restored to his rights, and if you desire to show that you have no ill-feeling towards him on account of this proposed endeavour to recover what is really his own, he begs you to meet him on his arrival in London on the 18th of August. He will be in lodgings kept by a good Catholic friend of ours at No. 14, Tarragon-street, Russell-square, and you will inquire for him by the name of Mr. Vasari, as he will not assume the name of Brian Luttrell until he has seen you.

He will, of course, be in secular dress.

"I have now made you master of all necessary facts. If I have done so under protest, it is no concern of yours. I earnestly recommend you to give up your residence in Scotland, and to return, at any rate until this matter is settled, to San Stefano. I need hardly say that Brian Luttrell will never let you know the necessity of such drudgery as that in which you have lately been engaged.

"With earnest wishes for your welfare, and above all for your speedy return to the bosom of the true Catholic Church in which you were baptised, and of which I hope to see you one day account yourself a faithful child, I remain, my dear son,

"Your faithful friend and father, "Cristoforo Donaldi, "Prior of the Monastery of San Stefano."

CHAPTER XX.

"MISCHIEF, THOU ART AFOOT."

Hugo's meditations were long and deep. More than an hour elapsed before he roused himself from the thoughtful attitude which he had assumed at the close of his first perusal of this letter. When he lifted his face from his hands, his lips were white, although they were twisted into the semblance of a smile.

"So that is why I fancied I knew his face," he said, half aloud. "Who would have thought it? Brian alive, after all! What a fool he must be!

What an unmitigated, egregious fool!"

He poured out some brandy for himself with rather a shaky hand, and drank it off without water. He shivered a little, and drew closer to the fire. "It's a very cold night," he muttered, holding his hands out to the leaping flame, and resting his forehead upon the marble mantelpiece.

"It's a cold night, and ---- it all, are my wits going? I can't think clearly; I can hardly see out of my eyes. It's the shock; that's what it is. The shock? Yes, Dio mio, and it is a shock, in all conscience!

Whoever would have believed that Brian could possibly be alive all this time! Poor devil! I suppose that little 'accident' to Richard preyed upon his mind. He must be mad to have given up his property from a scruple of that sort. I never should have thought that a man could be such a fool. It's an awful complication."

He threw himself into an arm-chair, and leaned back with his dark, delicately-beautiful face slanted reflectively towards the ceiling. He was too much disturbed in mind to afford himself the solace of a cigar.

"This old fellow--the Prior--seems to know the family affairs very intimately," he went on thinking. "This is another extraordinary occurrence. Brian alive is nothing to the fact that Brian is the son of some Italian woman--a peasant-woman probably. Did Aunt Margaret suspect it? She always hated Brian; every one could see that. When she said once, 'He is not my son,' did she mean the words literally? Quite possible."

"And the real Brian Luttrell is now to appear on the scene! What is his name? Dino--Bernardino--Vasari. Of course, there was little use in his coming forward as long as Richard Luttrell was alive. Now that he is gone and Brian is heir to the property, this young fellow, whom the priests have got hold of, becomes important. No doubt this is what they have hoped for all along. He will have the property and he is a devout son of the Church, and will employ it to Catholic ends. I know the jargon--I heard enough of it in Sicily. They have the proofs, no doubt--they could easily manufacture them if they were wanting; and they will oust Elizabeth Murray and set their pet pupil in her place, and manage the land and the money and everything else for him. And what will Mrs. Luttrell say?"

He paused, and changed his position uneasily. His brows contracted; his eye grew restless as he continued to reflect.

"It's my belief," he said at last, "that Mrs. Luttrell will be enchanted. And then what will become of me?"

He rose from his chair and began to pace up and down the room. "What will become of me?" he repeated. "What will become of the fifteen-hundred a-year, and the house and grounds, and all the rest of the good things that she promised to give me? They will go, no doubt, to the son and heir. Did she ever propose to give me anything while Richard and Brian had to be provided for? Not she! She notices me now only because she thinks that I am the only Luttrell in existence. When she knows that there is a son of her's still living, I shall go to the wall.

I shall be ruined. There will be no Netherglen for me, no marriage with an heiress, no love-making with pretty little Kitty. I shall have to disappear from the scene. I cannot hold my ground against a son--a son of the house! Curses on him! Why isn't he dead?"

Hugo bestowed a few choice Sicilian epithets of a maledictory character upon Dino Vasari and Brian Luttrell both; then he returned to the table and studied the latter pages of Father Cristoforo's letter.

"Meet him in London. I should like to meet Dino Vasari, too. I wonder whether Brian had read this letter when he dropped it. These instructions come at the very end. If he has not read these sentences, I might find a way of outwitting them all yet. I think I could prevent Dino Vasari from ever setting foot in Scotland. How can I find out?"

"And what an extraordinary thing for Brian to do--to take a tutorship in the very family where Elizabeth Murray is living. What has he done it for? Is he in love with one of those girls? Or does he hope to retrieve his mistake by persuading Elizabeth Murray to marry him? A very round-about way of getting back his fortune, unless he means to induce Dino Vasari to hold his tongue. If Dino Vasari were out of the way, and Brian felt his title to the estate rather shaky, of course, it would be very clever of him to make love to Elizabeth. But he's too great a fool for that. What was his motive, I wonder? Is it possible that he did not know who she was?"

But he rejected this suggestion as an entirely incredible one.

After a little further thought, another idea occurred to him. Father Cristoforo's letter consisted of three closely-written sheets of paper.

He separated the first sheet from the others; the last words on the sheet ran as follows:--

"Is it on account of either of these ladies that you have returned to England?"

This sheet he folded and enclosed in an envelope, which he carefully sealed and addressed to John Stretton, Esquire. He placed the other sheets in his own pocket-book, and then went peacefully to bed. He could do nothing more, he told himself, and, although his excitable disposition prevented his sleeping until dawn grew red in the eastern sky, he would not waste his powers unnecessarily by sitting up to brood over the resolution that he had taken.

Before ten o'clock next morning he was riding to Strathleckie. On reaching the house he asked at once if he could see Mr. Stretton. The maid-servant who answered the door looked surprised, hesitated a moment, and then asked him to walk in. He followed her, and was not surprised to find that she was conducting him straight to the school-room, which was on the ground-floor. He had thought that she looked stupid; now he was sure of it. But it was a stupidity so much to his advantage that he mentally vowed to reward it by the gift of half-a-crown when he had the opportunity.

The boys were at their lessons; their tutor sat at the head of the table, with his back towards the light. When he saw Hugo enter, he calmly took a pair of blue spectacles from the table and fixed them upon his nose. Hugo admired the coolness of the action. The blue spectacles were even a better disguise than the grey hair and the beard; if Mr.

Stretton had worn them when he was standing at the railway station door, Hugo would never have been haunted by that look of recognition in his eyes.

"Mary has made a mistake," said Mr. Stretton to one of the boys, in a curiously-muffled voice. "Take this gentleman up to the drawing-room, Harry."

"There is no mistake," said Hugo, suavely. "I called to see Mr. Stretton on business; it will not take me a moment to explain. Mr. Stretton, may I ask whether you have lost any paper--a letter, I think--during the last few days?"

"Yes. I lost a letter yesterday afternoon."

"On the high road, I think. Then I was not mistaken in supposing that a paper that the wind blew to my feet this morning, as I was strolling down the road, belonged to yourself. Will you kindly open this envelope and tell me whether the paper contained in it is yours?"