Dino was silent for a few minutes. Then his face lighted up, his pale lips parted with a smile. "So you never read Father Cristoforo's letter?" he said. "And you sent me no message of reply?"

"Certainly not. How could I, when I did not know that you were in England?"

Dino held out his hands. "I misjudged you," he said, simply, "Will you forgive me and take my hand again?"

Brian clasped his hand. "You know there's nothing to forgive," he said, with a smile. "But I am glad you don't think I neglected you on purpose, Dino. I had not forgotten those pleasant days at San Stefano."

Dino smiled, too, but did not seem inclined to speak again. The nurse came to say that the interview had lasted long enough, and Brian took his leave, promising to come on the morrow, and struck with the look of perfect peace and quiet upon the placid face as it lay amongst the white pillows, almost as white as they.

He had only a couple of days left before he was to start for Pernambuco, where he had heard of work that was likely to suit him. He had made his arrangements, taken his passage in the steerage: he had nothing to do now but to write a farewell letter to Mr. Heron, telling him whither he was bound, and another--should he write that other or should he not?--to Elizabeth. He felt it hard to go without saying one last farewell to her. The discovery that she was the heiress of his property had finally decided him to leave England. He dared not risk the chance of being recognised and identified, if such recognition and identification would lead to her poverty. For even if, by a deed of gift in his supposed name of Brian Luttrell, he devised his wealth to her, he knew that she would never consent to take it if he were still alive. The doubt thrown on his birth and parentage would not be conclusive enough in her mind to justify her in despoiling him of what all the judges in the land would have said was his birthright. But then Brian did not know that Vincenza Vasari had been found. The existence of another claimant to the Luttrell estate never troubled him in the least. He wronged nobody, he thought, by allowing Elizabeth Murray to suppose that Brian Luttrell was dead.

He wrote a few lines to Mr. Heron, thanking him for his kindness, and informing him that he was leaving England for South America; and then he proceeded to the more difficult task of writing to Elizabeth. He destroyed many sheets of paper, and spent a great deal of time in the attempt, although the letter, as it stood at last, was a very simple affair, scarcely worthy of the pains that had been bestowed upon it.

"Dear Miss Murray," he wrote, "when you receive this note I shall have left England, but I cannot go without one word of farewell. You will never know how much you did for me in those early days of our acquaintance in Italy; how much hope you gave me back, how much interest in life you inspired in me; but for all that you did I thank you. Is it too much to ask you to remember me sometimes? I shall remember you until the hour of my death. Forgive me if I have said too much. God bless you, Elizabeth! Let me write that name once, for I shall never write to you nor see your face again."

He put no signature. He could not bear to use a false name when he wrote to her; and he was sure that she would know from whom the letter came.

He went out and dropped it with his own hands into a letter-box; then he came back to his dreary lodgings, never expecting to find there anything of interest. But he found something that interested him very much indeed. He found a long and closely written letter from the Prior of San Stefano.

Father Cristoforo could not resist the opportunity of lecturing his young friend a little. He gave him a good many moral maxims before he came to the story that he had to tell, and he pointed them by observing rather severely that if it were not for Brian's carelessness, his pupil might possibly have escaped the "accident" that had befallen him. For if Brian had met Dino in London on the appointed day, he would not have been wandering alone in the streets (as Father Cristoforo imagined him to have been) or fallen into the hands of thieves and murderers.

With which prologue the Padre once more began his story. And this time Brian read it all.

He put down the letter at last with a curious smile: the smile of a man who does not want to acknowledge that he suffers pain. "Dino," he said to himself, lingeringly. "Dino! It is he who is Brian Luttrell, then, after all. And what am I? And, oh, my poor Elizabeth! But she will only regret the loss of the money because she will no longer be able to help other people. The Herons will suffer more than she. And Percival Heron!

How will it affect him? I think he will be pleased. Yes, I think he is disinterested enough to be thoroughly pleased that she is poor. I should be pleased, in his case.

"There is no doubt about it now, I suppose," he said, beginning to pace up and down the little room, with slow, uneven steps and bent head. "I am not a Luttrell. I am a Vasari. My mother's name was Vincenza Vasari--a woman who lied and cheated for the sake of her child. And I was the child! Good God! how can it be that I have that lying blood in my veins? Yet I have no right to say so; it was all done for me--for me--who never knew a mother's love. Oh, mother, mother, how much happier your son would have been if you had reared him in the place where he was born, amongst the vines and olive-yards of his native land.

"And I must see Dino to-morrow. So he knows the whole story. I understand now why he thought ill of me for not coming to meet him, poor fellow! I must go early to-morrow."

He went, but as soon as he reached Dino's bed-side he found that he knew not what to say, Dino looked up at him with eyes full of grave, wistful affection, and suddenly smiled, as if something unwontedly pleasant had dawned upon his mind.

"Ah," he said, "at last--you know."

"Yes, I know," said Brian.

"And you are sorry? I am sorry, too."

"No," said Brian, finding it rather difficult to express himself at that moment; "I am not sorry that you are the man who will bear the name of Luttrell, that I have wrongly borne so long. I suppose--from what the Prior says--that your claim can be proved; if I were in my old position I should be the first to beg you to prove it, and to give up my name and place to you if justice required it. As it is, I do not stand in your way, because the old Brian Luttrell--the one who killed his brother, you know--is dead."

"But if you were in your old position, could you still pardon me and be friendly with me, even if I claimed my rights?"

"I hope so," said Brian. "I hope that I should not be so ungenerous as to look upon you as an enemy because you wished to take your own place amongst your own kindred. You ought rather to look upon me as your enemy, because I have occupied your place so long."

"You are good--you are generous--you are noble!" said Dino, his eyes suddenly filling with tears. "If all the world were like you! And do you know what I shall do if the estate ever becomes mine? You shall take the half--you may take it all, if it please you better. But we will divide it, at any rate, and be to each other as brothers, shall we not? I have thought of you so often!"

He spoke ardently, eagerly; pressing Brian's hands between his own from time to time. It was from an impulse as strong and simple as any of Dino's own that Brian suddenly stooped down and kissed him on the forehead. The caress seemed natural enough to Dino; it was as the ratification of some sacred bond to the English-bred Brian Luttrell.

Henceforth, the two became to each other as brothers, indeed; the interests of one became the interests of the other. Before long, Dino learnt from Brian himself the whole of his sad story. He lay with shining eyes and parted lips, his hand clasped in Brian's, listening to his account of the events of the last two years. The only thing that Brian did not touch upon was his love for Elizabeth. That wound was too recent to be shown, even to Dino, who had leaped all at once, as it seemed, into the position of his bosom friend. But Dino guessed it all.

As Brian walked back to his lodgings from the hospital, he was haunted by a verse of Scripture which had sprung up in his mind, and which he repeated with a certain sense of pleasure as soon as he recollected the exact words. "And it came to pass"--so ran the verse that he remembered--"when he had made an end of speaking unto Saul that the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul." He liked the words. He looked them out in a Bible belonging to his landlady when he reached home, and he found another verse that touched him, too. "Then Jonathan and David made a covenant, because he loved him as his own soul."

Had not Brian Luttrell and Dino Vasari made a covenant?

The practical result of their friendship was an important one to Brian.

He sacrificed his passage money, and did not sail on the following day for Pernambuco.

CHAPTER XXVI.

ELIZABETH'S CONFESSION.

"I wonder what she wants with me," said Percival Heron, meditatively. He was sitting at his solitary breakfast-table, having pushed from him an empty coffee-cup and several newspapers: a letter from Elizabeth was in his hands. It consisted of a few lines only, and the words that had roused his wonderment were these:--

"I am very anxious to see you. Could you come down to Strathleckie at once? If not, pray come as soon as possible."

"I suppose she is too true a woman to say exactly what she wants," said Percival, a gay smile curling his lips beneath his black moustache.

"Perhaps she won't be very angry with me this time if I press her a little on the subject of our marriage. We parted on not very good terms last time, rather _en delicatesse_, if I'm not mistaken, after quarrelling over our old subject of dispute, the tutor. Well, my lady's behests are to be obeyed. I'll wire an acceptance of the invitation and start to-night."

He made the long journey very comfortably, grumbling now and then in a good-tempered way at Elizabeth for sending for him in so abrupt a fashion; but on the whole he felt pleased that she had done so. It showed that she had confidence in him. And he was very anxious for the engagement to be made public: its announcement would be a sort of justification to him in allowing her to do as much as she had done for his family. Percival had, in truth, always protested against her generosity, but failed in persuading his father not to accept it. Mr.

Heron was too simple-minded to see why he should not take Elizabeth's gifts, and Mrs. Heron did not see the force of Percival's arguments at all.

"Elizabeth is not here, then," he said to Kitty, who met him at the station.

"No," answered Kitty in rather a mysterious voice. "She wouldn't come."

"Why wouldn't she come?" said Percival, sharply. He followed his sister into the waggonette as he spoke: he did not care about driving, and gladly resigned the reins to the coachman.

"I can't tell you. I don't think she is well."

"Not well? What's the matter?"

"I don't know. She always has a headache. Did she want you to come, Percival?"

"She wrote to ask me."

"I'm glad of that."

"Kitty, will you have the goodness to say what you mean, instead of hinting?"

Kitty looked frightened.

"I don't mean anything," she said, hurriedly, while a warm wave of colour spread itself over her cheeks and brow.

"Don't mean anything? That's nonsense. You should not say anything then.

Out with it, Kitty. What do you think is wrong with Elizabeth?"