The inexorable sternness of his voice struck the listeners with amaze.

Pale as a ghost, trembling like an aspen leaf, Hugo emerged from his hiding-place, and confronted the mother and the son.

CHAPTER XXXII.

RETRIBUTION.

"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 He will learn the truth--that I have withdrawn my claim; then he and Miss Murray must settle the matter of property between them.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.