"Kiss me, Angela," he said, "for the last time. You will never do it again.... Are you all listening? I wish you and everyone to know that it was I--I--who shot Richard Luttrell in the wood; not Brian. We fired at the same moment. It was not Brian; do you hear?"

There was a dead silence. Then Brian staggered as if he would have fallen, and caught at Percival's arm. But the weakness was only for a moment. He said, simply, "I thank God," and stood erect again. Mr.

Colquhoun put on his spectacles and stared at him. Angela, pale to the lips, did not move; Hugo's head was still resting against her shoulder.

It was Brian's voice that broke the silence, and there was pity and kindliness in its tone.

"Never mind, Hugo," he said, bending over him. "It was an accident; it might have been done by either of us. God knows I sorrowed bitterly when I thought my hand had done it; perhaps you have sorrowed, too. At any rate, you are trying to make amends, and if I have anything personally to forgive----"

"Wait," said Hugo, in his feeble yet imperious voice, with long pauses between the brief, broken sentences. "You do not understand. I did it on purpose. I meant to kill him. He had struck me, and I meant to be revenged. I thought I should suffer for it--and I did not care.... I did not mean Brian to be blamed; but I dared not tell the truth.... Put me down, Angela; I killed him, do you hear?"

But she did not move.

"Did you wish me to write this statement?" said Mr. Colquhoun, in his dryest manner. "If so, I have done it."

"Give me the pen," said Hugo, when he had heard what had been written.

He took it between his feeble fingers. He could scarcely write; but he managed to scrawl his name at the bottom of the paper on which his confession was recorded, and two of the persons present signed their names as witnesses.

"Tell Mrs. Luttrell," said Hugo, very faintly, when this was over. Then he lay back, closed his eyes, and remained for some time without speaking.

"I have something else to tell," he said, at last. "Kitty--you know, she married me ... but it was against her own will. She did not elope with me. I carried her off.... She will explain it all now. Do you hear, Kitty? Tell anything you like. It will not hurt me. You never loved me, and you never would have done. But nobody will ever love you as I did; remember that. And I think that's all."

"Have you nothing to say," asked Mr. Colquhoun in very solemn tones, "about your conduct to Dino Vasari and Mrs. Luttrell?"

"Nothing to you."

"But everything to God," murmured Angela. He raised his eyes to her face and did not speak. "Pray for His forgiveness, Hugo, and He will grant it. Even if your sins are as scarlet they shall be as white as snow."

"I want your forgiveness," he whispered, "and nothing more."

"I will give you mine," she said, and the tears fell from her eyes as she spoke; "and Brian will give you his: yes, Brian, yes. As we hope ourselves to be forgiven, Hugo, we forgive you; and we will pray with you for God's forgiveness, too."

She had taken Brian's hand and laid it upon Hugo's, and for a moment the three hands rested together in one strangely loving clasp. And then Hugo whispered, "Pray for me if you like: I--I dare not pray."

And, forgetful of any human presence but that of this sick, sinful soul about to come before its Maker, Angela prayed aloud.

He died in the early dawn, with his hand still clasped in hers. The short madness of his love for Kitty seemed to have faded from his memory. Perhaps all earthly things had grown rather faint to him: certain it was that his attempt on the lives of Dino and of Mrs.

Luttrell did not seem to weigh very heavily on his conscience. It was the thought of Richard Luttrell that haunted him more than all beside.

It was with a long, shuddering moan of fear--and, as Angela hoped (but only faintly hoped), of penitence--that his soul went out into the darkness of eternity.

With Hugo Luttrell's death, the troubles of the family at Netherglen seemed to disappear. Old Mrs. Luttrell's powers of speech remained with her, although she could not use her limbs; and the hardness and stubbornness of her character had undergone a marvellous change. She wept when she heard of Dino's death; but her affection for Brian, and also for Elizabeth, proved to be strong and unwavering. Her great desire--that the properties of Netherglen and Strathleckie should be united--was realised in a way of which she had never dreamt. Brian himself believed firmly that he was of Italian parentage and that Dino Vasari was the veritable heir of the Luttrells; but the notion was now so painful to Mrs. Luttrell, that he never spoke of it, and agreed, as he said to Elizabeth, to be recognised as the master of Netherglen and Strathleckie under false pretences. "For the whole estate, to tell the truth, is yours, not mine," he said. And she: "What does that matter, since we are man and wife! There is no 'mine and thine' in the case. It is all yours and all mine; for we are one."

In fact, no words were more applicable to Brian and Elizabeth than the quaint lines of the old poet:

"They were so one, it never could be said Which of them ruled and which of them obeyed.

He ruled because she would obey; and she, By her obeying, ruled as well as he.

There ne'er was known between them a dispute Save which the other's will should execute."

The Herons returned to London shortly after Elizabeth's marriage, and with them Kitty returned, too. But it was a very different Kitty from the one who had frolicked at Strathleckie, or pined at Netherglen. The widowed Mrs. Hugo Luttrell was a gentler, perhaps a sadder, woman than Kitty Heron had promised to be: but she was a sweeter woman, and one who formed the chief support and comfort to her father's large and irregular household, as it passed from its home in Scotland to a more permanent abode in Kensington. For the house in Gower-street, dear as it was to Kitty's heart, was not the one which Mr. and Mrs. Heron preferred to any other.

Little Jack, now slowly recovering from his affection of the spine, found in Kitty the motherliness which he had sorely missed when Elizabeth first went away. His affection was very sweet to Kitty. She had never hitherto been more than a playmate to her step-brothers: she was destined henceforward to be their chief counsellor and friend. And the little baby-sister was almost as a child of her own to Kitty's heart.

It was not until more than a year of quiet life in her father's home had passed away that she saw much of Rupert Vivian. She was very shy and silent with him when he began to seek her out again. He thought her a little cold, and fancied that a blind man could find no favour in her eyes. It was Angela--that universal peacemaker--who at last set matters straight between the two.

"Kitty," she said, one day when Kitty was calling upon her, "why are you so distant and unfriendly to my brother?"

"I did not mean to be," said Kitty, with rising colour.

"But, indeed, you are. And he thinks--he thinks--that he has offended you."

"Oh, no! How could he!" ejaculated Kitty. Whereat Angela smiled. "You must tell him not to think any such thing, Angela, please."

"You must tell him yourself. He might not believe me," said Angela.

Kitty was very simple in some things still. She took Angela's advice literally.

"Shall I tell him now--to-day?" she said, seriously.

"Yes, now, to-day," said Angela. "You will find him in the library."

"But he will think it so strange if I go to him there."

"Not at all. I would not send you to him if I did not know what he would feel. Kitty, he is not happy. Can you not make him a little happier?"

And then Angela, who had meanwhile led her guest to the library door, opened it and made her enter, almost against her will. She stood for a moment inside the door, doubting whether to go or stay. Then she looked at Rupert, and decided that she would stay.

He was alone. He was leaning his head on one hand in an attitude of listlessness, which showed that he was out of spirits.

"Is that you, Angela?" he said.

"No," said Kitty, softly. "It's not Angela: it's me."

She was very ungrammatical, but her tone was sweet, and Rupert smiled.

His face looked as if the sunshine had fallen on it.

"Me, is it?" he said, half-rising. Then, more gravely--"I am very glad to see you--no, not to see you: that's not it, is it?--to have you here."

"Are you?" said Kitty.

There were tears in her voice.

"Am I not?" He was holding her hand now, and she did not draw it away even when he raised it, somewhat hesitatingly, to his lips. He went on in a very low voice:--"It would make the happiness of my life to have you always with me. But I must not hope for that."

"Why not?" said Kitty, giving him both hands instead of one; "when it would make mine, too."

And after that there was no more to be said.