don't say that, Hugo," began the second brother, with a hasty desire to pave the way for reconciliation.

"Why not?" said Hugo.

The look of abject fear was dying out of his face. The worst, he thought, was over. He drew himself up, crossed his arms, and tried to meet Brian's reproachful eyes with confidence, but in this attempt he was not successful. In spite of himself, the eyelids dropped until the long, black lashes almost touched the smooth, olive cheek, across which passed a transient flush of shame. This sign of feeling touched Brian; the lad was surely not hopelessly bad if he could blush for his sins. But Richard went on ruthlessly.

"You need expect no further help from me. I own you as a relation no longer. You have disgraced the name you bear. Don't let me see you again in my house." He was too indignant, too much excited, to speak in anything but short, sharp sentences, each of which seemed more bitter than the last. Richard Luttrell was little concerned for Hugo's welfare, much for the honour of the family. "Go," he said, "at once, and I will not publish your shameful conduct to the world. If you return to my house, if you seek to establish any communication with members of my family, I shall not keep your secret."

"Speak for yourself, Richard," said his brother, warmly, "not for me. I hope that Hugo will do better in time; and I don't mean to give him up. You must make an exception for me when you speak of separating him from the family."

"I make no exception," said Richard.

Brian drew nearer to his brother, and uttered his next words in a lower tone.

"Think what you are doing," he said. "You will drive him to desperation, and, after all, he is only a boy of nineteen. Quite young enough to repent and reform, if we are not too hard upon him now. Do as you think fit for yourself and your own household, but you must not stand in the way of what I can do for him, little though that may be."

"I stand to what I have said," answered Richard, harshly. "I will have no communication between him and you." Then, folding his arms, he looked grimly and sardonically into Brian's face. "I trust neither of you," he said. "We all know that you are only too easily led by those whom you like to be led by, and he is a young reprobate. Choose for yourself, of course; I have no claim to control you, only, if you choose to be friendly with him, I shall cut off the supplies to you as well as to him, and I shall expose him publicly."

Brian took away the hand which, in the ardour of his pleading, he had laid upon Richard's arm. Had it not been for Hugo's sake, he would have quitted the spot in dudgeon. He knew in his heart that it was useless to argue with Richard in his present state of passion. But for Hugo's sake he swallowed his resentment, and made one more trial.

"If he repents——" he began doubtfully, and never finished the sentence.

"I don't repent," said Hugo.

His voice was hoarse and broken, but insolently defiant. By a great effort of will he fixed his haggard eyes full on Richard Luttrell's face as he spoke. Richard shrugged his shoulders.

"You hear?" he said, briefly to his brother.

"I hear," Brian answered, in a low, pained tone.

With an air of bravado Hugo stooped and picked up the pocket-book which still lay at his feet. He weighed it in his hand, and then laughed aloud, though not very steadily.

"It is full still," he said. "It will be useful, no doubt. I am much obliged to you, Cousin Richard."

The action, and the words accompanying it, shocked even Richard, who professed to think nothing too bad for Hugo's powers. He tossed his head back and turned away with a contemptuous "Good Heavens!" Brian walked for a few paces distance, and then stood still, with his back to his cousin. Hugo glanced from one to the other with uneasiness, which he tried to veil by an assumption of disdain, and dropped the purse furtively into his pocket. He was ill-pleased to see Richard turn back with lowered eyebrows, and a look of stern determination upon his bearded face.

"Brian," said Luttrell, more quietly than he had yet spoken, "I think I see mother coming down the road. Will you meet her and lead her away from the loch, without telling her the reason? I don't wish her to meet this—this gentleman—again."

The intonation of his voice, the look that he bestowed upon Hugo at the words that he emphasised, made the lad quiver from head to foot with rage. Brian walked away without turning to bestow another glance or word on Hugo. It was a significant action, and one which the young fellow felt, with a throb of mingled shame and hatred, that he could understand. He clenched his hands until the dent of the nails brought blood, without knowing what he did; then made a step or two in another direction, as if to leave the place. Richard's commanding voice made him pause.

"Stop!" said Luttrell. "Wait until I give you leave to go."

Hugo waited, with his face turned towards the shining waters of the loch. The purple mist amongst the distant hills, the golden light upon the rippling water, the reddening foliage of the trees, had never been more beautiful than they were that morning. But their beauty was lost upon Hugo, whose mind was filled with hard and angry protests against the treatment that he was receiving, and a great dread of the somewhat desolate future.

Richard Luttrell moved about restlessly, stopping short, now and then, to watch the figure in black which he had discerned upon the road near the house. He saw Brian meet it; the two stood and spoke together for a few minutes; then Brian gave his arm to his mother and led her back to the house. When they were quite out of sight, Luttrell turned back to his cousin and spoke again.

"Now that I have got Brian out of the way," he said, as he laid an iron hand on Hugo's arm, "I am free to punish you as I choose. Mind, I would have spared you this if you had not had the insufferable insolence to pick up that pocket-book in my presence. Since you were shameless enough for that, it is plain what sort of chastisement you deserve. Take that—and that—and that!"

He lifted his hunting-crop as he spoke, and brought it down heavily on the lad's shoulders. Hugo uttered a cry like that of a wild animal in pain, and fought with hands, feet, teeth even, against the infliction of the stinging blows; but he fought in vain. His cousin's superior strength mastered him from the beginning; he felt like an infant in Richard's powerful grasp. Not until the storm of furious imprecations in which the lad at first vented his impotent rage had died away into stifled moans and sobs of pain, did Richard's vengeance come to an end. He flung the boy from him, broke the whip between his strong hands, and hurled the fragments far into the water, then walked away to the house, leaving Hugo to sob his heart out, like a passionate child, with face down in the short, green grass.

CHAPTER III.

HUGO LUTTRELL.

Hugo's Sicilian mother had transmitted to him a nature at once fierce and affectionate, passionate and cunning. Half-child, half-savage, he seemed to be bound by none of the restraints that civilised men early learn to place upon their instincts. He expressed his anger, his sorrow, his love, with all the abandon that characterised the natives of those sunny shores where the first years of his life were spent. Profoundly simple in his modes of feeling, he was yet dominated by the habits of slyness and trickery which seem to be inherent in the truly savage breast. He had the savage's love of secrecy and instinctive suspicion of his fellow-creatures, the savage's swift passions and vindictiveness, the savage's innate difficulty in comprehending the laws of honour and morality. It is possible to believe that, with good training from his infancy, Hugo Luttrell might have developed into a trustworthy and straightforward man, shrinking from dishonesty and cowardice as infamy