"Many years." Brother Dino looked at the Englishman with some expression in his eyes which Brian did not remark at the moment, but which recurred afterwards to his memory as being singular. There was sympathy in it, pity, perhaps, and, above all, an intense curiosity. "Many years ago my friends knew him; not I. The Signor Luttrell--he lives still in your country?"

"No. He died eight years ago."

"And----"

A question evidently trembled on the Italian's lips, but he restrained himself. He could not ask it when he saw the pain and the dread in Brian's face. But Brian answered the question that he had meant to ask.

"My brother is dead, also. My mother is living and well."

Then he wheeled round and looked at the landing-stage, to which they were now very close. The stranger respected his emotion; he glanced once at the band of crape on Brian's arm, and then walked quietly away. When he returned it was only to say good-bye.

"I should like to see you again," Brian said to him. "Perhaps I may find you out and visit you some day. You find your life peaceful and happy, no doubt?"

"Perfectly."

"I envy you," said Brian.

They parted. Brian went away to his hotel, leaving the young seminarist still standing on the deck--a black figure with his pale hands crossed upon his breast in the glow of the evening sunshine, awaiting the arrival of his superior as a soldier waits for his commanding officer.

Brian looked back at him once and waved his hand: he had not been so much interested in anyone for what seemed to him almost an eternity of time.

Sitting sadly and alone in the hotel that night, he fell to pondering over some of the words that the young Italian had spoken, and the questions that he had asked. He wondered greatly what was the service that his father had rendered to these Italians, and blamed himself a little for not asking more about the young man's history. He knew well enough that his parents had once spent two or three years abroad--chiefly in Italy; he himself had been born in an Italian town, and had spent almost the whole of the first year of his life in a little village at the foot of the Apennines. Was it not near a place called San Stefano, indeed, that he had been nursed by an Italian peasant woman?

Brian determined, in a vague and dreamy way, that at some future time he would visit San Stefano, find out the history of his new acquaintance, and see the place where he had been born at the same time. That is if ever he felt inclined to do anything of the sort again. At present--and especially as the temporary interest inspired by the young Italian died away--he felt as if he cared too little for his future to resolve upon doing anything. There was a letter waiting for him, addressed in Mr.

Colquhoun's handwriting. He had not even the heart to open it and see what the lawyer had to say. Something drew him next morning towards that wonderful old building of red stone, which looks as if it were hourly crumbling away, and yet has lasted so many hundred years, the cathedral of Mainz. The service was just over; the organ still murmured soft, harmonious cadences. The incense was wafted to his nostrils as he walked down the echoing nave. There had been a mass for the dead and a funeral that morning; part of the cathedral was draped in black cloth and ornamented by hundreds of wax candles, which flared in the sunlight and dropped wax on the uneven pavement below. There was an oppressiveness in the atmosphere to Brian; everything spoke to him of death and decay in that strange, old city, which might veritably be called a city of the dead. He turned aside into the cloisters, and listened mechanically while an old man discoursed to him in crabbed German concerning Fastrada's tomb and the carved face of the minstrel Frauenlob upon the cloister wall. Presently, however, the guide showed him a little door, and led him out into the pleasant grassy space round which the cloisters had been built. He was conscious of a great feeling of relief. The blue sky was above him again, and his feet were on the soft, green grass.

There were tombstones amongst the grass, but they were overgrown with ivy and blossoming rose-trees. Brian sat down with a great sigh upon one of the old blocks of marble that strewed the ground, and told the guide to leave him there awhile. The man thought that he wanted to sketch the place, as many English artists did, and retired peacefully enough. Brian had no intention of sketching: he wanted only to feel himself alone, to watch the gay, little sparrows as they leaped from spray to spray of the monthly rose-trees, the waving of the long grass between the tombstones, and the glimpse of blue sky beyond the mouldering reddish walls on either hand.

As he sat there, almost as though he were waiting for some expected visitor, the cloister doors opened once more, and two or three men in black gowns came out. They were all priests except one, and this one was the young Italian whose acquaintance Brian had made upon the steamer.

They were talking rapidly together; one of them seemed to be questioning the young man, and he was replying with the serene yet earnest expression of countenance which had impressed Brian so favourably. At first they stood still; by-and-bye they crossed the quadrangle, and here Brother Dino fell somewhat behind the others. Following a sudden impulse, Brian suddenly rose as he came near, and addressed him.

"Can you speak to me? I want to ask you about my father----"

He spoke in English, but the young priest replied in Italian.

"I cannot speak to you now. Wait till we meet at San Stefano."

The words might be abrupt, but the smile which followed them was so sweet, so benign, that Brian was only struck with a sudden sense of the beauty of the expression upon that keen Italian face. "God be with you!"

said Brother Dino, as he passed on. He stretched out his hand; it held one of the faintly-pink, sweet roses, which he had plucked near the cloister door. He almost thrust it into Brian's passive fingers. "God be with you," he said, in his native tongue once more. "Farewell, brother."

In another moment he was gone. Brian had the green enclosure, the birds and the roses to himself once more.

He looked down at the little overblown flower in his hand and carried it mechanically to his nostrils. It was very sweet.

"Why does he think that I shall go to San Stefano?" he asked himself.

"What is San Stefano to me? Why should I meet him there?"

He sat down again, holding the flower loosely in one hand, and resting his head upon the other. The old langour and sickness of heart were coming back upon him; the momentary excitement had passed away. He would have given a great deal to be able to rouse himself from the depression which had taken such firm hold of his mind; but he failed to discover any means of doing so. He had a vague, morbid fancy that Brother Dino could help him to master his own trouble--he knew not how; but this hope had failed him. He did not even care to go to San Stefano.

After a little time he remembered the letter in his pocket, addressed to him in Mr. Colquhoun's handwriting. He took it out and looked at it for a few minutes. Why should Mr. Colquhoun write to him unless he had something unpleasant to say? Perhaps he was only forwarding some letters. This quiet, grassy quadrangle was a good place in which to read letters, he thought. He would open the envelope and see what Colquhoun had to say.

He opened it very slowly.

Then he started, and his hand began to tremble. The only letter enclosed was one in his mother's handwriting. Upon a slip of blue paper were a few words from the lawyer. "Forwarded to Mr. Brian Luttrell at Mrs.

Luttrell's request on the 25th of October, 1877, by James Colquhoun."

Brian opened the letter. It had no formal opening, but it was carefully signed and dated, and ran as follows:--

"They tell me that I have done you an injury by doubting your word, and that I am an unnatural mother in saying--even in my own chamber--what I thought. I have an excuse, which no one knows but myself and James Colquhoun. I think it is well under present circumstances to tell you what it is.

"I am a strong believer in race. I think that the influence of blood is far more powerful than those of training or education, how strong soever they may be. Therefore, I was never astonished although I was grieved, to see that your love for Richard was not so great as that of brothers should have been----"

"It is false!" said Brian, with a groan, crushing the letter in his hand, and letting it fall to his side. "No brother could have loved Richard more than I."

Presently he took up the letter again and read.

"Because I knew," it went on, "though many a woman in my position would not have guessed the truth, that you were not Richard's brother at all: that you were not my son."

Again Brian paused, this time in utter bewilderment.

"Is my mother mad" he said to himself. "I--not her son? Who am I, then?"

"I repeat what I have said,"--so ran Mrs. Luttrell's letter--"with all the emphasis which I can lay upon the words. The matter may not be capable of proof, but the truth remains. You are not my son, not Edward Luttrell's son, not Richard Luttrell's brother--no relation of ours at all; not even of English or Scottish blood. Your parents were Italian peasant-folk; and my son, Brian Luttrell, lies buried in the churchyard of an Italian village at the foot of the Western Apennines. You are a native of San Stefano, and your mother was my nurse."

CHAPTER XI.

ON A MOUNTAIN-SIDE.

"When my child Brian was born we were renting a villa near San Stefano, and were somewhat far removed from any English doctor. My doctor was, therefore, an Italian; and what was worse, he was an Italian monk. I hate foreigners, and I hate monks; so you may imagine for yourself the way in which I looked upon him. No doubt he had a hand in the plot that has ended so miserably for me and mine, so fortunately for you.

"My Brian was nursed by our gardener's wife, a young Italian woman called Vincenza, whose child was about the age of mine. I saw Vincenza's child several times. Its eyes were brown (like yours); my baby's eyes were blue. It was when they were both about two months old that I was seized with a malarious fever, then very prevalent. They kept the children away from me for months. At last I insisted upon seeing them.

The baby had been ill, they told me; I must be prepared for a great change in him. Even then my heart misgave me, I knew not why.

"Vincenza brought a child and laid it in my lap, I looked at it, and then I looked at her. She was deadly white, and her eyes were red with tears. I did not know why. Of course I see now that she had enough of the mother's heart in her to be loath to give up her child. For it was her child that she had placed upon my knee. I knew it from the very first.

"'Take this child away and give me my own,' I said. 'This is not mine.'

"The woman threw up her hands and ran out of the room. I thought she had gone to fetch my baby, and I remained with her child--a puny, crying thing--upon my knees. But she did not return. Presently my husband came in, and I appealed to him. 'Tell Vincenza to take her wretched, little baby away,' I said. 'I want my own. This is her child; not mine.'

"My husband looked at me, pityingly, as it seemed to my eyes. Suddenly the truth burst upon me. I sprang to my feet and threw the baby away from me upon the bed. 'My child is dead,' I cried. 'Tell me the truth; my child is dead.' And then I knew no more for days and weeks.

"When I recovered, I found, to my utter horror, that Vincenza and her child had not left the house. My words had been taken for the ravings of a mad woman. Every one believed the story of this wicked Italian woman who declared that it was her child who had died, mine that had lived! I knew better. Could I be mistaken in the features of my own child? Had my Brian those great, dark, brown eyes? I saw how it was. The Italians had plotted to put their child in my Brian's place; they had forgotten that a mother's instinct would know her own amongst a thousand. I accused them openly of their wickedness; and, in spite of their tears and protestations, I saw from their guilty looks that it was true. My own Brian was dead, and I was left with Vincenza's child, and expected to love it as my own.

"For nobody believed me. My husband never believed me. He maintained to the very last that you were his child and mine. I fought like a wild beast for my dead child's rights; but even I was mastered in the end.

They threatened me--yes, James Colquhoun, in my husband's name, threatened me--with a madhouse, if I did not put away from me the suspicion that I had conceived. They assured me that Brian was not dead; that it was Vincenza's child that had died; that I was incapable of distinguishing one baby from another--and so on. They said that I should be separated from my own boy--my Richard, whom I tenderly loved--unless I put away from me this 'insane fancy,' and treated that Italian baby as my son. Oh, they were cruel to me--very cruel. But they got their way. I yielded because I could not bear to leave my husband and my boy. I let them place the child in my arms, and I learnt to call it Brian. I buried the secret in my own heart, but I was never once moved from my opinion.

My own child was buried at San Stefano, and the boy that I took back with me to England was the gardener's son. You were that boy.

"I was silent about your parentage, but I never loved you, and my husband knew that I did not. For that reason, I suppose, he made you his favourite. He petted you, caressed you more than was reasonable or right. Only once did any conversation on the subject pass between us. He had refused to punish you when you were a boy of ten, and had quarrelled with Richard. 'Mark my words,' I said to him, 'there will be more quarrelling, and with worse results, if you do not put a stop to it now.