Oh, why had she not made her warning to Vivian a little stronger? Why had Brian Luttrell not come home that night to Netherglen? It was too late to expect him now.

Her heart beat fast and her hands trembled, but she went resolutely enough to the dressing-room from which Hugo had done his best to exclude her. The door was slightly ajar: oh wonderful good fortune! and the fire was out. The room was in darkness; and the door leading into Mrs.

Luttrell's apartment stood open--she had a full view of its warmly lighted space.

She remained motionless for a few minutes: then seeing her opportunity, she glided behind the thick curtain that screened the window. Here she could see the great white bed with its heavy hangings of crimson damask, and the head of the sick woman in its frilled cap lying on the pillows: she could see also her husband's face and figure, as he stood beside the little table on which Mrs. Luttrell's medicine bottles were usually kept, and she shivered at the sight.

His face wore its craftiest and most sinister expression. His eyes were narrowed like those of a cat about to spring: the lines of his face were set in a look of cruel malice, which Kitty had learned to know. What was he doing? He had a tumbler in one hand, and a tiny phial in the other: he was measuring out some drops of a fluid into the glass.

He set down the little bottle on the table, and held up the tumbler to the light. Then he took a carafe and poured a tea-spoonful of water on the liquid. Kitty could see the phial on the table very distinctly. It bore in red letters the inscription: "Poison." And again she asked herself: what was Hugo going to do?

Breathlessly she watched. He smiled a little to himself, smelt the liquid, and held it once more towards the light, as if to judge with his narrowed eyes of the quantity required. Then, with a noiseless foot and watchful eye, he moved towards the bed, still holding the tumbler in his hand. He looked down for a moment at the pale and wrinkled face upon the pillow; then he spoke in a peculiarly smooth and ingratiating tone of voice.

"Aunt Margaret," he said, "I have brought you something to make you sleep."

He had placed the glass to her lips, when a movement in the next room made him start and lift his eyes. In another moment his wife's hands were on his arm, and her eyes were blazing into his own. The liquor in the glass was spilt upon the bed. Hugo turned deadly pale.

"What do you mean? What do you want?" he said, with a look of mingled rage and terror. "What are you doing here?"

"I have come to save her--from you." She was not afraid, now that the words were said, now that she had seen the guilty look upon his face.

She confronted him steadily; she placed herself between him and the bed.

Hugo uttered a low but emphatic malediction on her "meddlesome folly."

"Why are you not in your room?" he said. "I locked you in."

"I was not there. Thank God that I was not."

"And why should you thank God?" said Hugo, who stood looking at her with an ugly expression of baffled cunning on his face. "I was doing no harm.

I was giving her a sleeping-draught."

"Would she ever have waked?" asked Kitty, in a whisper.

She looked into her husband's eyes as she spoke, and she knew from that moment that the accusation was based on no idle fancy of her own. In heart, at least, he was a murderer.

But the question called forth his worst passions. He cursed her again--bitterly, blasphemously--then raised his hand and struck her with his closed fist between the eyes. He knew what he was doing: she fell to the ground, stunned and bleeding. He thrust her out of his way; she lay on the floor between the bed and the window, moaning a little, but for a time utterly unconscious of all that went on around her.

Hugo's preparations had been spoilt. He was obliged to begin them over again. But this time his nerve was shaken: he blundered a little once or twice. Kitty's low moan was in his ears: the paralysed woman upon the bed was regarding him with a look of frozen horror in her wide-open eyes. She could not move: she could not speak, but she could understand.

He turned his back upon the two, and measured out the drops once more into the glass. His hand shook as he did so. He was longer about his work than he had been before. So long that Kitty came to herself a little, and watched him with a horrible fascination. First the drops: then the water; then the sleeping-draught, from which the sleeper was not to awake, would be ready.

Kitty did not know how she found strength or courage to do at that moment what she did. It seemed to her that fear, sickness, pain, all passed away, and left her only the determination to make one desperate effort to defeat her husband's ends.

She knew that the window by which she lay was unshuttered. She rose from the ground, she reached the window-sill and threw up the sash, almost before Hugo knew what she was doing. Then she sent forth that terrible, agonised cry for help, which reached the ears of the four men who were even at that moment waiting and listening at the garden door.

Hugo dropped the glass. It was shivered to pieces on the floor, and its contents stained the rug on which it fell. He strode to the window and stopped his wife's mouth with his hands, then dragged her away from it, and spoke some bitter furious words.

"Do you want to hang me?" he said. "Keep quiet, or I'll make you repent your night's work----"

And then he paused. He had heard the sound of opening doors, of heavy steps and strange voices upon the stairs. He turned hastily to the dressing-room, and he was confronted on the threshold by the determined face and flashing eyes of his cousin, Brian Luttrell. He cast a hurried glance beyond and around him; but he saw no help at hand. Kitty had sunk fainting to the ground: there were other faces--severe and menacing enough--behind Brian's: he felt that he was caught like a wild beast in a trap. His only course was to brazen out the matter as best he could; and this, in the face of Brian Luttrell, of Percival Heron, of old Mr.

Colquhoun, it was hard to do. In spite of himself his face turned pale, and his knees shook as he spoke in a hoarse and grating tone.

"What does this disturbance mean?" he said. "Why do you come rushing into Mrs. Luttrell's room at this hour of the night?"

"Because," said Brian, taking him by the shoulder, "your wife has called for help, and we believe that she needs it. Because we know that you are one of the greatest scoundrels that ever trod the face of the earth.

Because we are going to bring you to justice. That is why!"

"These are very fine accusations," said Hugo, with a pale sneer, "but I think you will find a difficulty in proving them, Mr.--Vasari."

"I shall have at least no difficulty in proving that you stole money and forged my brother's name three years ago," said Brian, in a voice that was terrible in its icy scorn. "I shall have no difficulty in proving to the world's satisfaction that you shamefully cheated Dino Vasari, and that you twice--yes, twice--tried to murder him, in order to gain your own ends. Hugo Luttrell, you are a coward, a thief, a would-be murderer; and unless you can prove that you were in my mother's room with no evil intent (which I believe to be impossible) you shall be branded with all these names in the world's face."

"There is no proof--there is no legal proof," cried Hugo, boldly. But his lips were white.

"But there is plenty of moral proof, young man," said Mr. Colquhoun's dry voice. "Quite enough to blast your reputation. And what does this empty bottle mean and this broken glass? Perhaps your wife can tell us that."

There was a momentary silence. Mr. Colquhoun held up the little bottle, and pointed with raised eyebrows to the label upon it. Heron was supporting his sister in his arms and trying to revive her: Fane and the impassive constable barred the way between Hugo and the door.

In that pause, a strange, choked sound came from the bed. For the first time for many months Mrs. Luttrell had slightly raised her hand. She said the name that had been upon her lips so many times during the last few weeks, and her eyes were fixed upon the man whom for a lifetime she had called her son.

"Brian!" she said, "Brian!"

And he, suddenly turning pale, relaxed his hold upon Hugo's arm and walked to the bed-side. "Mother," he said, leaning over her, "did you call me? Did you speak to me?"

She looked at him with wistful eyes: her nerveless fingers tried to press his hand. "Brian," she murmured. Then, with a great spasmodic effort: "My son!"

The attention of the others had been concentrated upon this little scene; and for the moment both Fane and Mr. Colquhoun drew nearer to the bed, leaving the door of Mrs. Luttrell's bed-room unguarded. The constable was standing in the dressing-room. It was then that Hugo saw his chance, although it was one which a sane man would scarcely have thought of taking. He made a rush for the bed-room door.

Whither should he go? The front door was bolted and barred; but he supposed that the back door would be open. He never thought of the entrance to the garden by which Brian Luttrell had got into the house.

He dashed down the staircase; he was nimbler and lighter-footed than Fane, who was immediately behind him, and he knew the tortuous ways and winding passages of the house, as Fane did not. He gained on his pursuer. Down the dark stone passages he fled: the door into the back premises stood wide open. There was a flight of steep stone steps, which led straight to a kitchen and thence into the yard. He would have time to unbolt the kitchen door, even if it were not already open, for Fane was far, far behind.

But there was no light, and there was a sudden turn in the steps which he had forgotten. Fane reached the head of the staircase in time to hear a cry, a heavy crashing fall, a groan. Then all was still.

CHAPTER LI.

A LAST CONFESSION.

They carried him upstairs again, handling him gently, and trying to discover the extent of his injuries; but they did not guess--until, in the earliest hours of the day, a doctor came from Dunmuir to Netherglen--that Hugo Luttrell's hours on earth were numbered. He had broken his back, and although he might linger in agony for a short time, the inevitable end was near. As the dawn came creeping into the room in which he lay, he opened his eyes, and the watchers saw that he shuddered as he looked round.

"Why have they brought me here?" he said.

No one knew why. It was the nearest and most convenient room for the purpose. Brian had not been by to interpose, or he might have chosen another place. For it was the room to which Richard Luttrell had been carried when they brought him back to Netherglen.

Kitty was beside him, and, with her, Elizabeth, who had come from Dunmuir on hearing of the accident. These two women, knowing as they did the many evil deeds which he had committed, did not refuse him their gentle ministry. When they saw the pain that he suffered, their hearts bled for him. They could, not love him: they could not forgive him for all that he had done; but they pitied him. And most of all they pitied him when they knew that the fiat had gone forth that he must die.

He knew it, too. He knew it from their faces: he had no need to ask. The hopelessness upon his face, the pathetic look of suffering in his eyes, touched even Kitty's heart. She asked him once if she could do anything to help him. They were alone together, and the answer was as unexpected as it was brief: "I want Angela."

They telegraphed for her, although they hardly thought that she would reach the house before he died. But the fact that she was coming seemed to buoy him up: he lingered throughout the day, turning his eyes from time to time to the clock upon the mantelpiece, or towards the opening door. At night he grew restless and uneasy: he murmured piteously that she would not come, or that he should die before she came.