wing on
him.

The old Manor House, standing in its high-walled gardens, its sunny low
rooms looking out across the down, seemed wrapped in an atmosphere of
ancient peace, which consorted as ill with the present impression of the
place as does old Gobelin tapestry with a careful modern patch upon its
surface. The patch, however, adroitly copied, is seen to be an
innovation.

The old house, which had known so much, had sheltered so much, had kept
counsel so long, seemed to resent the artificial peace that its present
owner had somewhat laboriously constructed round himself, within its
mellow, ivied walls.

There is a fictitious tranquillity which is always on the verge of being
broken, which depends largely on uninterrupted hours, on confidential,
velvet-shod servants, on a brooding dove in a cedar, on the absence of
the inharmonious or jarring elements which pervade daily life.

Such an imitation peace, coy as a fickle mistress, Wentworth cherished.
Was it worth all the trouble he took to preserve it, when the real thing
lay at his very door?

On this February morning, as he sat looking out across the down, white
in the pale sunshine, the current of his life ran low. He had returned
the night before from one of his periodical journeys to Italy to visit
Michael in his cell. He was tired with the clang and hurry of the long
journey, depressed almost to despair by the renewed realisation of his
brother's fate. Two years--close on two years, had Michael been in
prison.

In Wentworth's faithful heart that wound never healed. To-day it bled
afresh. He bit his lip, and his face quivered.

* * * * *

Wentworth was not as handsome as Michael, but, nevertheless, he was
distinctly good to look at, and the half-brothers, in spite of the
fifteen years' difference between their ages, bore a certain superficial
resemblance to each other. Wentworth was of middle height, lightly and
leanly built, with a high bridge on a rather thin nose, and with narrow,
clean grey eyes under light eyelashes. He looked as if he had been made
up of different shades of one colour. His light brown hair had a little
grey in it, his delicately cut face and nervous hands were both tanned,
by persistent exposure to all kinds of weather, to nearly the same
shade of indeterminate brown as his hair.

You could not look at Wentworth without seeing that he was a man who had
never even glanced at the ignoble side of life, fo