I fear we shall be found out."

"You can go back at once, Jane," said Lucilla.

"By myself?"

"Yes. Thank you for bringing me here--here I remain."

She had barely taken her seat again between Oscar and me, before the door
was softly opened from the outside. A long thin nervous hand stole in
through the opening; took the servant by the arm; and drew her out into
the passage. In her place, a man entered the room with his hat on. The
man was Nugent Dubourg.

He stopped where the servant had stopped. He looked at Lucilla; he looked
at his brother; he looked at me.

Not a word fell from him. There he stood, fronting the friend whom he had
calumniated and the brother whom he had betrayed. There he stood--with
his eyes fixed on Lucilla, sitting between us--knowing that it was all
over; knowing that the woman for whom he had degraded himself, was a
woman parted from him for ever. There he stood, in the hell of his own
making--and devoured his torture in silence.

On his brother's appearance, Oscar had risen, and had raised Lucilla with
him. He now advanced a step towards Nugent, still holding to him his
betrothed wife.

I followed them, eagerly watching his face. There was no fear in me now
of what he might do. Lucilla's blessed influence had found, and cast out,
the lurking demon that had been hidden in him. With a mind attentive but
not alarmed, I waited to see how he would meet the emergency that
confronted him.

"Nugent!" he said, very quietly.

Nugent's head drooped--he made no answer.

Lucilla, hearing Oscar pronounce the name, instantly understood what had
happened. She shuddered with horror. Oscar gently placed her in my arms,
and advanced again alone towards his brother. His face expressed the
struggle in him of some subtly-mingling influences of love and anguish,
of sorrow and shame. He recalled to me in the strangest manner my past
experience of him, when he had first trusted me with the story of the
Trial, and when he had told me that Nugent was the good angel of his
life.

He went up to the place at which his brother was standing. In the simple,
boyish way, so familiar to me in the bygone time, he laid his hand on his
brother's arm.

"Nugent!" he said. "Are you the same dear good brother who saved me from
dying on the scaffold, and who cheered my hard life afterwards? Are you
the same bright, clever, noble fellow that I was always so fond of, and
so proud of?"

He paused, and removed his brothe