a
name!"

I looked at him, waiting for an explanation, but he walked on in
silence. It was not until we were half-way across the park that I
spoke. "I do not understand!" I said softly. "Will you not tell me
something of your trouble?"

"I would that I could, Adrea!" he answered. His voice was so gentle,
and yet his face was so stern. "But no, I cannot. It is a secret. It
is only a blotted page of our family history made clear to me. But it
alters everything!"

"Does it make you poorer?" I asked falteringly.

He looked down in my eyes bravely; but his voice shook as he answered:
"If it be true--as I scarcely doubt--it takes from me everything: my
money, my home, my future. It brings everything but disgrace upon us,
Adrea, and even that must touch our name. Even though the living are
spared, the memory of the dead must suffer!"

I felt the tears flowing down my cheeks, but I dashed them away. "I do
not understand. I----"

"Of course not! and I cannot explain. Yet it is simple! I have an
elder brother, of whom I never heard, to whom everything belongs. I am
going to find him!"

"Where is he?" I cried. He shook his head. "That I cannot tell. Father
Adrian knows, but he will not speak. I am going in search of him
myself. I am going to Cruta!"

To Cruta! The name rang in my ears, and earth and trees and sky seemed
reeling before me. Then I clutched him by the arm, and cried out
hysterically,--

"You shall not go there! The place is horrible! You shall not go!"

He stood still, and looked at me in wonderment. We had crossed the
park now, and were on the edge of the bare moorland. His figure alone
stood out in solitary relief against the sky. I was half mad with fear
and dismay. He did not understand. How could he?

"It is at Cruta that I can learn all that there still is for me to
learn," he said. "I shall start for there to-night."

Oh! it was horrible! What could I say? How was I to stop him? How much
dare I tell? I caught hold of his hands, and held them tightly.

"Paul, I want to ask you something! When you heard from the convent
that relations had claimed me and taken me away, and then, a year
afterwards, you found me there--in London--a dancing girl, what did
you think?"

He answered me at once and without hesitation. "I thought that you had
misled the Lady Superior,--that you were weary of your life there, and
had run away."

I shook my head. "I knew that you thought so and I never denied it.
But