ied. She immediately
changed the dead child for her own, being wishful to escape the blame of
carelessness, and retain her place; also to gain for her own child the
advantages of wealth and position. The two boys, who have now grown to
manhood, are brothers; children, of one mother; and Brian Luttrell--a
baby boy of some four months old--sleeps, as his mother declares, in the
graveyard of San Stefano."

"Why did the nurse confess only a half-truth, then?"

"She wanted to get absolution; and yet she did not want to injure the
prospects of her child, I suppose. At the worst, she thought that one
boy would be substituted for another. The woman was foolish--and
wicked," said the Prior, with a grain of impatient contempt in his tone;
"and the more foolish that she did not observe that she was outwitting
herself--trying to cheat God as well as man."

"Then--you think--that I----"

"That you are the son of an Italian gardener and his wife. Courage, my
son; it might have been worse. But I know nothing positively; I have
constructed a theory out of Vincenza's self-contradictions; it may be
true; it may be false. Of one thing I would remind you; that as you have
given up your position in England and Scotland, you have no
responsibility in the matter. You have done exactly what the law would
have required you to do had it been proved that you were Vincenza's
son."

"But the other child--the boy who was sent to his grandmother? What
became of him?"

The Prior looked at him in silence for a little time before he spoke.
"How do you feel towards him?" he said, finally. "Are you prepared to
treat him as a brother or not?"

Brian averted his face. "I have had but one brother," he said, shortly.
"I cannot expect to find another--especially when I am not sure that he
is of my blood or I of his."

"In any case he is your foster-brother. I should like you to meet him."

"Does he know the story?"

"He does."

"And is prepared to welcome me as a brother?" said Brian, with a bitter
but agitated laugh. "Where is he? I will see him if you like."

He had risen to his feet, and stood with his arms crossed, his brow
knitted, his mouth firmly set. There was something hard in his face,
something defiant in his attitude, which caused the Prior to add a word
of remonstrance. "It is not his fault," he said, "any more than it is
yours. You need not be enemies; it is my object to make you friends."

"Let me see him," repeated Brian gloomi