ith face
down in the short, green grass.

CHAPTER III.

HUGO LUTTRELL.

Hugo's Sicilian mother had transmitted to him a nature at once fierce
and affectionate, passionate and cunning. Half-child, half-savage, he
seemed to be bound by none of the restraints that civilised men early
learn to place upon their instincts. He expressed his anger, his sorrow,
his love, with all the abandon that characterised the natives of those
sunny shores where the first years of his life were spent. Profoundly
simple in his modes of feeling, he was yet dominated by the habits of
slyness and trickery which seem to be inherent in the truly savage
breast. He had the savage's love of secrecy and instinctive suspicion of
his fellow-creatures, the savage's swift passions and vindictiveness,
the savage's innate difficulty in comprehending the laws of honour and
morality. It is possible to believe that, with good training from his
infancy, Hugo Luttrell might have developed into a trustworthy and
straightforward man, shrinking from dishonesty and cowardice as infamy
worse than death; but his early education had been of a kind likely to
foster every vice that he possessed. His father, a cousin of the
Luttrells of Netherglen, after marrying a lovely Palermitan, and living
for three years with her in her native land, had at last tired of her
transports of love and jealousy, and started upon an exploring
expedition in South Africa. Hugo was brought up by a mother who adored
him and taught him to loathe the English race. He was surrounded by
flatterers and sycophants from his babyhood, and treated as if he were
born to a kingdom. When he was twelve years old, however, his mother
died; and his father, on learning her death some months afterwards, made
it his business to fetch the boy away from Sicily and bring him to
England. But Hugh Luttrell, the father, was already a dying man. The
seeds of disease had been developed during his many journeyings; he was
far gone in consumption before he even reached the English shores. His
own money was nearly spent. There was a law-suit about the estates
belonging to his wife's father, and it was scarcely probable that they
would devolve upon Hugo, who had cousins older than himself and dearer
to the Sicilian grandfather's heart. The dying man turned in his
extremity to the young head of the house, Richard Luttrell, then only
twenty-one years of age, and did not turn in vain. Richard Luttrell
undertook th