Brian. "I hope that I should not be so ungenerous as
to look upon you as an enemy because you wished to take your own place
amongst your own kindred. You ought rather to look upon me as your
enemy, because I have occupied your place so long."

"You are good--you are generous--you are noble!" said Dino, his eyes
suddenly filling with tears. "If all the world were like you! And do you
know what I shall do if the estate ever becomes mine? You shall take the
half--you may take it all, if it please you better. But we will divide
it, at any rate, and be to each other as brothers, shall we not? I have
thought of you so often!"

He spoke ardently, eagerly; pressing Brian's hands between his own from
time to time. It was from an impulse as strong and simple as any of
Dino's own that Brian suddenly stooped down and kissed him on the
forehead. The caress seemed natural enough to Dino; it was as the
ratification of some sacred bond to the English-bred Brian Luttrell.
Henceforth, the two became to each other as brothers, indeed; the
interests of one became the interests of the other. Before long, Dino
learnt from Brian himself the whole of his sad story. He lay with
shining eyes and parted lips, his hand clasped in Brian's, listening to
his account of the events of the last two years. The only thing that
Brian did not touch upon was his love for Elizabeth. That wound was too
recent to be shown, even to Dino, who had leaped all at once, as it
seemed, into the position of his bosom friend. But Dino guessed it all.

As Brian walked back to his lodgings from the hospital, he was haunted
by a verse of Scripture which had sprung up in his mind, and which he
repeated with a certain sense of pleasure as soon as he recollected the
exact words. "And it came to pass"--so ran the verse that he
remembered--"when he had made an end of speaking unto Saul that the soul
of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as
his own soul." He liked the words. He looked them out in a Bible
belonging to his landlady when he reached home, and he found another
verse that touched him, too. "Then Jonathan and David made a covenant,
because he loved him as his own soul."

Had not Brian Luttrell and Dino Vasari made a covenant?

The practical result of their friendship was an important one to Brian.
He sacrificed his passage money, and did not sail on the following day
for Pernambuco.

CHAPTER XXVI.

ELIZABETH'S CONFESSION.