will not cast me off as you
have cast off your other friends? Promise me."

"I promise you, Dino," said Brian, laying his hand soothingly on the
other's shoulder. It seemed to him that Dino must be suffering from
fever; that he was taking a morbidly exaggerated view of matters. But
his next words showed that his excitement proceeded from no merely
physical cause.

"I have done you no harm, at any rate," he said, rising and holding
Brian's hand between his own. "I have made up my mind. I will have none
of this inheritance. It shall either be yours or hers. I do not want it.
And I have taken the first step towards ridding myself of it."

"What have you done?" said Brian.

"Will you ever forgive me?" asked Dino, looking half-sadly,
half-doubtfully, into his face. "I am not sure that you ever will. I
have betrayed you. I have said that you were alive."

Brian's face first turned red, then deathly pale. He withdrew his hand
from Dino's grasp, and took a backward step.

"You!" he said, in a stifled voice. "You! whom I thought to be my
friend!"

"I am your friend still," said Dino.

Brian resumed his place by the mantelpiece, and played mechanically with
the ornaments upon it. His face was pale still, but a little smile had
begun to curve his lips.

"So," he said, slowly, "my deep-laid plans are frustrated, it seems. I
did not think you would have done this, Dino. I took a good deal of
trouble with my arrangements."

The tone of gentle satire went to Dino's heart. He looked appealingly at
Brian, but did not speak.

"You have made me look like a very big fool," said Brian, quietly, "and
all to no purpose. You can't make me stay in England, you know, or
present myself to be recognised by Mrs. Luttrell, and old Colquhoun. I
shall vanish to South America under another name, and leave no trace
behind, and the only result of your communication will be to disturb
people's minds a little, and to make them suppose that I had repented of
my very harmless deception, and was trying to get money out of you and
Miss Murray."

"Nobody would think so who knows you."

"Who does know me? Not even you, Dino, if you think I would take
advantage of what you have said to-night. Go to-morrow, and tell Brett
that you were mistaken. It is Brett you have told, of course."

"It is not Brett."

"Who then?"

"Mr. Percival Heron," said Dino, looking him steadily in the face.

Brian drew himself up into an upright posture, with an ej