at the proof of his birth had been destroyed? She would
acknowledge him as her son before all the world; and she would let him
divide his heritage with whomsoever he chose. Netherglen should be his,
and the three claimants might settle between themselves, whether the
rest of the property should belong to one of them, or be divided amongst
the three. He might even go back to San Stefano; she would love him and
bless him throughout, if only she knew that his life was safe. She went
further. She seemed to be pleading with fate--or rather with God--for
the safety of her son. She would receive Brian with open arms; she would
try to love him for Dino's sake. She would do all and everything that
Dino required from her, if only she could conquer this terrible
helplessness of feeling, this dumbness of tongue which had come over
her. Surely it was but a passing phase: surely when someone came and
stood before her the spell would be broken, and she would be able to
speak once more.

The maid peeped in, thought she was sleeping, and quietly retired. No
one ventured to disturb Mrs. Luttrell if she nodded, for at night she
slept so little that even a few minutes' slumber in the daytime was a
boon to her. A silent, motionless figure in her great arm-chair, with
her hands folded before her in her lap, she sat--not sleeping--with all
her senses unnaturally sharpened, it seemed to her; hearing every sound
in the house, noting every change in the red embers of the fire in which
the proof of her son's history had been consumed, and all the while
picturing to herself some terrible tragedy going on outside the house,
which a word from her might have averted. And she not able to pronounce
that word!

Dino, meanwhile, had plunged into the darkness, without a thought of
fear for himself. He walked away from the house just as she had seen him
in her waking dream, with head bent and eyes fixed on the ground. He
took the right road to Dunmuir, more by accident than by design, and
walked beneath the rows of sheltering trees, through which the loch
gleamed whitely on the one hand, while on the other the woods looked
ominously black, without a thought of the revengeful ferocity which
lurked beneath the velvet smoothness of Hugo Luttrell's outer demeanour.
If something moved amongst the trees on his right hand, if something
crouched amongst the brushwood, like a wild animal prepared to spring,
he neither saw nor heard the tokens which might have move