ll lay. Should he go in? No, he
dare not. He could not look upon Richard Luttrell's dead face. And yet
he hesitated, drawn by a curious fascination towards that half-open
door.

While he waited, the door was slowly opened from the inside, and a hand
appeared clasping the edge of the door. A horrible fancy seized Hugo
that Richard had risen from his bed and was coming out into the hall;
that Richard's fingers were bent round the edge of the open door. He
longed to fly, but his knees trembled; he could not move. He stood
rooted to the spot with unreasoning terror, until the door opened still
more widely, and the person who had been standing in the room came out.
It was no ghostly Richard, sallying forth to upbraid Hugo for his
misdeeds. It was Brian Luttrell who turned his pale face towards the boy
as he passed through the hall.

Hugo cowered before him. He sank down on the lower steps of the wide
staircase and hid his face in his hands. Brian, who had been passing him
by without remark, seemed suddenly to recollect himself, and stopped
short before his cousin. The lad's shrinking attitude touched him with
pity.

"You are right to come back," he said, in a voice which, although
abstracted, was strangely calm. "He told you to leave the house for
ever, did he not? But I think that--now--he would rather that you
stayed. He told me that I might do for you what I chose."

The lad's head was bent still lower. He did not say a word.

"So," said Brian, leaning against the great oak bannisters as if he were
utterly exhausted by fatigue, "so--if you stay--you will only be
doing--what, perhaps, he wishes now. You need not be afraid."

"You are the master--now," murmured Hugo from between his fingers.

It was the last speech that Brian would have expected to hear from his
cousin's lips. It cut him to the heart.

"Don't say so!" he cried, in a stifled voice. "Good God! to think that
I--I--should profit by my brother's death!" And Hugo, lifting up his
head, saw that the young man's frame was shaken by shuddering horror
from head to foot. "I shall never be master here," he said.

Hugo raised his head with a look of wonder. Brian's feeling was quite
incomprehensible to him.

"He was always a good brother to me," Brian went on in a shaken voice,
more to himself than to his cousin, "and a kind friend to you so long as
you kept straight and did not disgrace us by your conduct. You had no
right to complain, whatever he might do o