, but cruel to
you. I knew the truth from the first."

"Then you are a scoundrel confessed!" cried Paul.

Hugh rolled his head slightly, and made a poor pretense to smile.

"I knew how she had passed from one man to another; I knew what her
honor counted for. And yet I was silent--silent, though by silence I
lost my birthright. Say, now, if you will, which of us--you or I--has
been the true guardian of our mother's name?"

Paul got up again, abject, crushed, trembling in every limb.

"Man, man, don't gnaw my heart away! Unsay your words! Have pity on me,
and confess that it is a lie--a black, foul lie! Think of the horror of
it--only think of it, and have pity!"

"It is true!"

Then Paul fell on his knees and caught his brother by the arm.

"Hugh, Hugh! my brother, confess it is false! Don't let my flesh consume
away with horror! Don't let me envy the very dead who lie at peace in
their graves! Pity her, if you have no pity left for me!"

"I would save you from a terrible sin."

Paul rose to his feet.

"Now I know it is a lie!" he said, and all the abject submission of his
bearing fell away in one instant.

Hugh Ritson's face flushed.

"There is that here," said Paul, throwing up his head and striking his
breast, "that tells me it is false!"

Hugh smiled coldly, and regained his self-possession.

"My mother knew all. If Greta had been my half-sister, would she have
stood by and witnessed our love?"

Hugh waved his hand deprecatingly.

"Your mother was as ignorant of the propinquity as you were. Robert
Lowther was dead before she settled at Newlands. The survivors knew
nothing of each other. The secret of that early and ill-fated marriage
was buried with him."

"Destiny itself would have prevented it, for destiny shapes its own
ends, and shapes them for the best," said Paul.

"Yes, destiny is shaping them now," said Hugh, "here, and in me. This is
the point to which the pathways of your lives have tended. They meet
here--and part."

Paul's ashy face smiled.

"Then nature would have prevented it," he said. "If this thing had been
true, do you think we should not have known it--she and I--in the
natural recoil of our own hearts? When true hearts meet, there is that
within which sanctions their love, and says it is good. That is Heaven's
own license. No sanction of the world or the world's law, no earthly
marriage is like to that, for it is the marriage first made by nature
itself. Our hearts hav