they were
the first in the field, and his grace proceeded with the major to
inspect the ground, so that time might be saved against the coming of
the other party.

Mr. Caryll stood apart, breathing the freshness of the sunlit morning,
but supremely indifferent to its glory. He was gloomy and preoccupied.
He had slept ill that night after his interview with Sir Richard,
tormented by the odious choice that lay before him of either breaking
with the adoptive father to whom he owed obedience and affection, or
betraying his natural father whom he had every reason to hate, yet who
remained his father. He had been able to arrive at no solution. Duty
seemed to point one way; instinct the other. Down in his heart he felt
that when the moment came it would be the behests of instinct that he
would obey, and, in obeying them, play false to Sir Richard and to the
memory of his mother. It was the only course that went with honor; and
yet it was a course that must lead to a break with the one friend he had
in the world--the one man who stood to him for family and kin.

And now, as if that were not enough to plague him, there was this
quarrel with Rotherby which he had upon his hands. That, too, he had
been considering during the wakeful hours of that summer night. Had he
reflected he must have seen that no other result could have followed
his narrative at White's last night; and yet it was a case in which
reflection would not have stayed him. Hortensia Winthrop's fair name was
to be cleansed of the smirch that had been cast upon it, and Justin was
the only man in whose power it had lain to do it. More than that--if
more were needed--it was Rotherby himself, by his aggressiveness, who
had thrust Mr. Caryll into a position which almost made it necessary
for him to explain himself; and that he could scarcely have done by any
other than the means which he had adopted. Under ordinary circumstances
the matter would have troubled him not at all; this meeting with such a
man as Rotherby would not have robbed him of a moment's sleep. But
there came the reflection--belatedly--that Rotherby was his brother, his
father's son; and he experienced just the same degree of repugnance at
the prospect of crossing swords with him as he did at the prospect of
betraying Lord Ostermore. Sir Richard would force upon him a parricide's
task; Fate a fratricide's. Truly, he thought, it was an enviable
position, his.

Pacing the turf, on which the dew still gl