repentance, and I shall merely ask you not to
hate me more than you can help when you have finished reading this
letter. You must often have heard of your elder brother who died when
I was in Spain, the year after your father's death. He did not die----'

'There must be something more,' said Jane. She turned the page this
way and that, as though to read some writing not decipherable by other
eyes.

'I 've looked everywhere,' said Peter; 'there 's nothing more.
Besides, you see, she stops in the middle of a sheet of notepaper. Why
should she have written anything else on another piece?'

They read the letter again together, scanning the words line by line.

'What can it mean?' she said at last.

'I have evidently got an elder brother,' said Peter briefly, 'to whom
everything belongs. Most people remember that my mother took a curious
antipathy to the other little chap when I was born. I can't make it
out in any possible way--no one can, of course. But it seems pretty
plain that no will can be proved, nor can I touch anything, until my
brother is known to be either dead or alive.'

'What can we do?' said Jane. Their two hands were locked together, and
the trouble was the trouble of both.

'I can go out to Spain, where he is supposed to have died,' said Peter,
'and make inquiries.'

'I want to ask you something,' said Jane, after a pause. 'Let us be
married quietly, first of all, and then we can do everything together.'

'I 'm probably a pauper,' he said simply, 'without the right to a
single stone of Bowshott. I went fully into my father's will with the
lawyer last night, and he leaves nearly everything to the eldest son.'

'Dear Peter!' protested Jane, accepting Peter's statement, but brushing
aside its purport.

They talked on far into the morning, at one time half distrusting the
evidence of their eyes which read the letter, at another looking far
into the future to try to pierce the veil of darkness that at present
shrouded it. Then, for there were many things to do, the young man
turned his face homeward again, and Jane sat on alone in the garden,
looking with eyes that hardly were conscious of seeing what they rested
on, while the wet branches of the beech trees rocked themselves
together, and the tearful autumn sunshine flickered on the disordered
beds of mignonette. She sat there until the stable clock struck one,
then rose and went indoors. One important decision had been made.
They wou