nder lad of
twenty, with the olive skin, the curling jet-black hair, the
liquid-brown eyes, which marked his descent from a southern race. The
face was one of singular beauty. The curved lips, the broad brow on
which the dusky hair grew low, the oval cheek and rounded chin might
well have served for the impersonation of some Spanish beggar-boy or
Neapolitan fisher-lad. They were of the subtilely sensuous type,
expressive of passion rather than of intellect or will. At present, with
the usual rich, ripe colour vanished from cheek and lips, with eyes
downcast, and trembling hands dropped to his sides, he was a picture of
embodied shame and fear which his cousin and guardian, Richard Luttrell,
regarded with unmitigated disgust.

Luttrell himself was a man of very different fibre. Tall, strong,
fiercely indignant, he towered over the youth as if he could willingly
have smitten him to the earth. He was a fine-looking, broad-shouldered
man of twenty-eight, with strongly-marked features, browned by exposure
to the sun and wind. The lower part of his face was almost hidden by a
crisp chestnut beard and moustache, whilst his eyes were of the reddish
hazel tint which often denotes heat of temper. The fire which now shot
from beneath the severely knitted brows might indeed have dismayed a
person of stouter heart than Hugo Luttrell. The youth showed no signs of
penitence; he was thoroughly dismayed and alarmed by the position in
which he found himself, but that was all.

The scene of their interview was hardly in accordance with its painful
character. The three men--for there was another whom we have not
attempted to describe--stood on the border of a small loch, the tranquil
waters of which came lapping almost to their feet as they spoke
together. The grassy shores were fringed with alder and rowan-trees.
Above the heads of the speakers waved the branches of a great Scotch
fir, the outpost and sentinel, as it were, of an army of its brethren,
standing discreetly a few yards away from the banks of the loch. Richard
Luttrell's house, though not far distant, was out of sight; and the one
little, grey-stone cottage which could be seen had no windows fronting
the water. It was a spot, therefore, in which a prolonged conversation
could be carried on without much fear of disturbance. Beyond the trees,
and on each side of the loch, were ranged the silent hills; their higher
crags purple in the sunlight, brown and violet in shadow. The ti