as he
addressed himself again to Hugo. "You will leave Netherglen to-day. Your
luggage can be sent after you; give your own directions about it. I
suppose you will rejoin your regiment? I neither know nor care what you
mean to do. If we meet again, we meet as strangers."

"Willingly," said Hugo, lifting his eyes for one instant to his cousin's
face, with an expression so full of brooding hatred and defiance that
even Richard Luttrell was amazed.

"For Heaven's sake don't say that, Hugo," began the second brother, with
a hasty desire to pave the way for reconciliation.

"Why not?" said Hugo.

The look of abject fear was dying out of his face. The worst, he
thought, was over. He drew himself up, crossed his arms, and tried to
meet Brian's reproachful eyes with confidence, but in this attempt he
was not successful. In spite of himself, the eyelids dropped until the
long, black lashes almost touched the smooth, olive cheek, across which
passed a transient flush of shame. This sign of feeling touched Brian;
the lad was surely not hopelessly bad if he could blush for his sins.
But Richard went on ruthlessly.

"You need expect no further help from me. I own you as a relation no
longer. You have disgraced the name you bear. Don't let me see you again
in my house." He was too indignant, too much excited, to speak in
anything but short, sharp sentences, each of which seemed more bitter
than the last. Richard Luttrell was little concerned for Hugo's welfare,
much for the honour of the family. "Go," he said, "at once, and I will
not publish your shameful conduct to the world. If you return to my
house, if you seek to establish any communication with members of my
family, I shall not keep your secret."

"Speak for yourself, Richard," said his brother, warmly, "not for me. I
hope that Hugo will do better in time; and I don't mean to give him up.
You must make an exception for me when you speak of separating him from
the family."

"I make no exception," said Richard.

Brian drew nearer to his brother, and uttered his next words in a lower
tone.

"Think what you are doing," he said. "You will drive him to desperation,
and, after all, he is only a boy of nineteen. Quite young enough to
repent and reform, if we are not too hard upon him now. Do as you think
fit for yourself and your own household, but you must not stand in the
way of what I can do for him, little though that may be."

"I stand to what I have said," answered