ght twinkled in the rooms, nor
a solitary pedestrian loitered about the pavement, that he seemed
inclined to pause. "This is the place," he said to himself, tightening
his grasp upon the young man's arm. "This is the place I chose."

He led Dino down the lane, looking carefully about him until he came to
a narrow archway on his left hand. This archway opened on a flagged
passage, at the end of which a flight of steps led up to one of the
empty warehouses. It was a lonely, deserted spot.

He dragged his companion into this entry; the steps of the two men
echoed upon the flags for a little way, and then were still. There was
the sound of a fall, a groan, then silence. And after five minutes of
that silence, Hugo Luttrell crept slowly back to the lane, and stood
there alone. He cast one fearful glance around him: nobody was in sight,
nobody seemed to have heard the sounds that he had heard. With a quick
step and resolute mien he plunged again into the network of little
streets, reached a crowded thoroughfare at last, and took a cab for the
Strand. He had a ticket for a theatre in his pocket. He went to the
theatre.

CHAPTER XXII.

BRIAN'S WELCOME.

The hint given in the Prior's letter concerning Brian's reasons for
continuing to teach in the Heron family, together with Hugo's own
quickness of perception, had enabled that astute young man to hit upon
something very like the exact truth. He had exaggerated it in his
conversation with Dino: he had attributed motives to Brian which
certainly never entered Brian's mind; but this was done for his own
purposes. He thought that Brian's love for Elizabeth Murray might prove
a useful weapon in the struggle between Dino's sense of his rights and
the romantic affection that he entertained for the man who had taken his
place in the world--an affection which Hugo understood so little and
despised so much, that he fancied himself sure of an easy victory over
Dino's resolution to fight for his rightful position. It was greatly to
his surprise that he found so keen a sense of justice and resentment at
the little trust that Brian had reposed in him present in Dino's mind:
the young man had been irritatingly firm in his determination to possess
the Strathleckie estate; he knew precisely what he wanted, and what he
meant to do. And although he was inclined to be generous to Brian and to
Miss Murray, there seemed no reason to expect that he would be equally
generous to Hugo. Ther