entage would not be conclusive enough in her mind to
justify her in despoiling him of what all the judges in the land would
have said was his birthright. But then Brian did not know that Vincenza
Vasari had been found. The existence of another claimant to the Luttrell
estate never troubled him in the least. He wronged nobody, he thought,
by allowing Elizabeth Murray to suppose that Brian Luttrell was dead.

He wrote a few lines to Mr. Heron, thanking him for his kindness, and
informing him that he was leaving England for South America; and then he
proceeded to the more difficult task of writing to Elizabeth. He
destroyed many sheets of paper, and spent a great deal of time in the
attempt, although the letter, as it stood at last, was a very simple
affair, scarcely worthy of the pains that had been bestowed upon it.

"Dear Miss Murray," he wrote, "when you receive this note I shall have
left England, but I cannot go without one word of farewell. You will
never know how much you did for me in those early days of our
acquaintance in Italy; how much hope you gave me back, how much interest
in life you inspired in me; but for all that you did I thank you. Is it
too much to ask you to remember me sometimes? I shall remember you until
the hour of my death. Forgive me if I have said too much. God bless you,
Elizabeth! Let me write that name once, for I shall never write to you
nor see your face again."

He put no signature. He could not bear to use a false name when he wrote
to her; and he was sure that she would know from whom the letter came.

He went out and dropped it with his own hands into a letter-box; then he
came back to his dreary lodgings, never expecting to find there anything
of interest. But he found something that interested him very much
indeed. He found a long and closely written letter from the Prior of San
Stefano.

Father Cristoforo could not resist the opportunity of lecturing his
young friend a little. He gave him a good many moral maxims before he
came to the story that he had to tell, and he pointed them by observing
rather severely that if it were not for Brian's carelessness, his pupil
might possibly have escaped the "accident" that had befallen him. For if
Brian had met Dino in London on the appointed day, he would not have
been wandering alone in the streets (as Father Cristoforo imagined him
to have been) or fallen into the hands of thieves and murderers.

With which prologue the Padre once mor