ou
their confidant?"

"No, no," cried Dino, earnestly. "How can you think so of a woman with a
face like hers, of a man with a soul like Brian's? Even he has told me
little; but he has told me more than he knows--and I have guessed the
rest. If I had not known before, your face would have told me all."

"Tricked!" said Percival, falling back in his chair with a gesture of
disgust. "I might have known as much. Well, sir, you are wrong. And Miss
Murray's feelings are not to be canvassed in this way."

"You are right," said Dino; "we will not speak of her. We will speak of
Brian, of my friend. He is not happy. He is very brave, but he is
unhappy, too. Are we to rob him of both the things which might make his
happiness? Are you to marry the woman that he loves, and am I to take to
myself his inheritance?"

"Hardly to be called his inheritance, I think," said Percival, in a
parenthetic way, "if he was the child of one Vincenza Vasari, and not of
the Luttrells."

"I have my proposals to make," said Dino again lowering his voice. A
nervous flush crept up to his forehead: his lips twitched behind the
thin fingers with which he had partly covered them: the fingers
trembled, too. Percival noted these signs of emotion without seeming to
do so: he waited with some curiosity for the proposition. It startled
him when it came. "I have been thinking that it would be better," said
Dino, so simply and naturally that one would never have supposed that he
was indicating a path of stern self-sacrifice, "if I were to withdraw
all my claims to the estate, and you to relinquish Miss Murray's hand to
Brian, then things would fall into their proper places, and he would not
go to America."

Percival stared at him for a full minute before he seemed quite to
understand all that was implied in this proposal; then he burst into a
fit of scornful laughter.

"This is too absurd!" he cried. "Am I to give her up tamely because Mr.
Brian Luttrell, as you call him, wishes to marry her? I am not so
anxious to secure Mr. Brian Luttrell's happiness."

"But you wish to secure Miss Murray's, do you not?"

Percival became suddenly silent. Dino went on persuasively.

"I care little for the money and the lands which they say would be mine.
My greatest wish in life is to become a monk. That is why I put on the
gown that I used to wear, although I have taken no vows upon me yet, but
I came to you in the spirit of one to whom earthly things are dead. Let