ed into a sitting-room not very
generally used. The housekeeper, an old and faithful servant of the
family, had already prepared it, according to the doctor's orders, for
the reception of the dead. The visitors hurriedly took their departure;
Donald Grant's wagonette had been at the door some little time, and, as
soon as he had seen poor Richard Luttrell's remains laid upon a long
table in the sitting-room, he drove silently away, with Archie on the
box-seat beside him, and the three girls in the seats behind, crying
over the troubles of their friends.

Doctor Muir and Brian Luttrell remained for some time in the passage
outside the study door. The doctor tried several times to persuade his
companion to leave his post, but Brian refused to do so.

"I must wait; I must see my mother," he repeated, when the doctor
pressed him to come away. "Oh, I know that she will not want to see me;
she will never wish to look on my face again, but I must see her and
remind her that--that--she has one son left--who loves her still." And
then Brian's voice broke and he said no more. Doctor Muir shook his
head. He did not believe that Mrs. Luttrell would be much comforted by
his reminder. She had never seemed to love her second son.

"Where is Hugo?" the doctor asked, in an undertone, when the silence had
lasted some time.

"I do not know."

"He will be home to-night?"

"I do not know."

All this time no sound had reached them from the interior of the room
where the two women sat together. Their voices must have been very low,
their sobs subdued. Angela had not cried out as Mrs. Luttrell had done
when she received the fatal news. No movement, no sign of grief was to
be heard.

Brian lifted up his grief-stricken eyes at last, and fixed them on the
doctor's face.

"Are they dead?" he muttered, strangely. "Will they never speak again?"

Doctor Muir did not immediately reply. He had placed the candle on a
wooden bracket in the wall, and its flickering beams lighted, the dark
corridor so feebly that until now he had scarcely caught a glimpse of
the young man's haggard looks. They frightened him a little. He himself
took life so easily--fretted so little against the inevitable--that he
scarcely understood the look of anguish which an hour or two of trouble
had imprinted upon Brian Luttrell's face. It was the kind of sorrow
which has been known to turn a man's hair from black to white in a
single night.

"I will knock at the door,