Hugo’s visit to the Herons was paid rather late in the afternoon, and he, therefore, had the full benefit of the whole family party, as each member of it dropped in to tea. Mrs. Heron’s old habits still re-asserted themselves, in spite of the slight check imposed on her by the remembrance that the house belonged to Elizabeth, that the many new luxuries and comforts, including freedom from debt, had come from Elizabeth’s purse, and that Elizabeth, although she chose to abdicate her power, was really the sovereign of Strathleckie. But Elizabeth arrogated so little to herself, and was so wonderfully content to be second in the house, that Mrs. Heron was apt to forget the facts of the case, and to act as if she were mistress as much as she had ever been in the untidy dwelling in Gower-street.

As regarded the matter of tidiness, Elizabeth had made reforms. There were now many more servants than there had been in Gower-street, and the drawing-room could not present quite the same look of chaos as had formerly prevailed there. But Elizabeth knew the ways of the household too well to expect that Mr. Heron’s paint-brushes, Mrs. Heron’s novels, and the children’s toys would not be found in every quarter of the house; it was as much as she could do to select rooms that were intended to fill the purposes of studio, boudoir, and nursery; she could not make her relations confine themselves and their occupations to their respective apartments.

She had had a great struggle with her uncle before the present state of affairs came about. He had roused himself sufficiently to protest against making use of her money and not giving her, as he said, her proper position; but Elizabeth’s determined will overcame all his objections. “I never wanted this money,” she said to him; “I think it a burden. The only way in which I can enjoy it is by making life a little easier to other people. And you have the first claim you and my cousins; because you took me in and were good to me when I was a little, friendless orphan of twelve years old. So, now that I have the chance, you must come and stay with me in my house and keep me from feeling lonely, and then I shall be able to think that my wealth is doing good to somebody beside myself. You make me feel as if I were a stranger, and not one of yourselves, when you object to my doing things for you. Would you mind taking gifts from Kitty? And am I so much less dear to you than Kitty? You used to tell me that I was like a daughter to you. Let me be your daughter still.”

Mr. Heron found it difficult to make protests in the face of these arguments; and Mrs. Heron slid gracefully into the arrangement without any protest at all. Kitty’s objections were easily overcome; and the children thought it perfectly natural that their cousin should share her good gifts with them, in the same way that, when she was younger, she divided with them the toys and sweeties that kind friends bestowed upon her.

Therefore, when Hugo called at Strathleckie, he was struck with the fact that it was Mrs. Heron, and not Elizabeth, who acted as his hostess. It needed all his knowledge of the circumstances and history of the family to convince himself that the house did not belong to Alfred Heron, the artist, and that the stately girl in a plain, black dress, who poured out the tea, was the real mistress of the house. She acted very much as though she were a dependent, or at most an elder daughter, in the same position as little Kitty, who assumed no airs of authority over anybody or anything.

Hugo admired Elizabeth, as he admired beautiful women everywhere; but he was not interested in her. Mentally he called her fool for not adopting her right station and spending her money in her own way. She was too grave for him. He was more at his ease with Kitty.

Rupert Vivian’s message if it could be called a message was given lightly and carelessly enough, but Hugo had the satisfaction of seeing the colour flash all over Miss Heron’s little mignonne face as he listened to Mrs. Heron’s languid reply.

“Dear me! and is that old relative in Wales really dying? Mr. Vivian has always made periodical excursions into Wales ever since I knew him. Well, I wondered why he did not write to say that he was coming. It was an understood thing that he should stay with us as soon as we returned from Italy, and I was surprised to hear nothing from him. Were not you, Kitty?”

“No, I was not at all surprised,” said Kitty, rather sharply.

“I had a commission to execute for my friend,” said Hugo, turning a little towards her. “Mr. Vivian asked me to take charge of a parcel, and to place it in your own hands; he was afraid that it would be broken if it went by post. He told me that it was a little birthday remembrance.”

He laid the parcel on a table beside the girl. He noticed that her colour varied, but that she did not speak. Mrs. Heron’s voice filled the pause.

“How kind of you to bring it, Mr. Luttrell! Mr. Vivian always remembers our birthdays; especially Kitty’s. Does he not, Kitty?”

“Not mine especially,” said Kitty, frowning. She looked at the box as if she did not care to open it.

“Do let us see what it is,” pursued Mrs. Heron. “Mr. Vivian has such exquisite taste! Shall we open the box, Kitty?”

“If you like,” returned Kitty. “Here is a pair of scissors.”

“Oh, we could not think of opening your box for you; open it yourself, dear. Make haste; we are all quite curious, are we not, Mr. Luttrell?”

Mr. Luttrell smiled a little, and toyed with his tea-spoon; his eyes were fixed questioningly on Kitty’s mutinous face, with its down-dropped, curling lashes and pouting rose-leaf lips. He felt more curiosity respecting the contents of that little box than he cared to show.

She opened it at last, slowly and reluctantly, as it seemed to him, and took out of a nest of pink cotton-wool a string of filagree silver beads. They were very delicately worked, and there was some ground for Vivian’s fear that they might get injured in the post, for their beauty was very great. Mrs. Heron went into ecstasies over the gift. It was accompanied merely by a card, on which a few words were written: “For Miss Heron’s birthday, with compliments and good wishes from Rupert Vivian.” Kitty read the inscription; her lip curled, but she still kept silence. Hugo thought that her eye rested with some complacency upon the silver beads; but she did not express a tithe of the pleasure and surprise which flowed so readily from Mrs. Heron’s fluent tongue.

“Don’t you like them, Kitty?” asked an inconvenient younger brother who had entered the room.

“They are very pretty,” said Kitty.

“Not so pretty as the ornament he sent you last year,” said Harry. “But it’s very jolly of him to send such nice things every birthday, ain’t it?”

“Yes, he is very kind,” Kitty answered, with a shy sort of stiffness, which seemed to show that she could well dispense with his kindness. Hugo laughed to himself, and pictured Vivian’s discomfiture if he had seen the reception of his present. He changed the subject.

“Have you been long in Scotland, Miss Murray?”

“For a fortnight only. We came rather suddenly, hearing that the tenant had left this house. We expected him to stay for some time longer.”

“It is fortunate for us that Strathleckie happened to fall vacant,” said Hugo, gravely.

“Do you know, Betty,” said one of the boys at that moment, “that Mr. Stretton says he has been in Scotland before, and knows this part of the country very well?”

“Yes, he told me so.”

“Mr. Stretton is our tutor,” said Harry, kindly explaining his remark to the visitor. “He only came yesterday morning. He had a holiday when we came here; and so had we.”

“I presume that you like holidays,” said Hugo, caressing the silky moustache that was just covering his upper lip, and smiling at the child, with a notion that he was making himself pleasant to the ladies of the party by doing so.

“I liked holidays before Mr. Stretton came to us,” said Harry. “But I don’t mind lessons half so much now. He teaches in such a jolly sort of way.”

“Mr. Stretton is a favourite,” remarked Hugo, looking at the mother.

“Such a clever man!” sighed Mrs. Heron. “So kind to the children! We met him in Italy.”

“I think I saw him at the station yesterday. He has grey hair?”

“Yes, but he’s quite young,” interposed Harry, indignantly. “He isn’t thirty; I asked him. He had a brain fever, and it turned his hair grey; he told me so.”

“It has a very striking effect,” said Mrs. Heron, languidly. “He has a fine face my husband says a beautiful face and framed in that grey hairI wish you could see him, Mr. Luttrell, but he is so shy that it seems impossible to drag him out of his own particular den.”

“So very shy, is he?” thought Hugo to himself. “I wonder where I have seen him. I am sure I have seen him before, and I am sure that he knew me. Well, I must wait. I suppose I shall meet him again in the course of time.”

He took his leave, remembering that he had already out-stayed the conventional limits of a call; and he was pleased when Mrs. Heron showed some warmth of interest in his future movements, and expressed a wish to see him again very soon. Her words showed either ignorance or languid neglect of the usages of society, but they did not offend him. He wanted to come again. He wanted to see more of Kitty.

He had ridden from Strathleckie to Netherglen, and he paced his horse slowly along the solitary road which he had to traverse on his way homewards. The beautiful autumn tints and the golden haze that filled the air had no attractions for him. But it was pleasant to him to be away from Mrs. Luttrell; and he wanted a little space of time in which to meditate upon his future course of action. He had seen the woman whom his aunt wished him to marry. Well, she was handsome enough; she was rich; she would look well at the head of his table, ruling over his household, managing his affairs and her own. But he would rather that it had been Kitty.

At this point he brought his horse to a sudden standstill. Before him, leaning over a gate with his back to the road, he saw a man whom he recognised at once. It was Mr. Stretton, the tutor. He had taken off his hat, and his grey hair looked very remarkable upon his youthful figure. Hugo walked his horse slowly forward, but the beat of the animal’s feet on the hard road aroused the tutor from his reverie. He glanced round, saw Hugo approaching, and then, without haste, but without hesitation, quietly opened the gate, and made his way into the field.

Hugo stopped again, and watched him as he crossed the field. He was very curious concerning this stranger. He felt as if he ought to recognise him, and he could not imagine why.

Mr. Stretton was almost out of sight, and Hugo was just turning away, when his eye fell upon a piece of white paper on the ground beside the gate. It looked like a letter. Had the tutor dropped it as he loitered in the road? Hugo was off his horse instantly, and had the paper in his hand. It was a letter written on thin, foreign paper, in a small, neat, foreign hand; it was addressed to Mr. John Stretton, and it was written in Italian.

To Hugo, Italian was as familiar as English, and a momentary glance showed him that this letter contained information that might be valuable to him. He could not read it on the road; the owner of the letter might discover his loss and turn back at any moment to look for it. He put it carefully into his pocket, mounted his horse again, and made the best of his way to Netherglen.

He was so late in arriving that he had little time to devote to the letter before dinner. But when Mrs. Luttrell had kissed him and said good-night, when he, with filial courtesy, had conducted her to the door of her bed-room, and taken his final leave of her and of Angela on the landing, then he made his way to the library, rang for more lights, more coal, spirits and hot water, and prepared to devote a little time to the deciphering of the letter which Mr. John Stretton had been careless enough to lose.

He was not fond of the library. It was next to the room in which they had laid Richard Luttrell when they brought him home after the “accident.” It looked out on the same stretch of garden; the rose trees that had tapped mournfully at that other window, when Hugo was compelled by Brian to pay a last visit to the room where the dead man lay, had sent out long shoots that reached the panes of the library window, too. When there was any breeze, those branches would go on tap, tapping against the glass like the sound of a human hand. Hugo hated the noise of that ghostly tapping: he hated the room itself, and the long, dark corridor upon which it opened, but it was the most convenient place in the house for his purpose, and he therefore made use of it.

“San Stefano!” he murmured to himself, as he looked at the name of the place from which the letter had been dated. “Why, I have heard my uncle mention San Stefano as the place where Brian was born. They lived there for some months. My aunt had an illness there, which nobody ever liked to talk about. Hum! What connection has Mr. John Stretton with San Stefano, I wonder? Let me see.”

He spread the letter carefully out before him, turned up the lamp, and began to read. As he read, his face turned somewhat pale; he read certain passages twice, and then remained for a time in the same position, with his elbows upon the table and his face supported between his hands. He found matter for thought in that letter.

It ran as follows:

“My Dear Mr. Stretton, I will continue to address you by this name as you desire me to do, although I am at a loss to understand your motive in assuming it. You will excuse my making this remark; the confidence that you have hitherto reposed in me leads me to utter a criticism which might otherwise be deemed an impertinence. But it seems to me a pity that you either did not retain your old name and the advantages that this name placed in your way, or that you did not take up the appellation which, as I fear I must repeat, is the only one to which you have any legal right. If your name is not Luttrell, it is Vasari. If you object to retaining the name of Luttrell, why not adopt Vasari? Why complicate matters by taking a name (like that of Stretton) which has no meaning, no importance, no distinction? All unnecessary concealment of truth is foolish; and this is an unnecessary concealment.

“Secondly, may I ask why you propose to accompany your English friends to a place so near your old home? If you wish it to be thought that you are dead, why, in Heaven’s name, do you go to a spot which is not ten miles from the house where you were brought up? True, your appearance is altered; your hair is grey and your beard has grown. But your voice: have you thought how easily your voice may betray you? And I have known cases where the eyes alone have revealed a person’s identity. If you wish to keep your secret, let me entreat you not to go to Strathleckie. If you wish to undo all that you have succeeded in doing, if you wish to deprive the lady who has inherited the Strathleckie property of her inheritance, then, indeed, you will go to Scotland, but in so doing you show a want of judgment and resolution which I cannot understand.

“You were at the monastery with us after your illness for many months. We learned to know you well and to regard you with affection. We were sorry when you grew restless and wandered away from us to seek fresh work amongst English people English and Protestant for the sake of old associations and habit. But we did not think or at least I did not think that you were so illogical and so weak as your present conduct drives me to consider you.

“There is only one explanation possible. You risk discovery, you follow these people to Scotland because one of the ladies of the family has given you, or you hope that she will give you, some special marks of favour. In plain words, you are in love. I have partially gathered that from your letters. Perhaps she also is in love with you. There is a Miss Heron, who is said to be beautiful; there is also Miss Murray. Is it on account of either of these ladies that you have returned to Scotland?

“I speak very frankly, because I conceive that I have a certain claim upon your confidence. I do not merely allude to the kindness shown to you by the Brothers of San Stefano, which probably saved your life. I claim your regard because I know that you were born in this village, baptised by one of ourselves, that you are of Italian parentage, and that you have never had any right to the name that you have borne for four-and-twenty years. This was suspicion when I saw you last; it is certainty now. We have found the woman Vincenza, who is your mother. She has told us her story, and it is one which even your English courts of law will find it difficult to disprove. She acknowledges that she changed the two children; that, when one of her twins died, she thought that she could benefit the other by putting it in the place of the English child. Her own baby, Bernardino, was brought up by the Luttrell family and called Brian Luttrell. That was yourself.

“How about the English boy, the real heir to the property? I told you about him when you were with us; I offered to let you see him: I wanted you to know him. You declined; I think you were wrong. You did see him many a time; you were friendly with him, although you did not know the connection that existed between you. I believe that you will remember him when I tell you that he was known in the monastery as Brother Dino. Dino Vasari was the name by which he had been known; but I think that you never learnt his surname. He had a romantic affection for you, and was grieved when you refused to meet the man who had so curious a claim upon your notice. I sent him away from the monastery in a few days, as you will perhaps remember; I knew that if he saw much of you, not even my authority, my influence, would induce him to keep the secret of his birth from you. You are rivals, certainly; you might be enemies; and, just because that cause of rivalry and enmity subsists, Dino Vasari loves you with his whole soul. If you stood in your old position, even I could not persuade him to dispossess you; but you have voluntarily given it up. Your property has gone to your cousin, and Dino has now no scruple about claiming his rights. Now that Vincenza Vasari’s evidence has been obtained, it is thought well that he should make the story public, and try to get his position acknowledged. Therefore he is starting for England, where he will arrive on the eighteenth of the month. He has his orders, and he will obey them. It is perhaps well that you should know what they are. He is to proceed at once to Scotland, and obtain interviews as soon as possible with Mr. Colquhoun and Mrs. Luttrell. He will submit his claims to them, and ascertain the line that they will take. After that, he will put the law in motion, and take steps towards dispossessing Miss Murray.

“I write all this to you at Dino’s own request. I grieve to say that he is occasionally headstrong to a degree which gives us pain and anxiety. He refused to take any steps in the matter until I had communicated with you, because he says that if you intend to make yourself known by your former name, and take back the property which accrued to you upon Mr. Richard Luttrell’s death, he will not stand in your way. I have pointed out to him, as I now point out to you, that this line of action would be dishonest, and practically impossible, because, in his interests, we should then take the matter up and make the facts public, but he insists upon my mentioning the proposal. I mention it in full confidence that your generosity and sense of honour will alike prevent you from putting obstacles in the way of my pupil’s recognition by his mother and succession to his inheritance.

“If you wish that Dino (as for the sake of convenience I will still call him) should be restored to his rights, and if you desire to show that you have no ill-feeling towards him on account of this proposed endeavour to recover what is really his own, he begs you to meet him on his arrival in London on the 18th of August. He will be in lodgings kept by a good Catholic friend of ours at N, Tarragon-street, Russell-square, and you will inquire for him by the name of Mr. Vasari, as he will not assume the name of Brian Luttrell until he has seen you. He will, of course, be in secular dress.

“I have now made you master of all necessary facts. If I have done so under protest, it is no concern of yours. I earnestly recommend you to give up your residence in Scotland, and to return, at any rate until this matter is settled, to San Stefano. I need hardly say that Brian Luttrell will never let you know the necessity of such drudgery as that in which you have lately been engaged.

“With earnest wishes for your welfare, and above all for your speedy return to the bosom of the true Catholic Church in which you were baptised, and of which I hope to see you one day account yourself a faithful child, I remain, my dear son,

“Your faithful friend and father,
“Cristoforo Donaldi,
“Prior of the Monastery of San Stefano.”