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CHAPTER LXII. DEALING WITH CUTBILL

“What’s to be done with Cutbill? – will any one tell me this?” was the anxious question Augustus asked as he stood in a group composed of Jack, Nelly, and the L’Estranges. “As to Sedley meeting him at all, I know that is out of the question; but the mere fact of finding the man here will so discredit us in Sedley’s eyes that it is more than likely he will pitch up the whole case and say good-bye to us forever.”

“But can he do that?” asked Julia. “Can he, I mean, permit a matter of temper or personal feeling to interfere in a dry affair of duty?”

“Of course he can; where his counsels are disregarded and even counteracted he need not continue his guidance. He is a hot-tempered man besides, and has more than once shown me that he will not bear provocation beyond certain limits.”

“I think,” began L’Estrange, “if I were in your place, I’d tell Cutbill. I’d explain to him how matters stood; and – ”

“No, no,” broke in Jack; “that won’t do at all. The poor dog is too hard up for that.”

“Jack is right,” said Nelly, warmly.

“Of course he is, so far as Mr. Cutbill goes,” broke in Julia; “but we want to do right to every one. Now, how about your brother and his suit?”

“What if I were to show him this letter,” said Augustus, “to let him see that Sedley means to be here to-morrow, to remain at farthest three days; is it not likely Cutbill would himself desire to avoid meeting him?”

“Not a bit of it,” cried Jack. “It’s the thing of all others he ‘d glory in; he ‘d be full of all the lively impertinences that he could play off on the lawyer; and he ‘d write a comic song on him – ay, and sing it in his own presence.”

“Nothing more likely,” said Julia, gravely.

“Then what is to be done? Is there no escape out of the difficulty?” asked Augustus.

“Yes,” said Nelly, “I think there is. The way I should advise would be this: I ‘d show Mr. Cutbill Sedley’s letter, and taking him into counsel, as it were, on the embarrassment of his own position, I ‘d say, ‘We must hide you somewhere for these three days.’”

“But he wouldn’t see it, Nelly. He’d laugh at your delicate scruples; he ‘d say, ‘That’s the one man in all Europe I ‘m dying to meet.’”

“Nelly is quite right, notwithstanding,” said Julia. “There is more than one side to Mr. Cutbill’s nature. He ‘d like to be thought a very punctilious gentleman fully as much as a very jocose companion. Make him believe that in keeping out of sight here at this moment he will be exercising a most refined delicacy – doing what nothing short of a high-bred sensibility would ever have dreamed of, – and you ‘ll see he ‘ll be as delighted with his part as ever he was with his coarse drollery. And here he comes to test my theory about him.”

As she spoke Cutbill came lounging up the garden walk, too busily engaged in making a paper cigarette to see those in front of him.

“I’m sure, Mr. Cutbill, that cigarette must be intended for me,” cried Julia, “seeing all the pains you are bestowing on its manufacture.”

“Ah, Miss Julia, if I could only believe that you’d let me corrupt your morals to the extent of a pinch of Latakia – ”

“Give me Sedley’s letter, Gusty,” said Nelly, “and leave the whole arrangement to me. Mr. Cutbill, will you kindly let me have three minutes of your company? I want a bit of advice from you.” And she took his arm as she spoke and led him down the garden. She wasted no time in preliminaries, but at once came to the point, saying, “We’re in what you would call ‘a fix’ this morning, Mr. Cutbill: my brother’s lawyer, Mr. Sedley, is coming here most unexpectedly. We know that some unpleasant passages have occurred between you and that gentleman, making a meeting between you quite impossible; and in the great difficulty of the moment I have charged myself with the solution of the embarrassment, and now begin to see that without your aid I am powerless. Will you help me; that is, will you advise with or for me?”

“Of course I will; but, first of all, where’s the difficulty you speak of? I ‘d no more mind meeting this man – sitting next him at dinner, if you like – than I would an old creditor – and I have a good many of them – that I never mean to pay.”

“We never doubted your tact, Mr. Cutbill,” said she, with a strong emphasis on the pronoun.

“If so, then the matter is easy enough. Tact always serves for two. If I be the man you take me for, that crabbed old fellow will love me like a brother before the first day is over.”

“That’s not the question, Mr. Cutbill. Your personal powers of captivation no one disputes, if only they get a fair field for their exercise; but what we fear is that Mr. Sedley, being the hot-tempered, hasty man he is, will not give you this chance. My brother has twice already been on the verge of a rupture with him for having acted on his own independent judgment. I believe nothing but his regard for poor dear papa would have made him forgive Augustus; and when I tell you that in the present critical state of our cause his desertion of us would be fatal, I am sure you will do anything to avert such a calamity.”

“Let us meet, Miss Ellen; let us dine together once – I only ask once – and if I don’t borrow money from him before he takes his bedroom candle, you may scratch Tom Cutbill, and put him off ‘the course’ forever. What does that impatient shrug of the shoulders mean? Is it as much as to say, ‘What a conceited snob it is!’ eh?”

“Oh, Mr. Cutbill, you could n’t possibly – ”

“Could n’t I, though? And don’t I know well that I am Just as vain of my little talents – as your friend, Miss Julia, called them – as you and others are ready to ridicule them; but the real difference between us after all is this: You think the world at large is a monstrous clever creature, with great acuteness, great discrimination, and great delicacy; and I know it to be a great overgrown bully, mistaking half it hears, and blundering all it says, so that any one, I don’t care who he is, that will stand out from the crowd in life, think his own thoughts and guide his own actions, may just do what he pleases with that unwieldy old monster, making it believe it’s the master, all the while it is a mere slave and a drudge. There’s another shrug of the shoulders. Why not say it out – you’re a puppy, Tom Cutbill?”

“First of all it would n’t be polite, and secondly – ”

“Never mind the secondly. It’s quite enough for me to see that I have not convinced you, nor am I half as clever a fellow as I think myself; and do you know, you ‘re the first I ever knew dispute the position.”

“But I do not. I subscribe to it implicitly; my presence here, at this moment, attests how I believe it. It is exactly because I regard Mr. Cutbill as the cleverest person I know – the very ablest to extricate one from a difficulty – that I have come to him this morning.”

“My honor is satisfied!” said he, laying his hand on his heart, and bowing with a grand seriousness.

“And now,” said Nelly, hurriedly, for her patience had wellnigh given in, “what’s to be done? I have a project of my own, but I don’t know whether you would agree to it.”

“Not agree to a project of yours! What do you take me for, Miss Ellen?”

“My dear Mr. Cutbill, I have exhausted all my compliments. I can only say I indorse all the preceding with compound interest.”

Slightly piqued by the half sarcasm of her manner, he simply said – “And your project; what is it?”

“That you should be a close prisoner for the short time Mr. Sedley stays here; sufficiently near to be able to communicate and advise with you – for we count much on your counsel – and yet totally safe from even the chance of meeting him. There is a small chapel about a mile oft, where the family confessor used to live, in two neat little rooms adjoining the building. These shall be made comfortable for you. We will take care – I will – that you are not starved; and some of us will be sure to go and see you every day, and report all that goes on. I foresee a number of details, but I have no time now to discuss them; the great point is, do you agree?”

“This is Miss Julia’s scheme, is it not?”

“No, I assure you; on my word, it is mine.”

“But you have concerted it with her?”

“Not even that; she knows nothing of it.”

“With whom, then, have you talked it over?”

“With none, save Mr. Cutbill.”

“In that case, Mr. Cutbill complies,” said he, with a theatrical air of condescension.

“You will go there?”

“Yes, I promise it.”

“And remain close prisoner till I liberate you?”

“Everything you command.”

“I thank you much, and I am very proud of my success,” said she, offering her hand. “Shall I own to you,” said she, after a pause, “that my brother’s nerves have been so shaken by the agitation he has passed through, and by the continual pressure of thinking that it is his own personal fault that this battle has been so ill contested, that the faintest show of censure on him now would be more than he could bear? I have little doubt that the cause is lost, and I am only eager that poor Augustus should not feel it was lost through him.”

She was greatly agitated as she spoke, and, with a hurried farewell, she turned and left him.

CHAPTER LXIII. THE CLIENT AND HIS LAWYER

When the rest of the party had left the dinner-room, and Augustus Bramleigh and Mr. Sedley found themselves alone, a silence of several minutes ensued; a very solemn pause each felt it, well knowing that at such a moment the slightest word may be the signal for disclosures which involve a destiny. Up to this, nothing had been said on either side of “the cause;” and though Sedley had travelled across Europe to speak of it, he waited with decorous reserve till his host should invite him to the topic.

Bramleigh, an awkward and timid man at the best of times, was still more so when he found himself in a situation in which he should give the initiative. As the entertainer of a guest, too, he fancied that to introduce his personal interests as matter of conversation would be in bad taste, and so he fidgeted, and passed the decanters across the table with a nervous impatience, trying to seem at his ease, and stammering out at last some unmeaning question about the other’s journey.

Sedley replied to the inquiry with a cold and measured politeness, as a man might to a matter purely irrelevant.

“The Continent is comparatively new ground to you, Mr. Sedley?”

“Entirely so. I have never been beyond Brussels before this.”

“Late years have nearly effaced national peculiarities. One crosses frontiers now, and never remembers a change of country.”

“Quite so.”

“The money, the coinage, perhaps, is the great reminder after all.”

“Money is the great reminder of almost everything, everywhere, sir,” said Sedley, with a stern and decisive tone.

“I am afraid you are right,” said Bramleigh, with a faint sigh; and now they seemed to stand on the brink of a precipice, and look over.

“What news have you for me?” said he at last, gulping as he spoke.

“None to cheer, nothing to give encouragement. The discovery at Castello will insure them a verdict. We cannot dispute the marriage; it was solemnized in all form and duly witnessed. The birth of the child was also carefully authenticated – there is n’t a flaw in the registry, and they ‘ll take care to remind us on the second trial of how freely we scattered our contemptuous sarcasms on the illegitimacy of this connection on the first record.”

“Is the case hopeless, then?”

“Nothing is hopeless where a jury enters, but it is only short of hopeless. Kelson of course says he is sure, and perhaps so should I, in his place. Still they might disagree again: there’s a strong repugnance felt by juries against dispossessing an old occupant. All can feel the hardship of his case, and the sympathy for him goes a great way.”

“Still this would only serve to protract matters – they ‘d bring another action.”

“Of course they would, and Kelson has money!”

“I declare I see no benefit in continuing a hopeless contest.”

“Don’t be hopeless then, that’s the remedy.”

Bramleigh made a slight gesture of impatience, and slight as it was, Sedley observed it.

“You have never treated this case as your father would have done, Mr. Bramleigh. He had a rare spirit to face a contest. I remember one day hinting to him that if this claim could be backed by money it would be a very formidable suit, and his answer was: – ‘When I strike my flag, Sedley, the enemy will find the prize was scarcely worth fighting for.’ I knew what he meant was, he ‘d have mortgaged the estate to every shilling of its value, before there arose a question of his title.”

“I don’t believe it, sir; I tell you to your face I don’t believe it,” cried Bramleigh, passionately. “My father was a man of honor, and never would have descended to such duplicity.”

“My dear sir, I have not come twelve hundred miles to discuss a question in ethics, nor will I risk myself in a discussion with you. I repeat, sir, that had your father lived to meet this contention, we should not have found ourselves where we are to-day. Your father was a man of considerable capacity, Mr. Bramleigh. He conducted a large and important house with consummate skill; brought up his family handsomely; and had he been spared, would have seen every one of them in positions of honor and consequence.”

“To every word in his praise I subscribe heartily and gratefully;” and there was a tremor in his voice as Bramleigh spoke.

“He has been spared a sad spectacle, I must say,” continued Sedley. “With the exception of your sister who married that Viscount, ruin – there’s only one word for it – ruin has fallen upon you all.”

“Will you forgive me if I remind you that you are my lawyer, Mr. Sedley, not my chaplain nor my confessor?”

“Lawyer without a suit! Why, my dear sir, there will be soon nothing to litigate. You and all belonging to you were an imposition and a fraud. There, there! It’s nothing to grow angry over; how could you or any of you suspect your father’s legitimacy? You accepted the situation as you found it, as all of us do. That you regarded Pracontal as a cheat was no fault of yours, – he says so himself. I have seen him and talked with him; he was at Kelson’s when I called last week, and old Kelson said, – ‘My client is in the next room: he says you treated him rudely one day he went to your office. I wish you ‘d step in and say a civil word or two. It would do good, Sedley. I tell you it would do good!’ and he laid such a significant stress on the word, that I walked straight in and said how very sorry I felt for having expressed myself in a way that could offend him. ‘At all events, sir,’ said I, ‘if you will not accept my apology for myself, let me beseech you to separate the interest of my client from my rudeness, and let not Mr. Bramleigh be prejudiced because his lawyer was ill-mannered.’ ‘It’s all forgotten, never to be recalled,’ said he, shaking my hand. ‘Has Kelson told you my intentions towards Bramleigh?’”

“‘He has told me nothing,’ said I.”

“‘Tell him, Kelson. I can’t make the matter plain as you can. Tell Mr. Sedley what we were thinking of.’”

“In one word, sir, his plan was a partition of the property. He would neither disturb your title nor dispute your name. You should be the Bramleighs of Castello, merely paying him a rent-charge of four thousand a year. Kelson suggested more, but he said a hundred thousand francs was ample, and he made no scruple of adding that he never was master of as many sous in his life.”

“‘And what does Kelson say to this?’ asked I.”

“‘Kelson says what Sedley would say – that it is a piece of Quixotism worthy of Hanwell.’”

“‘Ma foi,’ said Pracontal, it is not the first time I have fired in the air.’”

“We talked for two hours over the matter. Part of what Pracontal said was good sound sense, well reasoned and acutely expressed; part was sentimental rubbish, not fit to listen to. At last I obtained leave to submit the whole affair to you, not by letter – that they would n’t have – but personally, and there, in one word, is the reason of my journey.

“Before I left town, however, I saw the Attorney-General, whose opinion I had already taken on certain points of the case. He was a personal friend of your father, and willingly entered upon it. When I told him Pracontal’s proposal, he smiled dubiously, and said, ‘Why, it’s a confession of defeat; the man must know his case will break down, or he never would offer such conditions.’

“I tried to persuade him that without knowing, seeing, hearing this Frenchman, it would not be easy to imagine such an action proceeding from a sane man, but that his exalted style of talk and his inflated sentimentality made the thing credible. He wants to belong to a family, to be owned and accepted as some one’s relative. The man is dying of the shame of his isolation.

“‘Let him marry.’”

“‘So he means, and I hear to Bramleigh’s widow, Lady Augusta.’”

“He laughed heartily at this and said, ‘It’s the only encumbrance on the property.’ And now, Mr. Bramleigh, you are to judge, if you can; is this the offer of generosity, or is it the crafty proposal of a beaten adversary? I don’t mean to say it is an easy point to decide on, or that a man can hit it off at once. Consult those about you; take into consideration the situation you stand in and all its dangers; bethink you what an adverse verdict may bring if we push them to a trial; and even if the proposal be, as Mr. Attorney thinks, the cry of weakness, is it wise to disregard it?”

“Would you have laid such a proposal before my father, Sedley?” said Bramleigh, with a scarcely perceptible smile.

“Not for five hundred pounds, sir.”

“I thought not.”

“Ay, but remember your father would never have landed us where we stand now, Mr. Bramleigh.”

Augustus winced under this remark, but said nothing.

“If the case be what you think it, Sedley,” said he at last, “this is a noble offer.”

“So say I.”

“There is much to think over in it. If I stood alone here, and if my own were the only interests involved, I think – that is, I hope – I know what answer I should give; but there are others. You have seen my sister: you thought she looked thin and delicate – and she may well do so, her cares overtax her strength; and my poor brother, too, that fine-hearted fellow, what is to become of him? And yet, Sedley,” cried he suddenly, “if either of them were to suspect that this – this – what shall I call it? – this arrangement – stood on no basis of right, but was simply an act of generous forbearance, I ‘d stake my life on it, they ‘d refuse it.”

“You must not consult them, then, that’s clear.”

“But I will not decide till I do so.”

“Oh, for five minutes – only five minutes – of your poor father’s strong sense and sound intellect, and I might send off my telegram to-night!” And with this speech, delivered slowly and determinately, the old man arose, took his bedroom candle, and walked away.

CHAPTER LXIV. A FIRST GLEAM OF LIGHT

After a sleepless, anxious night, in which he canvassed all that Sedley had told him, Bramleigh presented himself at Jack’s bedside as the day was breaking. Though the sailor was not worldly wise, nor endowed with much knowledge of life, he had, as Augustus knew, a rough-and-ready judgment which, allied to a spirit of high honor, rarely failed in detecting that course which in the long run proved best. Jack, too, was no casuist, no hair-splitter; he took wide, commonplace views, and in this way was sure to do what nine out of ten ordinary men would approve of, and this was the sort of counsel that Bramleigh now desired to set side by side with his own deeply considered opinion.

Jack listened attentively to his brother’s explanation, not once interrupting him by a word or a question till he had finished, and then, laying his hand gently on the other’s, said, “You know well, Gusty, that you could n’t do this.”

“I thought you would say so, Jack.”

“You’d be a fool to part with what you owned, or a knave to sell what did not belong to you.”

“My own judgment precisely.”

“I’d not bother myself then with Sedley’s pros and cons, nor entertain the question about saving what one could out of the wreck. If you have n’t a right to a plank in the ship, you have no right to her because she is on the rocks. Say ‘No,’ Gusty: say ‘No’ at once.”

“It would be at best a compromise on the life of one man, for Pracontal’s son, if he should leave one, could revive the claim.”

“Don’t let us go so far, Gusty. Let us deal with the case as it stands before us. Say ‘No,’ and have done with the matter at once.”

Augustus leaned his head between his hands, and fell into a deep vein of thought.

“You ‘ve had your trial of humble fortune now, Gusty,” continued Jack, “and I don’t see that it has soured you; I see no signs of fretting or irritability about you, old fellow; I’ll even say that I never remember you jollier or heartier. Isn’t it true, this sort of life has no terror for you?”

“Think of Nelly, Jack.”

“Nelly is better able to brave hard fortune than either of us. She never was spoiled when we were rich, and she had no pretensions to lay down when we became poor.”

“And yourself, my poor fellow? I ‘ve had many a plan of what I meant by you.”

“Never waste a thought about me. I ‘ll buy a trabaccolo. They ‘re the handiest coasting craft that ever sailed; and I ‘ll see if the fruit-trade in the Levant won’t feed me, and we ‘ll live here, Gusty, all together. Come now, tell me frankly, would you exchange that for Castello, if you had to go back there and live alone – eh?”

“I ‘ll not say I would; but – ”

“There’s no ‘but;’ the thing is clear and plain enough. This place would n’t suit, Marion or Temple; but they’ll not try it. Take my word for it, of all our fine acquaintances, not one will ever come down here to see how we bear our reduced lot in life. We ‘ll start fresh in the race, and we ‘ll talk of long ago and our grand times without a touch of repining.”

“I’m quite ready to try it, Jack.”

“That’s well said,” said he, grasping his hand, and pressing it affectionately. “And you’ll say ‘No’ to this offer? I knew you would. Not but the Frenchman is a fine fellow, Gusty. I did n’t believe it was in his nation to behave as nobly; for, mark you, I have no doubts, no misgivings about his motives. I ‘d say all was honest and above board in his offer.”

“I join you in that opinion, Jack; and one of these days I hope to tell him so.”

“That’s the way to fight the battle of life,” cried the sailor, enthusiastically. “Stand by your guns manfully, and, if you ‘re beaten, haul down your flag in all honor to the fellow who has been able to thrash you. The more you respect him, the higher you esteem yourself. Get rid of that old lawyer as soon as you can, Gusty; he’s not a pleasant fellow, and we all want Cutty back again.”

“Sedley will only be too glad to escape; he’s not in love with our barbarism.”

“I’m to breakfast with Cutty this morning. I was nigh forgetting it. I hope I may tell him that his term of banishment is nearly over.”

“I imagine Sedley will not remain beyond to-morrow.”

“That will be grand news for Cutty, for he can’t bear solitude. He says himself he ‘d rather be in the Marshalsea with plenty of companions, than be a king and have no associates. By the way, am I at liberty to tell him about this offer of Pracontal’s? He knows the whole history, and the man too.”

“Tell him if you like. The Frenchman is a favorite with him, and this will be another reason for thinking well of him.”

“That’s the way to live, Gusty. Keep the ship’s company in good humor, and the voyage will be all the happier.”

After a few words they parted, Augustus to prepare a formal reply to his lawyer, and Jack to keep his engagement with Cutbill. Though it was something of a long walk, Jack never felt it so; his mind was full of pleasant thoughts of the future. To feel that Julia loved him, and to know that a life of personal effort and enterprise was before him, were thoughts of overwhelming delight. He was now to show himself worthy of her love, and he would do this. With what resolution he would address himself to the stern work of life! It was not enough to say affluence had not spoiled him, he ought to be able to prove that the gentleman element was a source of energy and perseverance which no reverses could discourage. Julia was a girl to value this. She herself had learned how to meet a fallen condition and had sacrificed nothing that graced or adorned her nature in the struggle. Nay, she was more lovable now than he had ever known her. Was it not downright luck that had taught them both to bear an altered lot before the trial of their married life began? It was thus he reasoned as he went, canvassing his condition in every way, and contented with it in all.

“What good news have you got this morning?” cried Cutbill, as he entered. “I never saw you look so jolly in my life.”

“Well, I did find half-a-crown in the pocket of an old letter-case this morning; but it’s the only piece of unexpected luck that has befallen me.”

“Is the lawyer gone?”

“No.”

“Nor thinking of going?”

“I won’t say that. I suspect he ‘ll not make a long halt after he has a talk with Gusty to-day.”

And now Jack told in a few words the object of Sedley’s coming, what Pracontal had offered, and what Augustus had resolved to send for answer.

“I’d have said the Frenchman was the biggest fool in Europe if I had n’t heard of your brother,” said Cutbill, puffing out a long column of smoke, and giving a deep sigh.

“That’s not exactly how I read each of them,” said Jack, sternly.

“Possibly; but it’s the true rendering after all. Consider for one moment – ”

“Not for half a moment, Master Cutbill. That my brother might make a very good bargain, by simply bartering such an insignificant thing as his honor as a gentleman, is easy to see; and that scores of people would n’t understand that such a compromise was in question, or was of much consequence if it were, is also easy to see; and we need waste no time in discussing this. I say Gusty’s right, and I maintain it; and if you like to hold a different opinion, do so in Heaven’s name, but don’t disparage motives simply because you can’t feel them.”

“Are you better after all that?” said Cutbill, dryly, as he filled Jack’s glass with water, and pushed it towards him. “Do you feel refreshed?”

“Much better – considerably relieved.”

“Could I offer you anything cooling or calming?”

“Nothing half as cool as yourself, Cutty. And now let’s change the subject, for it’s one I’ll not stand any chaff about.”

“Am I safe in recommending you that grilled chicken, or is it indiscreet in me to say you ‘ll find those sardines good?”

Jack helped himself, and ate on without a word. At last he lifted his head, and, looking around him, said, “You ‘ve very nice quarters here, Cutbill.”

“As neat as paint. I was thinking this morning whether I ‘d not ask your brother to rent me this little place. I feel quite romantic since I ‘ve come up here, with the nightingales, and the cicalas, and the rest of them.”

“If there were only a few more rooms like this, I ‘d dispute the tenancy with you.”

“There ‘s a sea-view for you!” said he, throwing wide the jalousies. “The whole Bocca di Cattaro and the islands in the distance. Naples is nothing to it! And when you have feasted your eye with worldly beauty, and want a touch of celestial beatitude, you’ve only to do this.” And he arose, and walking over to one side of the room, drew back a small curtain of green silk, disclosing behind it an ornamental screen or “grille” of iron-work.

“What does that mean?” asked Jack.

“That means that the occupant of this room, when devoutly disposed, could be able to hear mass without the trouble of going for it. This little grating here looks into the chapel; and there are evidences about that members of the family who lived at the villa were accustomed to come up here at times to pass days of solitude, and perhaps penance, which, after all, judging from the indulgent character of this little provision here, were probably not over severe.”

“Nelly has told me of this chapel. Can we see it?”

“No; it’s locked and barred like a jail. I ‘ve tried to peep in through this grating; but it’s too dark to see anything.”

“But this grating is on a hinge,” said Jack. “Don’t you see, it was meant to open, though it appears not to have done so for some years back? Here ‘s the secret of it.” And pressing a small knob in the wall, the framework became at once movable, and opened like a window.

“I hope it’s not sacrilege, but I mean to go in,” said Jack, who, mounting on a chair, with a sailor’s agility insinuated himself through the aperture, and invited Cutbill to follow.

“No, no; I wasn’t brought up a rope-dancer,” said he, gruffly. “If you can’t manage to open the door for me – ”

“But it’s what I can. I can push back every bolt. Come round now, and I’ll admit you.”

By the time Cutbill had reached the entrance, Jack had succeeded in opening the massive doors; and as he flung them wide, a flood of light poured into the little crypt, with its splendid altar and its silver lamps; its floor of tessellated marble, and its ceiling a mass of gilded tracery almost too bright to look on: but it was not at the glittering splendor of gold or gems that they now stood enraptured. It was in speechless wonderment of the picture that formed the altar-piece, which was a Madonna, – a perfect copy, in every lineament and line, of the Flora at Castello. Save that an expression of ecstatic rapture had replaced the look of joyous delight, they were the same, and unquestionably were derived from the same original.

“Do you know that?” cried Cutbill.

“Know it! Why, it’s our own fresco at Castello.”

“And by the same hand, too,” cried Cutbill. “Here are the initials in the corner, – G. L.! Of all the strange things that I have ever met in life, this is the strangest!” And he leaned on the railing of the altar, and gazed on the picture with intense interest.

“I can make nothing of it,” muttered Jack.

“And yet there ‘s a great story in it,” said Cutbill, in a low, serious tone. “That picture was a portrait, – a portrait of the painter’s daughter; and that painter’s daughter was the wife of your grandfather, Montague Bramleigh; and it is her grandchild now, the man called Pracontal, who claims your estates.”