"Within a year or two of your own age. In all likelihood you and they will meet. If I thought the story would interest you I would relate it." "It would be certain to interest me," I said, with a successful attempt at calmness, "if only for the reason that Lauretta first spoke to me of the brothers. She said they were handsome, brave, and strong, and that she was sure I should like them." "Did she say so much?" said Doctor Louis. "But, after all, that is not strange, for they and she were playmates together when they were quite young children. It is, however, a long time since they met. Eric and Emilius left Nerac three years ago, for the purpose of travelling and seeing something of the world." "Lauretta spoke of them as special friends." "Yes, yes; women of her and her mother's stamp are very constant in their friendships and affections. The esteem of such is worth the winning; and you, Gabriel, have won it. "It has rejoiced me to believe so; it rejoices me still more to hear you confirm my belief." "Let what I tell you of these young men be in confidence between us." "It shall be, sir." "My wife is familiar with the story, but I doubt whether Lauretta has ever heard it. There is, in truth, a mystery in it." "Which will make it all the more interesting." "Perhaps, perhaps. There is in the human mind a strange leaning towards the weird and fantastic." Before we returned to Nerac on the evening of this day Doctor Louis fulfilled his promise, and told me the story of these brothers, which, however, so far as they were concerned, proved to be but an epilogue to the play.