"If you think," said Cuthbert, hotly, "that I'm going to take your place, you are very much mistaken." "It is not my place. It has been mine only by fraud." "Not a bit of it. It is yours by my father's will. He knew the truth, and chose to take this course." "Very unfair to you, Cuth," said Wyvis, a faint smile showing itself for the first time on his haggard face. Cuthbert shrugged his shoulders. "My dear fellow, do you suppose it's any news to me that my father cared more for your little finger than for my whole body? He chose--practically--to disinherit me in your favor; and a very good thing it's been for me too. I should never have taken to Art if I had been a landed proprietor." "I don't understand it," said Wyvis, meditatively. "One would have expected him to be jealous of his wife's family--and then you're a much better fellow than I am." "That was the reason," said Cuthbert, sitting down and nursing his lame leg, after a characteristic fashion of his own "I was a meek child--a sickly lad who didn't get into mischief. I was afraid of horses, you may remember, and hated manly exercises of every kind. Now you were never so happy as when you were on a horse's back----" "A strain inherited from my ploughman father, I suppose," said Wyvis, rather grimly. "And you got into scrapes innumerable; for which he liked you all the better. And you--well you know, old boy, you were never a reproach to him, as the sight of me was!" Cuthbert's voice dropped. He had never spoken of it before, but he and Wyvis knew well enough that his lameness was the result of his father's brutal treatment of Mary Brand shortly before the birth of her second son. "He ought to have been more bent on making amends than on sacrificing you to me," said Wyvis, bitterly. "Oh, don't look at it in that way," Cuthbert answered. The natural sweetness of his disposition made it painful to him to hear his father blamed, although that father had done his best to make his life miserable. "He never meant to hurt me, the poor old man; and when he had done it, the sight of my infirmity became exquisitely painful to him. I can forgive him that; I can forgive him everything. There are others whom it is more difficult to forgive." "You mean----" "I mean women who have not the courage to be true," said Cuthbert, in a low voice. He did not look at his brother, but he felt certain that a thrill of pain passed through him. For a minute or two Wyvis did not speak. "Well," he said at last, forcing an uneasy laugh, "I think that she was perhaps right. She might not have been very happy. And I doubt, after all, whether I ought to have asked her. Janetta thought not, at any rate." "Janetta is generally very wise." "So she is very wise. I am legally quite free, but she thinks me--morally--bound."