"It has freed me from nothing. Read this; would that not have freed me equally as well?" and he handed him the letter that his brother had written a few hours before his death. The other's face darkened as he read, and then he said: "He was a man of noble impulses, but they were only impulses! Would you have ever felt sure while he lived that he might not alter his mind again at any moment?" "Yes! He loved Ida, and I do not believe he was a man who would have ever loved another woman. I should have been safe in his hands." Then they began to talk about the murder itself, and Smerdon asked who was suspected, or if any one was? "No," Penlyn said, "no one is suspected--as yet. A labourer was seen following him on that night, and suspicion naturally falls on him, because, if he did not do it himself, he must have been close at hand, and would have helped him or given an alarm. There is only one road through the Park, which they must both have taken." "Is there any trace of this man?" "None whatever, up to last night. Meanwhile, his friend and secretary, Mr. Stuart, says that he is confident that the murder was committed by some one who had reason to wish him out of the way, and he is going through his papers to-day to see if any of them can throw any light on such an enemy." "He cannot, I suppose, find anything that can do you any harm?" "Supposing he finds those certificates he showed us?" "Supposing he does! You are Lord Penlyn now, at any rate. And it would give you an opportunity of putting in a claim to his property. You are his heir, if he has left no will." "His heir! To all his immense wealth?" "Certainly." "I shall never claim it, and I hope to God he has destroyed every proof of our relationship." "Why?" "Why! Because will not the fact that I held a position which belonged to him, and was the heir to all his money--of which I never thought till this moment--give the world cause for suspecting----?" "What?" "That I am his murderer." "Nonsense! I suppose you could prove where you were at the time of his death?" "No, I could not. I entered the hotel at two, but there was not a creature in the house awake. I could hear the porter's snores on the floor above, and there is not a living soul to prove whether I was in at three or not." "Nor whether you were out! If they were all asleep, what evidence could they give on either side?" "Even though there should be no evidence, how could I go through life with the knowledge that every one regarded me as his unproved murderer?" "You look at the matter too seriously. To begin with, after that letter he wrote you, he would very likely destroy all proofs of his identity----" "He had no chance. He was murdered, in all probability--indeed must have been--a quarter of an hour after he posted it in Pall Mall." "He might have destroyed them before--when he made up his mind to write the letter."