Father Cristoforo could not resist the opportunity of lecturing his young friend a little. He gave him a good many moral maxims before he came to the story that he had to tell, and he pointed them by observing rather severely that if it were not for Brian's carelessness, his pupil might possibly have escaped the "accident" that had befallen him. For if Brian had met Dino in London on the appointed day, he would not have been wandering alone in the streets (as Father Cristoforo imagined him to have been) or fallen into the hands of thieves and murderers. With which prologue the Padre once more began his story. And this time Brian read it all. He put down the letter at last with a curious smile: the smile of a man who does not want to acknowledge that he suffers pain. "Dino," he said to himself, lingeringly. "Dino! It is he who is Brian Luttrell, then, after all. And what am I? And, oh, my poor Elizabeth! But she will only regret the loss of the money because she will no longer be able to help other people. The Herons will suffer more than she. And Percival Heron! How will it affect him? I think he will be pleased. Yes, I think he is disinterested enough to be thoroughly pleased that she is poor. I should be pleased, in his case. "There is no doubt about it now, I suppose," he said, beginning to pace up and down the little room, with slow, uneven steps and bent head. "I am not a Luttrell. I am a Vasari. My mother's name was Vincenza Vasari--a woman who lied and cheated for the sake of her child. And I was the child! Good God! how can it be that I have that lying blood in my veins? Yet I have no right to say so; it was all done for me--for me--who never knew a mother's love. Oh, mother, mother, how much happier your son would have been if you had reared him in the place where he was born, amongst the vines and olive-yards of his native land. "And I must see Dino to-morrow. So he knows the whole story. I understand now why he thought ill of me for not coming to meet him, poor fellow! I must go early to-morrow." He went, but as soon as he reached Dino's bed-side he found that he knew not what to say, Dino looked up at him with eyes full of grave, wistful affection, and suddenly smiled, as if something unwontedly pleasant had dawned upon his mind. "Ah," he said, "at last--you know." "Yes, I know," said Brian. "And you are sorry? I am sorry, too." "No," said Brian, finding it rather difficult to express himself at that moment; "I am not sorry that you are the man who will bear the name of Luttrell, that I have wrongly borne so long. I suppose--from what the Prior says--that your claim can be proved; if I were in my old position I should be the first to beg you to prove it, and to give up my name and place to you if justice required it. As it is, I do not stand in your way, because the old Brian Luttrell--the one who killed his brother, you know--is dead."