"But if you were in your old position, could you still pardon me and be friendly with me, even if I claimed my rights?" "I hope so," said Brian. "I hope that I should not be so ungenerous as to look upon you as an enemy because you wished to take your own place amongst your own kindred. You ought rather to look upon me as your enemy, because I have occupied your place so long." "You are good--you are generous--you are noble!" said Dino, his eyes suddenly filling with tears. "If all the world were like you! And do you know what I shall do if the estate ever becomes mine? You shall take the half--you may take it all, if it please you better. But we will divide it, at any rate, and be to each other as brothers, shall we not? I have thought of you so often!" He spoke ardently, eagerly; pressing Brian's hands between his own from time to time. It was from an impulse as strong and simple as any of Dino's own that Brian suddenly stooped down and kissed him on the forehead. The caress seemed natural enough to Dino; it was as the ratification of some sacred bond to the English-bred Brian Luttrell. Henceforth, the two became to each other as brothers, indeed; the interests of one became the interests of the other. Before long, Dino learnt from Brian himself the whole of his sad story. He lay with shining eyes and parted lips, his hand clasped in Brian's, listening to his account of the events of the last two years. The only thing that Brian did not touch upon was his love for Elizabeth. That wound was too recent to be shown, even to Dino, who had leaped all at once, as it seemed, into the position of his bosom friend. But Dino guessed it all. As Brian walked back to his lodgings from the hospital, he was haunted by a verse of Scripture which had sprung up in his mind, and which he repeated with a certain sense of pleasure as soon as he recollected the exact words. "And it came to pass"--so ran the verse that he remembered--"when he had made an end of speaking unto Saul that the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul." He liked the words. He looked them out in a Bible belonging to his landlady when he reached home, and he found another verse that touched him, too. "Then Jonathan and David made a covenant, because he loved him as his own soul." Had not Brian Luttrell and Dino Vasari made a covenant? The practical result of their friendship was an important one to Brian. He sacrificed his passage money, and did not sail on the following day for Pernambuco. CHAPTER XXVI. ELIZABETH'S CONFESSION. "I wonder what she wants with me," said Percival Heron, meditatively. He was sitting at his solitary breakfast-table, having pushed from him an empty coffee-cup and several newspapers: a letter from Elizabeth was in his hands. It consisted of a few lines only, and the words that had roused his wonderment were these:--