"What have you to tell me?" he said, in an unusually quiet voice. "Is she deceiving me? Is she corresponding with him? Have they made you their confidant?" "No, no," cried Dino, earnestly. "How can you think so of a woman with a face like hers, of a man with a soul like Brian's? Even he has told me little; but he has told me more than he knows--and I have guessed the rest. If I had not known before, your face would have told me all." "Tricked!" said Percival, falling back in his chair with a gesture of disgust. "I might have known as much. Well, sir, you are wrong. And Miss Murray's feelings are not to be canvassed in this way." "You are right," said Dino; "we will not speak of her. We will speak of Brian, of my friend. He is not happy. He is very brave, but he is unhappy, too. Are we to rob him of both the things which might make his happiness? Are you to marry the woman that he loves, and am I to take to myself his inheritance?" "Hardly to be called his inheritance, I think," said Percival, in a parenthetic way, "if he was the child of one Vincenza Vasari, and not of the Luttrells." "I have my proposals to make," said Dino again lowering his voice. A nervous flush crept up to his forehead: his lips twitched behind the thin fingers with which he had partly covered them: the fingers trembled, too. Percival noted these signs of emotion without seeming to do so: he waited with some curiosity for the proposition. It startled him when it came. "I have been thinking that it would be better," said Dino, so simply and naturally that one would never have supposed that he was indicating a path of stern self-sacrifice, "if I were to withdraw all my claims to the estate, and you to relinquish Miss Murray's hand to Brian, then things would fall into their proper places, and he would not go to America." Percival stared at him for a full minute before he seemed quite to understand all that was implied in this proposal; then he burst into a fit of scornful laughter. "This is too absurd!" he cried. "Am I to give her up tamely because Mr. Brian Luttrell, as you call him, wishes to marry her? I am not so anxious to secure Mr. Brian Luttrell's happiness." "But you wish to secure Miss Murray's, do you not?" Percival became suddenly silent. Dino went on persuasively. "I care little for the money and the lands which they say would be mine. My greatest wish in life is to become a monk. That is why I put on the gown that I used to wear, although I have taken no vows upon me yet, but I came to you in the spirit of one to whom earthly things are dead. Let me give up this estate to Brian, and make him happy with the woman that he loves. When he is married to Elizabeth you shall never see my face again." "This is your proposition?" said Percival, after a little pause. "Yes." "If I give up Elizabeth"--he forgot that he had not meant to call her by her Christian name in Dino Vasari's presence--"you will give up your claim to the property?" "Yes."