"But--but--" said the lad, flushing and paling, and stammering with eagerness, "I thought that you would stay here, and that Netherglen and everything would belong to you, and--and----" "And that I should shoot, and fish, and ride, and disport myself gaily over my brother's inheritance--that my own hand deprived him of!" cried Brian, with angry bitterness. "It is so likely! Is it you who have no feeling, or do you fancy that I have none?" "But the place is yours," faltered Hugo, with a guilty look, "Strathleckie is yours, if Netherglen is not." "Mine! Yes, it is mine after a fashion," said Brian, while a hot, red flush crept up to his forehead, and his brows contracted painfully over his sad, dark eyes. "It is mine by law; mine by my father's will; and if it had come into my hands by any other way--if my brother had not died through my own carelessness--I suppose that I might have learnt to enjoy it like any other man. But as it is--I wish that every acre of it were at the bottom of the loch, and I there, too, for the matter of that! I have made up my mind that I will not benefit by Richard's death. Others may have the use of his wealth, but I am the last that should touch it. I will have the two or three hundred a year that he used to give me, and I will have nothing more." Hugo's face had grown pale. He looked more dismayed by this utterance than by anything that Brian as yet had said. He opened his lips once or twice before he could find his voice, and it was in curiously rough and broken tones that he at length asked a question. "Is this because of what people say about--about you--and--Richard?" He seemed to find it difficult to pronounce the dead man's name. Brian lifted up his face. "What do people say about me and Richard, then?" he said. Hugo retreated a little. "If you don't know," he said, looking down miserably, "I can't tell you." Brian's eyes blazed with sudden wrath. "You have said too little or too much," he said. "I must know the rest. What is it that people say?" "Don't you know?" "No, I do not know. Out with it." "I can't tell you," said Hugo, biting his lips. "Don't ask me, ask someone else. Anyone." "Is 'anyone' sure to know? I will hear it from you, and from no one else. What do people say?" Hugo looked up at him and then down again. The struggle that was waging between the powers of good and evil in his soul had its effect even on his outer man. His very lips turned white as he considered what he should say. Brian noted this change of colour, and was moved by it, thinking that he understood Hugo's reluctance to give him pain. He subdued his own impatience, and spoke in a lower, quieter voice.