When he left the room, Brian examined his belongings with care. Nothing in his possession was marked, owing to the fact that his clothes were mostly new ones, purchased with a view to mountaineering requirements. His pocket-book was lost. Mrs. Luttrell's letter and one or two other papers, however, remained with him, and he had sufficient money in his pockets to pay the innkeeper and preserve him from starvation for a time. He wondered that nobody had reported an unknown traveller to be lying ill in the village; but it was plain that his escape had been thought impossible. Even Gunston had given him up for lost. As he learnt afterwards, it was believed that he had not been able to sever the rope, and that he, with one of the guides, had fallen into a crevasse. The rope went straight down into the cleft, and he was believed to be at the end of it. There was not the faintest doubt in the mind of the survivors but that Brian Luttrell was dead. It remained for Brian himself to decide whether he should go back to the town, reclaim his luggage, and take up life again at the point where he seemed to have let it drop--or go forth into the world, penniless and homeless, without a name, without a hope for the future, and without a friend. Which should he do? CHAPTER XII. THE HEIRESS OF STRATHLECKIE. "Elizabeth an heiress! Elizabeth, with a fortune of her own!" said Mrs. Heron. "It is perfectly incredible." "It is perfectly true," rejoined her step-son. "And it has been true for the last three days." "Then Elizabeth does not know it," replied Kitty. "As to whether she knows it or not," said Percival, sardonically, "I am quite unable to form any opinion. Elizabeth has a talent for keeping secrets." He was not sorry that the door opened at that moment, and that Elizabeth, entering with little Jack in her arms, must have heard his words. She flashed a quick look at him--it was one that savoured of reproach--and advanced into the middle of the room, where she stood silent, waiting to be accused. It was twelve o'clock on the morning of a bright, cold November day. Mrs. Heron was lying on the sofa in the dining-room--a shabbily-comfortable, old-fashioned room where most of the business of the house was transacted. Kitty sat on a low chair before the fire, warming her little, cold hands. She had a cat on her lap, and a novel on the floor beside her, and looked very young, very pretty, and very idle. Percival was fidgetting about the room with a glum and sour expression of countenance. He was evidently much out of sorts, both in body and mind, for his face was unusually sallow in tint, and there was a dark, upright line between his brows which his relations knew and--dreaded. The genial, sunshiny individual of a few evenings back had disappeared, and a decidedly bad-tempered young man now took his place.