Under False Pretences. Sergeant Adeline
tears streaming now down her pale cheeks. "There is only one thing for us to say, Brian—It was God's will that he should go."
"How you must hate the sight of me," groaned Brian. He had almost forgotten the presence of Mrs. Luttrell, whose hard, watchful eyes were taking notice of every detail of the scene.
"I will not trouble you long; I am going to leave Scotland; I will go far away; you shall never see my face again."
"But I should be sorry for that," said Angela's soft, caressing voice, into which a tremor stole from time to time that made it doubly sweet. "I shall want to see you again. Promise me that you will come back, Brian—some day."
"Some day?" he repeated, mournfully. "Well, some day, Angela, when you can look on me without so much pain as you must needs feel now, any day when you have need of me. But, as I am going so very soon, will you tell me yourself whether Netherglen is a place that you hold in utter abhorrence now? Would it hurt you to make Netherglen your home? Could you and my mother find happiness—or at least peace—if you lived here together? or would it be too great a trial for you to bear?"
"It rests with you to decide, Angela," said Mrs. Luttrell from her sofa. "I have no choice; it signifies little to me whether I go or stay. If it would pain you to live at Netherglen, say so; and we will choose another home."
"Pain me?" said Angela. "To stay here—in Richard's home?"
"Would you dislike it?" asked Mrs. Luttrell.
The girl came to her side, and put her arms round the mother's neck. Mrs. Luttrell's face softened curiously as she did so; she laid one of her hands upon Angela's shining hair with a caressing movement.
"Dislike it? It would be my only happiness," said Angela. She stopped, and then went on with soft vehemence—"To think that I was in his house, that I looked on the things that he used to see every day, that I could sometimes do the thing that he would have liked to see me doing—it is all I could wish for, all that life could give me now! Yes, yes, let us stay."
"It's perhaps not so good for you as one might wish," said Mrs. Luttrell, regarding her tenderly. "You had perhaps better have a change for a time; there is no reason why you should live for ever in the past, like an old woman, Angela. The day will come when you may wish to make new ties for yourself—new interests——"
Angela's whisper reached her ear alone.
"'Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee,'" she murmured in the words of the widowed Moabitess, "'for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge; thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God … '"
Mrs. Luttrell clasped her in her arms and kissed her forehead. Then after a little pause she said to Brian—
"We will stay."
Brian bowed his head.
"I will make all necessary arrangements with Mr. Colquhoun, and send him to you," he said. "I think there is nothing else about which we have to speak?"
"Nothing," said Mrs. Luttrell, steadily.
"Except Hugo. As I am going away from home for so long I think it would be better if I settled a certain sum in the Funds upon him, so that he might have a moderate income as well as his pay. Does that meet with your approval?"
"My approval matters very little, but you can do as you choose with your own money. I suppose you wish that this house should be kept open for him?"
"That is as you please. He would be better for a home. May I ask what Angela thinks?"
"Oh, yes," said Angela, lifting her face slowly from Mrs. Luttrell's shoulder. "He must not feel that he has lost a home, must he, mother?" She pronounced the title which Mrs. Luttrell had begged her to bestow, still with a certain diffidence and hesitancy; but Mrs. Luttrell's brow smoothed when she heard it.
"We will do what we can for him," she said.
"He has not been very steady of late," Brian went on slowly, wondering whether he was right to conceal Hugo's misdeeds and evil tendencies. "I hope he will improve; you will have patience with him if he is not very wise. And now, will you let me say good-bye to you? I shall leave Netherglen to-morrow."
"To-morrow?" said Angela, wonderingly. "Why should you go so soon?"
"It is better so," Brian answered.
"But we shall know where you are. You will write?"
His eyes sought his mother's face. She would not look at him. He spoke in an unnaturally quiet voice, "I do not know."
"Mother, will you not tell him to write to you?" said Angela.
The mother sat silent, unresponsive. It was plain that she cared for no letter from this son of hers.
"I will leave my address with Mr. Colquhoun, Angela," said Brian, forcing a slight, sad smile. "If there is business for me to transact, he will be able to let me know. I shall hear from him how you all are, from time to time."
"Will you not write to me, then?" said Angela.
Brian darted an inquiring glance at her. Oh, what divine pity, what sublime forgetfulness of self, gleamed out of those tender, tear-reddened eyes!
"Will you let me?" he said, almost timidly.
"I should like you to write. I shall look for your letters, Brian. Don't forget that I shall be anxious for news of you."
Almost without knowing what he did, he sank down on his knees before her, and touched her hand reverently with his lips. She bent forward and kissed his forehead as a sister might have done.
"God bless you, Angela!" he said. He could not utter another word.
"Mother," said the girl, taking in hers the passive hand of the woman, who had sat with face averted—perhaps so that she should not meet the eyes of the man whom she could not forgive—"mother, speak to him; say good-bye to him before he goes."
The mother's hand trembled and tried to withdraw itself, but Angela would not let it go.
"One kind word to him, mother," she said. "See, he is kneeling before you. Only look at him and you will see how he has suffered! Don't let him go away from you without one word."
She guided Mrs. Luttrell's hand to Brian's head; and there for a moment it rested heavily. Then she spoke.
"If I have been unjust, may God forgive me!" she said.
Then she withdrew her hand and rose from her seat. She did not even look behind her as she walked to the bed-room door, pushed it open, entered, and closed it, and turned the key in the old-fashioned lock. She had said all that she meant to say: no power, human or divine, should wrest another word from her just then. But in her heart she was crying over and over again the words that had been upon her lips a hundred times to say.
"He is no son of mine—no son of mine—this man by whose hand Richard Luttrell fell. I am childless. Both my sons are dead."
CHAPTER VII.
A FAREWELL.
There was a little, sunny, green walk opposite the dining-room windows, edged on either side by masses of white and crimson phlox and a row of sunflowers, where the gentlemen of the house were in the habit of taking their morning stroll and smoking their first cigar. It was here that Hugo was slowly pacing up and down when Brian Luttrell came out of the house in search of him.
Hugo gave him a searching glance as he approached, and was not reassured. Brian's face wore a curiously restrained