"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?"