It was not to be wondered at that Edward Luttrell made a favourite of his second son in after life. A sense of the injustice done him by his mother made the father especially tender to the little Brian; he walked with him, talked with him, made a companion of him in every possible way. Mrs. Luttrell regained by degrees the cold composure of manner that had distinguished her in earlier life: but she could not command herself so far as to make a show of affection for her younger son. Brian was a very small boy indeed when he found that out. "Mother doesn't love me," he said once to his father, with grieving lips and tear-filled eyes; "I wonder why." What could his father do but press him passionately to his broad breast and assure him in words of tenderest affection that he loved his boy; and that if Brian were good, and true, and brave, his mother would love him too! "I will be very good then," said Brian, nestling close up to his father's shoulder—for he was a child with exceedingly winning ways and a very affectionate disposition—and putting one arm round Mr. Luttrell's neck. "But you know she loves Richard always—even when he is naughty. And you love me when I'm naughty, too." What could Mr. Luttrell say to that?
He died when Brian was fifteen years old; and the last words upon his tongue were an entreaty that his wife would never tell the boy of the suspicion that had turned her love to him into bitterness. He died, and part of the sting of his death to Mrs. Luttrell lay in the fact that he died thinking her mad on that one point. The doctors had called her conviction "a case of mania," and he had implicitly believed them.
But suppose she had not been mad all the time!
II.
In San Stefano life went on tranquilly from month to month and year to year. In 1867, Padre Cristoforo of the Benedictine Monastery, looked scarcely older than when he picked out a nurse for the Luttrell family in 1854. He was a tall man, with a stooping gait and a prominent, sagacious chin; deep-set, meditative, dark eyes, and a somewhat fine and subtle sort of smile which flickered for a moment at the corner of his thin-lipped mouth, and disappeared before you were fully conscience of its presence. He was summoned one day from the monastery (where he now filled the office of sub-Prior) at the earnest request of an old woman who lived in a neighbouring village. She had known him many years before, and thought that it would be easier to tell her story to him than to a complete stranger. He had received her communication, and stood by her pallet with evident concern and astonishment depicted upon his face. He held a paper in his hand, at which he glanced from time to time as the woman spoke.
"It was not my doing," moaned the old crone. "It was my daughter's. I have but told you what she said to me five years ago. She said that she did change the children; it was Lippo, indeed, who died, but the child whom the English lady took to England with her was Vincenza's little Dino; and the boy whom we know as Dino is really the English child. I know not whether it is true! Santa Vergine! what more can I say?"
"Why did you not reveal the facts five years ago?" said the Father, with some severity of tone.
"I will tell you, Reverend Father. Because Vincenza came to me next day and said that she had lied—that the child, Dino, was her own, after all, and that she had only wanted to see how much I would believe. What was I to do? I do not know which story to believe; that is why I tell both stories to you before I die."
"She denied it, then, next day?"
"Yes, Father; but her husband believed it, as you will see by that paper. He wrote it down—he could write and read a little, which I could never do; and he told me what he had written:—'I, Giovanni Vasari, have heard my wife, Vincenza, say that she stole an English gentleman's child, and put her own child in its place. I do not know whether this is true; but I leave my written word that I was innocent of any such crime, and humbly pray to Heaven that she may be forgiven if she committed it.' Is that right, Reverend Father? And then his name, and the day and the year."