"My dear Rupert," it began, "a horrible thing has happened, and I shall be off to-night. I have learned that I am not your brother at all, but that I was fraudulently put in that position. I have been writing this afternoon to father and mother. Oh! Rupert, to think that it is the last time I can call them so. They will tell you the whole business. I am writing this by the light of the lamp in the passage, and you will all be up in a few minutes, so I have no time to say more. I shall post the other letter to-night. Good-bye, Rupert! Good-bye, dear old fellow! We have been happy together, haven't we? and I hope you will always be so. Perhaps some day when I have made myself a name—for I have no right to call myself Clinton, and I won't call myself by my real name—I may see you again. I have taken the note, but I know that you won't grudge it me."
Rupert read the letter through two or three times, then ran down as he was, in his night-shirt and trousers, and passed in to the master's part of the private house. "Robert," he said to the man-servant whom he met in the passage, "is Mr. River-Smith dressed yet?"
"He is not finished dressing yet, Master Clinton; at least he has not come out of his room. But I expect he is pretty near dressed."
"Will you ask him to come out to me at once, please?" Rupert said. "It is a most serious business, or you may be sure I should not ask."
The man asked no questions, for he saw by Rupert's face that this must be something quite out of the ordinary way. "Just step into this room and I will fetch him," he said.
In a minute the master came in. "What is it, Clinton,—nothing serious the matter, I hope?"
"Yes, sir, I am afraid it is something very serious. My brother was not well yesterday evening. He said that he had a frightful headache, but he thought it would be all right in the morning, and he went and lay down on his bed. I thought that he was strange in his manner when I went in to say good-night to him; and when I went in this morning, sir, the bed hadn't been slept in and he was gone, and he has left me this note, and it is evident, as you will see, that he is altogether off his head. You see, he fancies that he is not my brother."
The master had listened with the gravest concern, and now glanced hastily through the letter.
"'Tis strange indeed," he said. "There is no possibility, of course, that there is anything in this idea of his?"
"No, sir, of course not. How could there be?"