Lord Penlyn looked up and saw his friend's eyes fixed on him, with almost an air of mockery in them. Then he said:
"I want you to understand one thing, Philip. There must be no banter nor joking on this subject. Even though I must hold my peace for ever, I still regard it as an awful calamity that has fallen upon me. If I could do so, I would set every detective in London to work to try and find the man who killed him; indeed, if it were not for Ida's sake, I should proclaim myself his brother to-morrow."
"But for Ida's sake you will not do so?"
"For Ida's sake, and for the reason that I do not wish his money, I shall not; and more especially for the reason that you have shown me our marriage would be postponed if I did so. But never make such a remark again to me. You know me well enough to know that I am not of the stuff that murderers and fratricides are made of."
"I beg your pardon," Philip said; "of course I did not speak in earnest."
"On this subject we will, if you please, speak in nothing else but earnest. And, if you will help me with your advice, I shall be glad to have it."
"Let us go over the ground then," his friend said, "and consider carefully what you have to do. In the first place you have to look at the matter from two different points of view. One point is that you lose all claim to his money--yes, yes, I know," as Lord Penlyn made a gesture of contempt at the mention of the money--"all claim by keeping your secret. It is better, however, that you should so keep it. But, on the other hand, there is, of course, the chance--a remote one, a thousand to one chance, but still a chance--that he may have left some paper behind him which would prove your relationship to each other. In that case you would, of course, have no alternative but to acknowledge that you were brothers."
"And what would the world think of me then?"
"That you had simply done as he bade you, and kept the secret."
"It would think that I murdered him. It would be natural that the world should think so. He stood between me and everything, except Ida's love, and people might imagine that he possessed that too. And his murder, coming so soon after he disclosed himself to me, would make appearances against me doubly black."