“Spare you? Whom have you ever spared, I should like to know, if they happened to obstruct your path? Look back over your past life, think of your victims, and repent before it is too late. I only regret that I did not know of this wrong earlier; it should have been righted long ago, I promise you. Charles,” and she turned suddenly upon him, searching his face eagerly with her keen gray eyes, “this is your brother!”
The moment the door had opened, and his eyes had fallen upon his crippled brother, Sir Charles had stood as one transfixed.
The hideous deformity had been the first thing to attract his attention, of course. That misplaced head, the misshapen shoulders, the withered, helpless hand, the twisted leg and foot had struck a terrible feeling in his heart. Then his eyes had sought the sad, pale face with an eager, searching gaze, as if seeking to know something of the soul within that distorted body.
At once he marked the grandly shaped head, with its broad, square forehead, which looked almost majestic beneath the crown of snowy hair. He marked the delicate, refined features, the deep, true, blue eyes, with their dark, sweeping lashes, the sensitive, expressive mouth, and the firm, decided chin.
It was a noble, attractive face, and as he looked, the shock of repulsion which he had at first experienced passed, and in its place came a tender pity and affection born of sympathy and the knowledge that this was his kin—his brother.
At Lady Ruxley’s word he went eagerly toward him, and clasping his hand in a strong, protecting clasp, exclaimed:
“My brother! How glad I am for the gift, even though it comes so late. Shall we begin to love each other now, Herbert?”
The two men—one so strong, handsome, and self-reliant in his glorious manhood, the other so weak and helpless in his deformity—gazed into each other’s eyes with a look which seemed to read their very souls, and the tears started unbidden to each.
“God bless you, my brother!” murmured Herbert Randal, with quivering lips, while a deep joy, such as he had never known in all his life before, thrilled him through and through.
Isabel Coolidge, looking on and beholding this scene, saw herself in a new light. She was bowed with shame and humiliation at the thought of her own selfish, wasted life, while she realized the grandness of Sir Charles’ nature as she had never done before, and knew she was unfit to mate with him.