"No, no!" cried Hugo, passionately. "Not like Cain. There is no curse on you----"
"Not even my mother's curse? I am not sure," said Brian. "I shall be a wanderer, at any rate; so much is certain: living on my three hundred a year, very comfortably, no doubt; until this life is over, and I come out clear on the other side----"
Hugo lifted his face. "You don't mean," he whispered, with a look of terrified suspicion, "that you would ever lay hands on yourself, and shorten your life in that way?"
"Why, no. What makes you think that I should choose such a course? I hope I am not a coward," said Brian, simply. "No, I shall live out my days somewhere--somehow; but there is no harm in wishing that they were over."
There was a pause. The dreamy expression of Brian's eyes seemed to betoken that his thoughts were far away. Hugo moved his stick nervously through the grass at his feet. He could not look up.
"What else have you to tell me?" he said at last.
"Do you know the way in which Strathleckie was settled?" said Brian, quietly, coming down to earth from some high vision of other worlds and other lives than ours. "Do you know that my grandfather made a curious will about it?"
"No," said Hugo. It was false, for he knew the terms of the will quite well; but he thought it more becoming to profess ignorance.
"This place belonged to my mother's father. It was left to her children and their direct heirs; failing heirs, it reverts to a member of her family, a man of the name of Gordon Murray. We have no power to alienate any portion of it. The rents are ours, the house and lands are ours, for our lives only. If we die, you see, without children, the property goes to these Murrays."
"Second cousins. I have never troubled myself about the exact degree of relationship until within the last day or two. I find that Gordon Murray would be my second cousin once removed, and that his child or children--he has more than one, I believe--would, therefore, be my third cousins. A little while ago I should have thought it highly improbable that any of the Gordon Murrays would ever come into possession of Strathleckie, but it is not at all improbable now."
"In London, I think. I am not sure. I have asked Colquhoun to find out all that he can about them. If there is a young fellow in the family, it might be well to let him know his prospects and invite him down. I could settle an income on him if he were poor. Then the estate would benefit somebody."