Hugo's face had grown pale. He looked more dismayed by this utterance than by anything that Brian as yet had said. He opened his lips once or twice before he could find his voice, and it was in curiously rough and broken tones that he at length asked a question.
"Is this because of what people say about--about you--and--Richard?"
He seemed to find it difficult to pronounce the dead man's name. Brian lifted up his face.
"What do people say about me and Richard, then?" he said.
"If you don't know," he said, looking down miserably, "I can't tell you."
"You have said too little or too much," he said. "I must know the rest. What is it that people say?"
"I can't tell you," said Hugo, biting his lips. "Don't ask me, ask someone else. Anyone."
"Is 'anyone' sure to know? I will hear it from you, and from no one else. What do people say?"
Hugo looked up at him and then down again. The struggle that was waging between the powers of good and evil in his soul had its effect even on his outer man. His very lips turned white as he considered what he should say.
Brian noted this change of colour, and was moved by it, thinking that he understood Hugo's reluctance to give him pain. He subdued his own impatience, and spoke in a lower, quieter voice.
"Don't take it to heart, Hugo, whatever it may be. It cannot be worse than the thing I have heard already--from my mother. I don't suppose I shall mind it much. They say, perhaps, that I--that I shot my brother"--(in spite of himself, Brian's voice trembled with passionate indignation)--"that I killed Richard purposely--knowing what I did--in order to possess myself of this miserable estate of his--is that what they say?"
Hugo answered by a bare little monosyllable--
"Then--if this is believed so generally--why have no steps been taken to prove my guilt? Good God, my guilt! Why should I not be prosecuted at once for murder?"
"There would be no evidence, they say." Hugo murmured, uneasily. "It is simply a matter of assertion; you say you shot at a bird, not seeing him, and they say that you must have known that he was there. That is all."
"A matter of assertion! Well, they are right so far. If they don't believe my word, there is no more to be said," replied Brian, sadly, his excitement suddenly forsaking him. "Only I never thought that my word would even be asked for on such a subject by people who had known me all my life. You don't doubt me, do you, Hugo?"