“Yes,” Brandon said.  “He was no fool; he could not have thought so, and therefore it could not have been that, or anything like it.  Nor could he have felt that he was in any sense answerable for the poor man’s death, for I have ascertained that there had been no communication between the two branches of the family for several years before he laid violent hands on himself.”

Valentine sighed restlessly.  “The whole thing is perfectly unreasonable,” he said; “in fact, it would be impossible to do as he desires, even if I were ever so willing.”

“Impossible?” exclaimed Brandon.

“Yes, the estate is already mine; how is it possible for me not to take it?  I must prove the will, the old will, the law would see to that, for there will be legacy duty to pay.  Even if I chose to fling the income into the pond, I must save out enough to satisfy the tax-gatherers.  You seem to take for granted that I will and can calmly and secretly let the estate be.  But have you thought out the details at all?  Have you formed any theory as to how this is to be done?”

He spoke with some impatience and irritation, it vexed him to perceive that his brother had fully counted on the dead father’s letter being obeyed.  Brandon had nothing to say.

“Besides,” continued Valentine, “where is this sort of thing to stop?  If I die to-morrow, John is my heir.  Is he to let it alone?  Could he?”

“I don’t know,” answered Brandon.  “He has not the same temptation to take it that you have.”

“Temptation!” repeated Valentine.

Brandon did not retract or explain the word.

“And does he know any reason, I wonder, why he should renounce it?” continued Valentine, but as he spoke his hand, which he had put out to take the Times, paused on its way, and his eyes involuntarily opened a little wider.  Something, it seemed, had struck him, and he was recalling it and puzzling it out.  Two or three lilies thrown under a lilac tree by John’s father had come back to report themselves, nothing more recent or more startling than that, for he was still thinking of the elder brother.  “And he must have hated him to the full as much as my poor father did,” was his thought.  “That garden had been shut up for his sake many, many years.  Wait a minute, if that man got the estate wrongfully, I’ll have nothing to do with it after all.  Nonsense!  Why do I slander the dead in my thoughts? as if I had not read that will many times—­he inherited after the old woman’s sickly brother, who died at sea.”  After this his thoughts wandered into all sorts of vague and intricate paths that led to no certain goal; he was not even certain at last that there was anything real to puzzle about.  His father might have been under some delusion after all.

At last his wandering eyes met Brandon’s.

“Well!” he exclaimed, as if suddenly waking up.

“How composedly he takes it, and yet how amazed he is!” thought Brandon.  “Well,” he replied, by way of answer.