‘Indeed I don’t,’ said Hugo, ‘if he isn’t Francis Tudor.’

’He has as much right to the name of Tudor as you have to the name of Hugo,’ Ravengar sneered.  ’He is the son of the man who dishonoured my father’s name by pretending to marry that woman in Minneapolis.  Even if I hated my father, I’ve no cause to love that branch of our complicated family connections.’

Hugo whistled.

‘I did not think there was so much money there,’ he said at length.

’There wasn’t.  The fellow came into twenty thousand two years ago, and he has never earned a cent.’

‘Yet he’s living at the rate of five thousand a year at least.’

‘It’s like him!’ Ravengar snorted.  ‘It’s like him!’

‘Perhaps he can’t help it,’ Hugo said queerly.  ’Everyone isn’t like you and me.’

‘He can help robbing me of my future wife!’

‘But she left you of her own accord.’

’Owen, she must marry me.  It is essential.  You must bring your influence to bear,’ Ravengar burst out wildly.  ‘She must be my wife!’

‘My dear fellow,’ Hugo protested calmly, ’what are you dreaming of?  I have no influence.  You talk like a man at his wits’ end.’

There was a silence.

‘I am a man at his wits’ end,’ Ravengar murmured, half sadly.  ’I trusted that girl.  She knows all my secrets.’

‘What secrets?’ asked Hugo, struck by the phrase.

‘My business secrets, of course.  What else do you fancy?’

‘My fancy is too active,’ said Hugo, with careful casualness.  ’It runs away with me.  I was thinking of other sorts of secrets, and of that curious principle of English law that a wife can’t give evidence against her husband....  You must pardon my fancy,’ he added.

’Do you mean to insinuate that my eagerness to marry Camilla Payne is in order to prevent her from being able to—­’

‘No, Louis; I mean to insinuate nothing.  Can’t you see a joke?’

‘I cannot,’ said Ravengar.  ‘Not that variety of joke.’

‘The appreciation of humour was never your strong point.’

Something in Hugo’s manner made Ravengar spring forward; then he checked himself.

‘Owen,’ he entreated, ’don’t let’s quarrel again.  I beg you to help me.  Help me, and I’ll promise never to interfere with you in your business—­I’ll swear it.’

‘Then it was you, after all, that instructed Polycarp?’

Ravengar gave an affirmative sign.

’I meant either to get hold of this place or to ruin you.  Remember what I suffered—­in the old days....  You see I’m frank with you.  Help me.  We’re neither of us growing younger.  I’m mad for that girl, and I must have her.’

Hugo put his hands into his pockets, and consulted his toes.  This semi-step-brother of his somehow aroused his compassion.

‘No, Louis,’ he said; ‘I can’t.’

‘You hate me?’

‘Not a bit.’