"For Heaven's sake don't say that, Hugo," began the second brother, with a hasty desire to pave the way for reconciliation.
The look of abject fear was dying out of his face. The worst, he thought, was over. He drew himself up, crossed his arms, and tried to meet Brian's reproachful eyes with confidence, but in this attempt he was not successful. In spite of himself, the eyelids dropped until the long, black lashes almost touched the smooth, olive cheek, across which passed a transient flush of shame. This sign of feeling touched Brian; the lad was surely not hopelessly bad if he could blush for his sins. But Richard went on ruthlessly.
"You need expect no further help from me. I own you as a relation no longer. You have disgraced the name you bear. Don't let me see you again in my house." He was too indignant, too much excited, to speak in anything but short, sharp sentences, each of which seemed more bitter than the last. Richard Luttrell was little concerned for Hugo's welfare, much for the honour of the family. "Go," he said, "at once, and I will not publish your shameful conduct to the world. If you return to my house, if you seek to establish any communication with members of my family, I shall not keep your secret."
"Speak for yourself, Richard," said his brother, warmly, "not for me. I hope that Hugo will do better in time; and I don't mean to give him up. You must make an exception for me when you speak of separating him from the family."
Brian drew nearer to his brother, and uttered his next words in a lower tone.
"Think what you are doing," he said. "You will drive him to desperation, and, after all, he is only a boy of nineteen. Quite young enough to repent and reform, if we are not too hard upon him now. Do as you think fit for yourself and your own household, but you must not stand in the way of what I can do for him, little though that may be."
"I stand to what I have said," answered Richard, harshly. "I will have no communication between him and you." Then, folding his arms, he looked grimly and sardonically into Brian's face. "I trust neither of you," he said. "We all know that you are only too easily led by those whom you like to be led by, and he is a young reprobate. Choose for yourself, of course; I have no claim to control you, only, if you choose to be friendly with him, I shall cut off the supplies to you as well as to him, and I shall expose him publicly."