Ritherdon (of Desolada), one of the richest, if not the richest, exporters of logwood and mahogany, is seriously ill and not expected to recover. Mr. Ritherdon came to the colony nearly thirty years ago, and from almost the first became extremely prosperous.

 

"Well!" exclaimed Julian, laying down the slip. "Well! It means, I suppose--that----"

"He is your father? Yes. That is what it does mean. He is your father, and the wealth of which that writer speaks is yours if he is now dead; will be yours, if he is still alive--when he dies."

Because, when our emotion, when any sudden emotion, is too great for us, we generally have recourse to silence, so now Julian said nothing; he sitting there musing, astonished at what he had just heard. Then, suddenly, knowing, reflecting that he must hear more, hear all, that he must be made acquainted now with everything that had occurred in the far-off past, he said, very gently: "Yes? Well, father--for it is you whom I shall always regard in that light--tell me everything. You said just now we had better make a beginning. Let us do so."

For a moment Mr. Ritherdon hesitated, it seeming as if he still dreaded to make his avowal, to commence to unfold the strange circumstances which had caused him to pass his life under the guise of father to the young man who was, in truth, his nephew. Then, suddenly, nerving himself, as it seemed to Julian, he began:

"My brother and I went to British Honduras, twenty-eight years ago, three years before you were born; at a time when money was to be made there by those who had capital. And he had some--a few thousand pounds, which he had inherited from an aunt who died between his birth and mine. I had nothing. Therefore I went as his companion--his assistant, if you like to call it so. Yet--for I must do him justice--I was actually his partner. He shared everything with me until I left him."

"Yes," the other said. "Yes. Until you left him! Yet, in such circumstances, why----?"

"Leave him, you would say. Why? Can you not guess? Not understand? What separates men from each other more than all else, what divides brother from brother, what----"

"A woman's love, perhaps?" Julian said softly. "Was that it?"

"Yes. A woman's love," Mr. Ritherdon exclaimed, and now his voice was louder than before, almost, indeed, harsh. "A woman's love. The love of a 

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