Mr. Caryll stood apart, breathing the freshness of the sunlit morning, but supremely indifferent to its glory. He was gloomy and preoccupied. He had slept ill that night after his interview with Sir Richard, tormented by the odious choice that lay before him of either breaking with the adoptive father to whom he owed obedience and affection, or betraying his natural father whom he had every reason to hate, yet who remained his father. He had been able to arrive at no solution. Duty seemed to point one way; instinct the other. Down in his heart he felt that when the moment came it would be the behests of instinct that he would obey, and, in obeying them, play false to Sir Richard and to the memory of his mother. It was the only course that went with honor; and yet it was a course that must lead to a break with the one friend he had in the world - the one man who stood to him for family and kin.

And now, as if that were not enough to plague him, there was this quarrel with Rotherby which he had upon his hands. That, too, he had been considering during the wakeful hours of that summer night. Had he reflected he must have seen that no other result could have followed his narrative at White's last night; and yet it was a case in which reflection would not have stayed him. Hortensia Winthrop's fair name was to be cleansed of the smirch that had been cast upon it, and Justin was the only man in whose power it had lain to do it. More than that - if more were needed - it was Rotherby himself, by his aggressiveness, who had thrust Mr. Caryll into a position which almost made it necessary for him to explain himself; and that he could scarcely have done by any other than the means which he had adopted. Under ordinary circumstances the matter would have troubled him not at all; this meeting with such a man as Rotherby would not have robbed him of a moment's sleep. But there came the reflection - belatedly - that Rotherby was his brother, his father's son; and he experienced just the same degree of repugnance at the prospect of crossing swords with him as he did at the prospect of betraying Lord Ostermore. Sir Richard would force upon him a parricide's task; Fate a fratricide's. Truly, he thought, it was an enviable position, his.