CONCLUSIONES Y RECOMENDACIONES

show you places you have never seen. Stay with us, Martin."

"But my mother calls me," he answered. "They will say no masses for her soul if they do not know I am a rich man."

"I will send them money for it," replied Dorothy. "Besides, it is a mistake, Martin; your mother is not in the Inferno."

He listened to her as if she had been the Madonna he had fancied her when he first saw her. A heavy sob broke through his lips, and then a cry of exultation. The chief burden that had weighed upon his spirit slipped away and fell from him. The deepest stigma of his life was removed; and in this he was like other men, that his mother, whom he had never seen, was dwelling in the same place as the mothers of other men.

him, from that far-off Austrian valley, one of the curious, quaint old crucifixes which stand at every point where crossroads meet. She had it placed near the entrance of this cave; for, she said, if it awoke a thought, or gave him a glimmer of religious light, it was right for him to have it. When he came upon it first, unexpectedly, he threw himself on his knees before it, and burst into a passion of tears. It was a symbol familiar to him from his earliest days; the only place of refuge, where, if he could reach it, he was safe from the blows of his tyrants.

So evident was Martin's rapid development, that Margaret decided to remain with Dorothy after Sidney and Philip had returned to London. She was deeply interested in this growth of a soul under her own eyes. Martin was learning to make broken sentences in English; and she marked his progress with constantly increasing pleasure in seeing him overcome difficulties.

To Martin these winter months were less wearisome than the summer and autumn had been. The snow made the moors a more familiar ground, and in these long, dark afternoons, if Dorothy was out of the way, he could creep into the kitchen, and crouch down in the chimney nook smoking a pipe, undisturbed by the servants, who were still busy at their work. Margaret and Dorothy sat chiefly in the great hall, which Martin liked next best to the kitchen; large screens were drawn round the hearth, and huge fires kept burning, and there Martin would lie on the warm bearskins, with Dorothy's dogs around him, while she read the "Fioretti di San Francisco." Most things were irksome to him still; he could never wear the shackles of civilization easily. But he was changing and developing. By and by they would reap the harvest of the seed they were sowing.

The Easter holidays brought back Philip for a few days. In his eyes the transformation was marvelous. Martin had submitted to wearing boots and a hat; at any rate, when he went out with Dorothy. He sat down with them to their meals, and could even make his wants known to the servants in intelligible words. He was learning to ride, and he was willing to sit in the carriage quietly when they drove to the nearest town. His eyes followed Dorothy, and he was obedient to her slightest sign.

He watched her as if to see if he displeased her in any way. When she looked at him his dull face brightened with a rare smile, which had a strange and pathetic attraction in it, like a sudden and transient gleam of sunshine on a dreary, wintry day. The doglike allegiance he had displayed toward Philip was plainly transferred to her.

Was there any touch of jealousy in the uneasiness which Philip felt at this new phase of his brother's character? A vague, indefinable apprehension of some new danger took hold of him at the sight of this constant companionship between Martin and Dorothy. He recognized in his own mind that Martin was still a young man, and that there was a simple charm about Dorothy that few men of any rank in life could be indifferent to. Was Martin too dense a barbarian to feel it?

Though more civilized in other respects, Martin had not yet learned to sleep before he was sleepy. His hours of slumber were still as irregular as his hours of eating had been at first. Late one night, when all the rest of the household were long ago asleep, Philip found him on the hearth in the hall, sitting on his low stool beside Dorothy's chair. His deep-set eyes were glowing under his shaggy eyebrows like the embers on the hearth.

"My brother," he said, as Philip stood looking down at him, "tell me, am I now a rich English signore like the other signori?"

"Of course," answered Philip, about to sit down in Dorothy's chair; but Martin motioned him away, and drew another seat forward.

"This belongs to her, my signorina," he said; "it is not for you or for me."

"Why not?" asked Philip, half laughing. "She is only a girl like other girls."

Martin made no answer, but repeated "like other girls" under his breath, as if it was a new idea to him.

"My brother," he resumed, after a pause, "when I was poor, without a penny, long ago, there was a girl I loved. When a man loves a girl he wants her for his wife. I wanted this girl to be my wife, but she spat at me."

"I am glad you did not marry her, Martin," said Philip, thinking how far worse it would have been if he had discovered his brother with a wife and children.

"She wouldn't spit at me now," he continued proudly. "I am a rich signore now, and I should laugh at her being my wife. She is down there, in the mud. But, my brother, listen to me. You say my signorina is a girl like other girls, and I am a rich signore. Would she laugh at me if I love her and want her to be my wife, like the girl I loved long ago?"

For a minute or two anger and a strong feeling of repulsion kept Philip silent. It was too monstrous to think of patiently. This rude peasant, this scarcely reclaimed savage, to be lifting up his eyes to the sweet English girl, who had only stooped to civilize him out of the pure compassion of her heart! But the feeling died out as quickly as it had been kindled. It was possible for Martin to love her, and, if so, how much he would have to suffer!

"She would laugh at me," said Martin in tones of the deepest and saddest conviction; "she would not look at me. See, I am a dog to her. She would turn her face away from me, and never look at me again. She is so far away above me, but you are close to her. You are like her, very grand, and very beautiful, and very clever. I am down, down in the mud. I cannot learn your ways; they are too hard for me. Oh, my brother! if I was like you, my signorina would love me and be my wife."

Philip, looking down at the seared and melancholy face of his unfortunate brother, said to himself that this might have been true. If Martin had been trained and educated as he himself had been he would have been a suitable husband for Dorothy, and what would please his father and mother more than to have her for their daughter?

"She is like the Madonna to me," said Martin slowly and hesitatingly, as if searching through his brain for suitable words to express the thoughts pressing busily into it; "my Madonna. I see her all day, and at night I cannot sleep. I sit all night on the mat at her door watching, listening. I do not sleep, but I am happy."

"You must never tell her that," replied Philip; "it would make her very unhappy."

"I will never tell her, my brother," he answered submissively; "she is too high above me. She is like an angel, and I am a dog. That is true. I am nothing; only a rich man. But I will give her all my riches—this house, these lands. They shall be hers, not mine."

"But you are not a rich man till your father dies," explained Philip; "they belong to him as long as he lives, and then they will belong to you as long as you live, but you can never give them away. They will be kept for your eldest son. It would be impossible for you to give any of them to Dorothy."

"It is a lie, then," he said; "it is a lie. I am not a rich man. They are of no good to me, this house and these lands. It would be better for me to have a farm of my own in Ampezzo, and marry a woman there. I did not dare to think the signorina would be my wife; but if I could give her this house and these lands, and live near her, where I could see her every day, I could be happy, perhaps, here in this strange country, though I do not know what the people say. I am not happy in Ampezzo; they curse me and throw stones at me. I am not happy here in these clothes, and this great house, and these fine rooms. Let me be a servant; your servant, or the signorina's; then I might be happy."

"That could never be," said Philip pityingly.

"That is what I am fit for," urged Martin. "Take me away from here; make me work hard. Say to me: 'Martin, clean my horse;' 'Martin, do this;' 'Martin, do that,' like Chiara did. The days would not be long then, and I should sleep sound at night. I want to be tired out, my brother. See, I am very strong; my arms and legs are strong; and I sit all day in a chair smoking a pipe, and all they tell me to do is, 'Read a little book, signore,' or, 'Learn a little English,' or, 'Let me teach you how to write.' Only my signorina says: 'Let us go out on the moors, Martin.' But she is not big and strong like me, and I walk like a girl beside her, for fear she should grow tired. I feel like a wolf shut up in a stable and fastened by a chain. Make me work hard like a servant, or let me go back to Ampezzo."

Philip let his hand fall gently on Martin's shoulder, and he turned and kissed it—the smooth, well formed hand, strong and muscular, yet as finely molded as a woman's. Martin stretched out his own knotted and deformed hands, and looked at them, as he had never done before, in the fire light, with a half laugh and a half groan. Since Philip's arrival this time he had become more conscious of the vast difference between himself and his brother. He saw his own uncouthness and ugliness as they must appear in Dorothy's eyes. His close watchfulness of her had betrayed to him how different was the expression of her face when she was talking to him or to Philip. He had seen a happy light in her eyes when Philip was beside her, or even when she caught the sound of his voice about the house. These two, thought Martin humbly, were fit for each other. Dorothy would be Philip's wife, not his.

"Yes, my brother," he said, speaking his last thought aloud, "my signorina loves you, and she will be your wife."

"Martin," exclaimed Philip, rising hastily, "you must never say such a word as that to me again."

He left him in solitary possession of the great hall; but looking out of his own room an hour later, he saw Martin stretched like a dog across the threshold of Dorothy's door.