"In your present situation," I resumed, "I don't understand your brother
leaving you here all by yourself."

He was on the point of flaming out again at that.

"Not a word against my brother!" he exclaimed fiercely. "My brother is
the noblest creature that God ever created! You must own that
yourself--you know what he did at the trial. I should have died on the
scaffold but for that angel. I insist on it that he is not a man. He is
an angel!"

(I admitted that his brother was an angel. The concession instantly
pacified him.)

"People say there is no difference between us," he went on, drawing his
chair companionably close to mine. "Ah, people are so shallow!
Personally, I grant you, we are exactly alike. (You have heard that we
are twins?) But there it ends, unfortunately for _me._ Nugent--(my
brother was christened Nugent after my father)--Nugent is a hero! Nugent
is a genius. I should have died if he hadn't taken care of me after the
trial. I had nobody but him. We are orphans; we have no brothers or
sisters. Nugent felt the disgrace even more than I felt it--but _he_
could control himself. It fell more heavily on him than it did on me.
I'll tell you why. Nugent was in a fair way to make our family name--the
name that we have been obliged to drop--famous all over the world. He is
a painter--a landscape painter. Have you never heard of him? Ah, you soon
will! Where do you think he has gone to? He has gone to the wilds of
America, in search of new subjects. He is going to found a school of
landscape painting. On an immense scale. A scale that has never been