"Enough, Gerald," and his brother spoke in terms of deep reproach, "since you persist in withholding your confidence, I will no longer urge it; but you cannot wonder that I, who love but you alone on earth, should sorrow as one without hope, at beholding you subject to a grief so overwhelming as to have driven you to seek refuge from it in an unhallowed grave."
"I do not understand you—what mean you?" quickly interrupted Gerald, raising his head from the hand which supported it at the breakfast-table while he colored faintly.
"You cannot well be ignorant of my meaning," pursued Henry in the same tone, "if you but recur to the circumstances attending your arrival here."
"I am still in the dark," continued Gerald, with some degree of impatience.
"Because you know not that I am acquainted with all that took place on the melancholy occasion. Gerald," he pursued, "forgive the apparent harshness of what I am about to observe—but was it generous—was it kind in you to incur the risk you did, when you must have known that your death would have entailed upon me an eternal grief? Was it worthy of yourself, moreover, to make the devoted follower of your fortunes, a sharer in the danger you so eagerly and wantonly courted?"
"Nay, my good brother," and Gerald made an attempt at levity, "you are indeed an unsparing monitor; but suppose I should offer in reply, that a spirit of enterprize was upon me on the occasion to which you allude, and that, fired by a desire to astonish you all with a bold feat, I had resolved to do what no other had done before me, yet without apprehending the serious consequences which ensued—or even assuming the danger to have been so great."
"All this, Gerald, you might, yet would not say; because, in saying it, you would have to charge yourself with a gross insincerity; and although you do not deem me worthy to share your confidence, I still have pleasure in knowing that my affection will not be repaid with deceit—however plausible the motives for its adoption may appear—by the substitution, in short, of that which is not for that which is."
"A gross insincerity?" repeated Gerald, again slightly coloring.
"Yes, my brother—I say it not in anger, nor in reproach—but a gross insincerity it would certainly be. Alas, Gerald, your motives are but too well known to me. The danger you incurred was incurred wilfully, wantonly, and with a view to your own destruction."