"A great deal certainly!" had echoed instinctively from Eugene Trevor's lips. But why has the smile with which he lightly commenced the words, faded away like a gleam of sunshine, from the dark hill side, ere they died upon his lips, what were the suggested thoughts, the awakened recollections he would have wished diverted? What record did the history of these six years inscribe on the tablets of his memory?
What ever it might be, he did not pause to contemplate it long; but pouring himself out a glass of wine, drank it down hastily, as if the ruddy draught could wash away the unrepented sin; the unatoned iniquity of his secret soul—then looked and spoke as unconsciously as before.
"Each mind has indeed," as it has been ably written, "an interior apartment into which none but itself and the divinity can enter. In this secluded place, the passions fluctuate and mingle in unknown agitation. Here all the fantastic, and all the tragic shapes of imagination have a haunt—where they can neither be invaded or discerned. Here projects, convictions, vows, are confusedly scattered, and the records of past life are laid; and here in solitary state, sits conscience surrounded by her own thunders which sometimes sleep, and sometimes roar, while the world knows it not."
We said or quoted something to the same effect in a preceding chapter, and added—that it was well that it should be so.
CHAPTER VII.
There are some moments in our fate
That stamp the colour of our days.
* * * * *
And mine was sealed in the slight gaze
Which fixed my eye, and fired my brain,
And bowed my head beneath the chain.
L. E. L.
Mrs. de Burgh soon after led Mary to the drawing-room, when all that was kind and affectionate, and calculated to reassure her young guest's mind, with regard to her previously conceived misgivings, was expressed by the former lady.