"No, the afternoon before it had occurred."
"Had she seen his brother?"
"She had, contrary to her cousin Olivia's promise, that so painful and useless an ordeal should be spared her. She had found him at Silverton on her arrival. It had been an interview most distressing and repugnant to her feelings at the time, though the startling and terrible events, which so closely succeeded, had in a great degree diverted her mind from any selfish consideration. She had since then been very ill. Her illness had detained her at Silverton, but this I shall not regret," she added. "I shall now depart with the happy consciousness, which I have not experienced for the last few years, that all is right which has been for long so very wrong, my mind relieved of its harassing weight of doubt, darkness and perplexity."
"Yes, your sense of disinterested justice may be satisfied; but your heart, will it remain equally so? The cause which you have so generously espoused, established; will not other feelings re-assert their power, and my brother again triumph in the possession of that which, to call my own, I would gladly have cast at his feet the richest inheritance on earth?"
These words were uttered with almost breathless agitation.
"No," was the reply in a voice so low and trembling that the anxious listener had to hold his breath to catch its accents; "such feelings have long been destroyed, and can never re-assert their influence. Even pity is done away save for the wounded conscience, which he who once I loved must carry with him through life; yes, pity even is now scarcely to be excited; and love—can love survive esteem?"
With a jealous, yearning glance Eustace Trevor watched the tears again falling from the agitated speaker's eyes, kissed away by the sympathising child; and then he rose and began again to pace the room as if to stem some fresh torrent of inward emotion which stirred within his breast. But at this juncture the door opened abruptly, and in another moment Eustace Trevor's hand was clasped in Louis de Burgh's, who, followed by Arthur Seaham, entered the room; and Mary, leaning on her brother's arm, left the re-united friends together.
CHAPTER XXI.
Flesh and blood,
You brother mine, that entertained ambition,
Expelled remorse and nature,
* * * * *
I do forgive thee,
Unnatural as thou art—
Forgive thy rankest fault.