She had closed the door behind her before perceiving her mistake, and stood rooted to the spot with feelings the nature of which may be better imagined than described, at finding herself at this critical moment in the presence of the brothers—those two beings with whom her fate had been so strangely, so intricately involved.
Yes, there stood the one, with look and bearing almost like that said to have distinguished man before the Fall:
"Erect and tall—Godlike erect, with native honour clad,
Within whose looks divine the image of the glorious Maker shone,
Truth, wisdom, sanctitude, severe and pure.
His fair large front and eye sublime"—
Irradiated with that attribute of God himself—a free and full forgiveness of an enemy.
And the other—with whom might his aspect at that moment suggest comparison? Alas! we fear but to
"That least erected spirit that fell
From Heaven; whose looks and thoughts even in Heaven
Were always downwards bent, admiring more
The riches of Heaven's pavement trodden gold,
Than aught divine or holy there."
For as there he sat, even as he had done when suddenly confronted that night with his offended, injured brother, in the room of the London hotel, with bent brow and lowering eye, half defiance and half fear; so now still more he seemed to shrink into abject nothingness before him, abashed and confounded by the majestic power of goodness—the awful loveliness of a virtuous and noble revenge. For a few grave, calm, but gentle words from Eustace Trevor's lips had already set his anxious fears at rest—had assured him that the well-merited ruin with which the overthrow, so sudden and unlooked-for, of his unrighteous hopes and machinations had threatened to overwhelm him, would be averted.
And there stood Mary, pale and motionless. Whilst from one to another wandered her distressed and startled glance, she yet saw and marked the contrast; saw—and mourned in spirit that thus too late her eyes were opened; that thus, for the first time, had been presented, side by side to her enlightened perception, the brother whom in her deceived imagination she had so blindly chosen—the one she had so ignorantly refused.
Yes, too late—for could she dare now to lift her eyes to own the full, but tardy abnegation of every thought and feeling of her heart, as well as understanding, to the noble being it had lost?