"Impossible, Louis!" Mary exclaimed with eagerness.
"Well, perhaps so. I don't know at all," Mr. de Burgh continued. "I shouldn't be so much surprised if he did; there are a great many things which surprise me more than that, Mary; for instance you yourself—yes, you, Mary," as she lifted up her eyes to her cousin's handsome face, with quiet surprise, "that you should see things in a light so different to what I should have expected from you."
"Ridiculous!" interposed Mrs. de Burgh—"that is to say that you should have expected her to have seen everything with your own jaundiced, prejudiced perception; but about Eustace Trevor."
"Yes, about Eustace Trevor; he is a subject certainly worth a little of your interest and inquiry. Mary, you should have known him," exclaimed Mr. de Burgh, with rising enthusiasm.
"You were very much attached to him then?" demanded Mary, with deep interest.
"Attached to him!—yes, indeed I was; that was a man whom one might well glory in calling friend; or," he murmured to himself, "a woman might be proud to worship as a lover."
"Yes," interposed Mrs. de Burgh, "I suppose he was a very superior, delightful person; but I own he always appeared to me, even as a boy, a little tête monté, so that it did not surprise me so very much when I heard of the calamity which had befallen him. He was just the sort of person upon whose mind any strong excitement, or sudden shock would have had the like effect."
"Olivia, you are talking nonsense," Mr. de Burgh petulantly exclaimed.
"It was his mother's death, I think, I heard which brought on this dreadful crisis?" Mary inquired.
"Exactly so," answered Mrs. de Burgh.