But the next moment, with a low-breathed sigh, which might have seemed the echo of her own, he released her hand, and turned away his head.
"You are kind to say this," he murmured, "for myself, I can only declare this meeting to be a happiness such as I had hardly expected ever to taste again in this world. But," he anxiously inquired, "will you again permit me to inquire the reason of the more than common—nay even, taking into consideration his relationship—more than natural interest, it would appear you feel in the unfortunate Eustace Trevor."
The earnest melancholy of his tone thrilled on Mary's heart.
"Mr. Temple," she said eagerly, "you speak with feeling on this subject, can it, oh! can it be possible that you have ever seen, ever known Eugene Trevor's brother? Oh, tell me if this is really the case, for you say true—in more than common degree—quite independently of selfish motives, connected with my own happiness—has my interest been excited in his discovery. It has been most strongly awakened in the fate, and history of one who has lately been brought before me in a light so charming yet so sad. Oh! Mr. Temple, you do not deny the fact. Then, tell me, only tell me where he can be found?"
Eustace Trevor had turned upon her the full light of his radiant countenance, radiant with a new and strange delight, the nature of which she could not comprehend; but as, with clasped hands and beseeching countenance, she uttered this latter inquiry, it was answered by a gesture, seeming to imply by her listener ignorance in the required information.
"You, then, did not know him?" she resumed, with renewed disappointment in her tone.
"I did know him—ah, too well!" was the murmured reply, his eyes, with a strange and mysterious expression, fixed upon the ground.
Very pale suddenly grew Mary's cheek as she looked upon him thus. Her lips parted, and her heart beat fast as from the shock of a strange and sudden idea, which flashed across her senses. But she put by the suggestion as the wild improbable coinage of her own high wrought imagination. She remembered too what had struck her often vaguely before, and also her brother's remark on a former occasion, with reference to the same resemblance. But when she looked again, the glowing illusion had faded, her companion was again calmly regarding her, again asking—in what she esteemed a cold and careless tone of voice—from whom it was, she had received the impression respecting Eustace Trevor, to which she had just alluded.
"It was his friend, and my cousin—Louis de Burgh, who first spoke of him to me in such warm and glowing terms; but he chiefly raised my interest by the beautiful but melancholy picture he drew of his devoted affection for his mother—that mother," she added in a low, sad tone, "with whose unhappy history, I then for the first time was made acquainted—indeed it caused his very affliction to become almost holy in my eyes—by showing it to have been but the crisis of his high and sacred grief. Mr. Temple," she continued with enthusiasm; "there seems to me something, if I may so speak, almost God-like in the pure and devoted love of a strong proud-hearted man towards his mother; and it is God-like, for was not the last earthly thought—the last earthly care of Him who hung upon the cross, even in his mortal agony—for his mother!"
The speaker's glistening eyes were raised above or she might have seen tears indeed,