"Painful indeed!" was the other's significant rejoinder.
"Never but once," Mary continued, "did I venture to question him upon the subject with any minuteness, and then he manifested such strong and painful emotion that I never afterwards approached it willingly. But at that time," she added with a sigh, "I had certainly heard very little of his brother, but the dark and terrible malady with which he was afflicted. Mr. Temple," she continued anxiously, "is not his complete disappearance most mysterious and inexplicable? and does it not appear to you almost impossible, that all the means which have been taken for his recovery could have been so completely unattended by success, supposing he were still alive?"
"But have any such means been taken?" her companion asked with some marked curiosity.
"Oh yes!" she hastened to reply "on Eugene's part at least."
A peculiar smile played on her companion's lips. It did not fail to strike Mary, and the incredulity it seemed to imply caused her feelings now so peculiarly sensitive upon that point, to be immediately up in arms.
"Mr. Temple, can you for a moment doubt this fact, he is Eugene's own brother, and—" she added in a low voice, the crimson blood at the same time mantling her cheeks, as the remembrance that she was addressing a rejected lover, pressed more consciously upon her, "he had interests of a different nature, closely connected with the assurance of his lost brother's fate?"
Mr. Temple started with sudden excitement.
"Indeed!" he exclaimed, then averting his head, he added, as if the utterance of each syllable was a separate pang. "Do you mean to say that there is still a question of this marriage?"
"There is," she replied; "though of a very remote and undefined nature, our engagement still subsists."
Having said this with no little embarrassment of manner, the same feeling probably caused her to raise her arm from the fountain, over which she had been unconsciously leaning, and by tacit consent they turned away from the spot, silently beginning to retrace their steps. They had not proceeded thus many yards, when Arthur Seaham appeared in sight, accompanied by a second person, who Mary, with an exclamation of delighted surprise, recognized as Mr. Wynne, concerning whom in the absorbing interest of the last hour she had no time to seek information.