"You, Mary, would have been the last I thought to put such a construction on an affair of this sort. You cannot know the circumstances of the case, and the difficult position in which Eugene might have been placed. That a most violent hatred between him and his father always existed is well known. That Eustace Trevor's feelings in this respect (feelings which it is to be confessed were not without some foundation) after his mother's death amounted to frenzy, as it is easy with his excitable disposition to believe. His violence must indeed have been extreme, for I know from good authority, that it has been impossible ever since to mention his eldest son's name in Uncle Trevor's presence, without sending the old man almost into convulsions. For peace and grief's sake alone, Eugene might have found it necessary to have his brother removed from the house, especially when sanctioned, as of course the action must have been, by medical certificates; at any rate, it is only charitable to suppose error--rather than malice deliberate and propense--to have been the origin of the proceeding."
Mary's eyes were by this time lifted up in anxious attention.
"Yes, yes," she murmured, with clasped hands and agitated fervour; "convince me it were _error_, and I should be thankful--oh, how thankful to cherish the idea; but vain, vain will be the endeavour to reason me into the persuasion that anything short of the most generous misconception could have justified any such proceeding with regard to Eustace Trevor, as the cruel course which was pursued against him; and oh, Olivia, I wonder at you--a woman--advocating such a cause."
Then pressing her hand wearily across her brow, as if she felt the overpowering influence of the dark bewildering theme which had taken such painful hold of her imagination.
Mrs. de Burgh lay back upon her sofa, and was silent. She felt herself getting into deeper waters than she had power or ability to struggle with. She had been persuaded to use all her rhetoric, into arguing a serious but gentle-minded girl into marrying a man, towards whom time and experience had much shaken her estimation.
To sift so particularly a matter, the wrongs and rights of which she had, like the world in general, been contented to take for so many years on credit, she was not prepared; and Mary's rebuke chafed her spirit, and changed in a manner the current of her thoughts.