"My dear, dear mother!" he exclaimed as he approached her, "has my absence then vexed you so grievously?... I could not help it, mother; Sir Gilbert literally made me his prisoner."
"Sir Gilbert, Charles, might have shown more respect to the memory of the friend he has lost, than by keeping his son to listen to his own wild invectives against the wife that friend so loved and trusted."
"Whoever has repeated to you the hasty expressions of Sir Gilbert, my dear mother, in such a manner as to leave a painful impression on your mind against him, has not acted well. You know his temper, but you know his heart also; and I should not have thought that it could have been in the power of any one to make you doubt the real friendship of Sir Gilbert for us all."
"Surely, Charles, it was no symptom of friendship to me, to say that your dear father had made an accursed will!"
"Good heavens!... what a strange misrepresentation, mother!... and all hanging, as it should seem, upon one little syllable!... Our friend, as you well know, is what Rosalind calls a manish man; he denies the supremacy of woman, and might, and I verily believe did say, that a will which vested power in her must be a cursed will. But we know too well his long-licensed coarseness of expression to greatly marvel at that; but for the solemn and most awful word ac-cursed, believe me, mother, he never said it."
"It matters little, my dear son, what particular words of abuse Sir Gilbert uttered against me, provided that your heart did not echo them."
"Mother! dearest mother!" cried Helen, rising and going towards her brother, who seemed petrified at the words he heard, "how for a single moment could you believe that Charles's heart could echo any word that spoke not honour and love towards you!"
"He might have been mistaken, Helen," replied her mother with a heavy sigh: "Charles could not indeed suspect that the mother his dear father so fully trusted should prove unworthy of the trust.--But let us quit this painful theme; and believe me, my children, that the first wish of my heart is to prove myself worthy of his trust and your love."
"Such words are just what we might expect to hear from you, mother," said Mowbray, "were any profession from you to us necessary; but I would gladly forget that you have ever thought such an assurance called for."