Or even, were this excitement which now alarmed him so much, to subside again for the present, how dreadful was the prospect opened by its having ever assumed so serious a form; and the inconsistency of Willoughby's conduct and manner, the incoherence of his expressions in his ill-sustained attempts at conversation, put the fatal truth beyond a doubt. Yet, were all those symptoms so far to abate, that no eye less watchful, less practised to watch than his own, could detect the lurking malady, was it fair, was it honourable, to involve in so frightful a family affliction, the happiness of a being as yet unconscious of it? Yet who could, who would, who ought to interfere? Delicacy and all good feeling for ever forbade that any surmise should proceed from him. Oh impossible! quite impossible! Fate must roll on, and overwhelm whom it would, he must be passive! But he was more: instinctively he strove to conceal from servants, and the few country neighbours whom chance threw in their way, the hourly increasing infirmity of his brother; treating, while such were present, his extravagance as hilarity, and every contradiction and inconsistency as an intended jest; adding thus the while, by the violent and unnatural contrast to his own secret sufferings.
Alfred sometimes thought that possibly he ought so far to conquer his scruples as to write to his mother, and communicate to her, in strict confidence, his apprehensions respecting the state of Willoughby's mind: but he might recover after a short period of quiet, and then his mother might be spared the pang: and he could not, as he had before decided, even within the bosom of his own family,--he could not, be the consequence what it might, bring himself to be the first to suggest such a thought. His mother, of course, would not suspect him of a base desire to grasp at his brother's birth-right, and of a consequent quicksightedness in discerning the approaches of this frightful visitation; but there were those who might so misjudge him. It was, however, he thought, at least his duty to prepare his mother's mind in some degree for whatever might be the result, by saying, that he did not think Willoughby quite well: this, therefore, he did in one or two of his letters. Yet Willoughby himself made no complaint; and to servants and occasional visiters appeared to be in particularly good health and spirits. We remark this now because the comment subsequently becomes important.