What should he say to these? or rather to him--his brother? To the other, he had long ceased to look but as on one who had forfeited all right to the name of father. "For what one amongst ye, who if his son ask a fish will he give him a serpent; or if he ask for bread will give him a stone," and by what better manner of speech figure forth all that old man had ever done by him, his luckless son? Nay, if this were all--if he could but have paused here, and forgotten how that father had played the part of husband to a sainted mother; but he looked not on _him_ now--he looked only to him, that mother's son; from whom, in spite of all he might have ever had to reprobate and forgive, it had not entered into his thoughts to conceive cruel perfidy such as that, of which since entering that room he had become but the more fully convinced he had been made the victim; and the bitterness of death--during that first instant that he thus stood reading in his brother Eugene's sullen, downcast brow, a too certain confirmation of his guilt--overwhelmed his soul.
But it passed over, and was gone; and a just and righteous indignation re-asserted its dominion in its place.
"Eugene," he said, "that paper," and he pointed to the legal document before him, "throws but too clear a light on the transactions of which I have been made the victim. Oh, how could you allow that demon, covetousness, to gain such empire over your heart? Cain, in the angry passion of the moment, slew his brother; but you, in cold-blooded calculation, could bend yourself to an act which time and circumstances, perhaps remote, could alone turn to your advantage."
"Eustace!" stammered his brother; "I excuse this intemperate language on your part, for of course you cannot appreciate the circumstances of the case; but any one would be ready to justify the necessary, but painful, course of conduct to which we were reduced. In whatever state of mind you may be now, there are others to testify as to the fact--"
"Pshaw! justify--who will justify one, who, during the temporary delirium of a brain fever, confined his own brother to a madhouse! affixed to his name that stamp and stigma which must cling to it for the remainder of his days; or, still more unwarrantable and cruel, the evident attempts to detain him in that madhouse, long after any reasonable possible excuse was afforded? But I can plainly read the motive which thus influenced you--too plainly, alas! Eugene, two months ago I had not conceived such conduct possible; but I know you _now_. I think I can pretty well divine what has been the course of conduct you have pursued; you have been to London, perhaps--"
