"What more can I add; but that I shall expect your written answer. I feel assured you will, no less than myself, desire, if possible, to avoid all personal communication. Direct to the General Post Office, London, where, till I am assured that my object is properly secured, I shall remain; and now, Eugene, farewell! God knows, that everything in the terms and substance of this letter, which may appear dictated by a harsh or threatening spirit, springs rather from the wretched circumstances of the case, our most unnatural and unavoidable position, one towards another--not from the temper of my mind towards you. Heaven be my witness, that I would gladly give my heart's blood at this moment, to discover that the past was but a horrid dream, and that now, as in years gone by, I could without fear, that the very air would repeat the words in mocking echo, sign myself, "Your affectionate brother, "EUSTACE TREVOR." CHAPTER XXV. There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life Is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat; And we must take the current when it serves, Or lose our ventures. SHAKSPEARE. It is not necessary to describe with much detail the effect produced by this letter, on the mind of Eustace Trevor, or the mode of conduct he pursued in the emergency. We have already made the reader acquainted with the half measures he pursued--the crooked paths he attempted, in order to extricate himself from the threefold difficulty in which he found himself placed. His answer in the first instance, to his brother's first startling address, had been of that character which usually marks the tone of the offender, when the injured one dares to rise up and interfere with his ill-deserved security, and ill-earned joys; but though in language fierce and vindictive, he might appear to set fear and threatening at defiance, there was too much implied acquiescence, in the power these threats exercised over his mind--in the testy assurance which accompanied his reply (how far true we have seen) that his marriage was not in any such immediate question as Eustace seemed to imagine--that his father's state of health rendered it an affair of most uncertain termination--till finally, a second letter from his brother, brought him, at last, to declare in terms, the bitterness of which may be well imagined, that he had put off his marriage _sine die_, in further proof of which, he was to hold no further communication by person or letter with Mary Seaham;--he then hoped that Eustace might be satisfied, and that he would have left England.