"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--" He paused. There was no denial. "You went to your clubs; and there very surely took means to establish the fact of your eldest brother's melancholy condition--his insanity, his confinement!" Eugene Trevor in a hoarse and angry voice would have attempted some reply, but Eustace's indignant voice overpowered him. "And then you brought that man down," he continued, "to fill up the measure of your iniquity, and one scratch of the pen alone was needed now to make it good. Let it be done. That paper of his, that base and villainous forgery, now lies before me at my mercy. But I scorn to touch it. I treat it as it is--a worthless, valueless nothing. If I but chose to follow your example--go, call my friends and neighbours about me, declare before them all the unnatural fraud which has been practised upon me; yes, show them this," and he bared his blackened, wounded wrists, "and ring in their astounded ears, what, and _for what_, it entered a brother's heart to conceive an act of such atrocity; then, do you think that I could not manage to make those who knew, and cared for me, credit my testimony before that of an abandoned woman and two ignorant time-serving country doctors? Ask Dr. Miller, would he even dare to say, my attack was anything but the temporary delirium of fever?" "Merciful heavens, Eugene!" murmured Mr. Trevor, trying in an under tone to gain his younger son's attention, without being heard by the other. "Is there no one at hand to stop him--to secure him?" But Eustace caught the muttered syllables, and turned sternly round. "No one, Sir; who will dare to do it? Think not that I entered _your_ house without precaution against what I there had every reason to expect. These," drawing a brace of pistols from his pocket, "I found opportunity to obtain; and should one of these poor trembling menials by your orders, dare--"