"Ridiculous!" interposed Mrs. de Burgh--"that is to say that you should have expected her to have seen everything with your own jaundiced, prejudiced perception; but about Eustace Trevor." "Yes, about Eustace Trevor; he is a subject certainly worth a little of your interest and inquiry. Mary, you should have known _him_," exclaimed Mr. de Burgh, with rising enthusiasm. "You were very much attached to him then?" demanded Mary, with deep interest. "Attached to him!--yes, indeed I was; that _was_ a man whom one might well glory in calling friend; or," he murmured to himself, "a woman might be proud to worship as a lover." "Yes," interposed Mrs. de Burgh, "I suppose he was a very superior, delightful person; but I own he always appeared to me, even as a boy, a little _tête monté_, so that it did not surprise me so very much when I heard of the calamity which had befallen him. He was just the sort of person upon whose mind any strong excitement, or sudden shock would have had the like effect." "Olivia, you are talking nonsense," Mr. de Burgh petulantly exclaimed. "It was his mother's death, I think, I heard which brought on this dreadful crisis?" Mary inquired. "Exactly so," answered Mrs. de Burgh. "How _do_ you know?" exclaimed her husband. "What does any one know about the matter?" "We can only judge from what one has heard from the best authority," again persisted his wife. "Best authority! well, I can only say that far from being of your opinion, I should have said that Eustace Trevor had been as far from madness as earth from heaven." "Really, Louis!" exclaimed Mrs. de Burgh, perceiving Mary's look of anxious interest and surprise, "one would fancy from the way you talk that you suspected him never really to have been mad." "'And this the world called frenzy; but the wise Have a far deeper madness, and the glance Of melancholy is a fearful gift. What is it but the telescope of truth, Which brings life near in utter nakedness, Making the cold reality more cold,'" quoted Mr. de Burgh for all reply. "What _is_ all this to do with the point in question?" said Mrs. de Burgh impatiently. "Really, Louis, Mary will think _you_ also decidedly have gone mad." "Mary likes poetry," he answered quietly; "she will not think it is madness what I have uttered." "But, Louis, what do you really mean about Eugene's brother?--tell me something about him. I have heard so very little," demanded Mary, earnestly. "Why do you not make Eugene tell you himself? I can only say: 'He was a man, take him for all in all, I shall not look upon his like again!'" "He was very handsome--very clever," said Mrs. de Burgh, taking up the theme more prosaically, "and very amiable I believe, though rather impetuous and hot-tempered; always at daggers drawn with his father, because he spent the old man's money a little faster than he liked, it is said."