But judging from herself, tears in her sex's eyes were marks of conscious weakness, and the melting mood of feeling rather than of any firmness or serious effect upon the mind; therefore with secret complacency she watched and awaited the close of her gentle cousin's agitated paroxysm of emotion. Then she had strong tea brought, of which she insisted upon her drinking, overwhelming Mary with care and tenderness, in the meantime sending for the children to stay a few moments to divert her thoughts, and restore her by their innocent presence to a more natural state of thought and feeling. Then, after partaking herself of some dinner, which Mary declined to share, she saw her guest ensconced in a comfortable arm-chair by the fire, looking very pale, it was true, and eyes bright only from nervous excitement, but her feelings apparently tranquillised and soothed; then struck bravely forth upon the anxious theme. With tact, skill, and eloquence which would have graced a better cause, Mrs. de Burgh pleaded in her favourite's behalf--favouritism, alas! we fear drawing its source from principles doing little honour to the object of her partiality, and justifying still less the restless zeal with which she strove to forward a cause, in which the fate of a good and innocent being was so closely implicated. But though "her tongue dropped manna and could make the worst appear the better reason," the time was past when the willing ear of the auditor could be thus beguiled. She had no longer to deal with the too credulous and easy-to-be-persuaded Mary of other days, but one with eyes too tremblingly awake, and ears too powerfully quickened, to the discernment of falsity from the truth. Each specious statement rang false and hollow on her unpersuaded mind, touching not one atom of that weight of inward conviction which, alas! had been too firmly rooted there, for aught but the touch of genuine truth to undermine; and when, with her face buried in her hands, she listened with suspended respiration to the story of the brother's madness, which flowed so glibly from those eager, fluent lips, little Mrs. de Burgh deemed now every word thus uttered served but more forcibly to confirm the fearful impression which the simple-motived Jane had made upon her listener's mind. "And then poor man," Mrs. de Burgh, continued, "after frightening the old man out of his wits by his violence, he fled from the house and hid himself no one knew where. Poor Eugene's anxiety on his behalf was extreme; but of course, as he supposed him to have gone abroad, all researches were taken on the wrong track. There is no one to vouch for the condition of his mind during that interval--when he came to your part of the world it seems that he had pretty well recovered."