Then pressing her hand wearily across her brow, as if she felt the overpowering influence of the dark bewildering theme which had taken such painful hold of her imagination. Mrs. de Burgh lay back upon her sofa, and was silent. She felt herself getting into deeper waters than she had power or ability to struggle with. She had been persuaded to use all her rhetoric, into arguing a serious but gentle-minded girl into marrying a man, towards whom time and experience had much shaken her estimation. To sift so particularly a matter, the wrongs and rights of which she had, like the world in general, been contented to take for so many years on credit, she was not prepared; and Mary's rebuke chafed her spirit, and changed in a manner the current of her thoughts. "How very disagreeable it would be for Eugene, if his brother should ever come forward, claiming rights, of which he had been dispossessed by his brother, under false pretences--" and the fair lady was beginning, for the first time, seriously to agitate her mind with these reflections, when the door softly opened, and Eugene Trevor himself made his appearance. One uneasy glance directed towards Mary, as if to see how she would take the intrusion; a slight movement of her shoulders, as she met the look of anxious inquiry which Eugene Trevor fixed upon her, seeming to express: "I have done my best--you must now try for yourself--" and Mrs. de Burgh took up her work and applied herself to it assiduously. Eugene Trevor said something not very coherent about his horse not being ready and seated himself a little behind Mary's chair, who had seemed more by feeling than by sight to be aware of her lover's entrance; for she had not lifted up her downcast eyes, fixed so drearily on the fire. And now only a scarce perceptible shudder and more rigid immovability seemed to announce the knowledge of his proximity. "Mary is very tired," observed Mrs. de Burgh, glancing up from her work. Eugene bent gently forward, and looked with earnest solicitude into Mary's face. He did not speak, but volumes could not have expressed more than the silent concentrated fervour of those dark, passionate eyes. It was impossible not to feel in some degree their power, though the influence which had enthralled her soul in other days, was gone; or remained, to use that most hackneyed of all similes, only as the power of the repellant rattlesnake. Painfully she turned away her head, whilst the hand of which Eugene gently had managed to possess himself, struggled to free itself from his hold. Probably, Mrs. de Burgh conceived, from all appearance, that this was the momentous crisis which it was her duty to make another effort to assist.