Arthur Seaham stood at the hall door two days after, looking out for the carriage which was to convey himself and sister from Silverton, some delay having been occasioned by the non-arrival of the post-horses.

Suddenly a single horse's hoof was heard approaching, and he had but just time to retreat out of observation, when Eugene Trevor rode up to the door.

Arthur Seaham could not but feel shocked at his altered appearance—his haggard countenance, and the strong marks of mental suffering it exhibited. His very form seemed bowed down by the sudden weight of care and anxiety which had fallen upon him; and when, having dismounted, and rang the bell, he stood there, whilst waiting for the servant to attend the summons, unconscious of human regard, holding his horse's rein;—there was something touching to the young man's kindly heart, in the manner in which Eugene Trevor stroked the glossy mane of the noble animal as it rubbed its head against his master's shoulder, looking up affectionately into his face.

The action seemed as expressively as words to say:

"Poor fellow! it must go hard indeed with me before I can make up my mind to part with you; in your eye, at least, is none of the suspicion and distrust I plainly perceive in every other." And softened by this touch of nature, and remembering the attachment to his sister—sincere he believed at the time, which like a fair flower amongst noxious plants had shewn his nature to be so capable of better things—a feeling of regret was excited in Arthur Seaham's mind that that "root of all evil," the promoter of "every foolish and hurtful lust—the love of money," should ever have struck its baneful fibres in this man's heart.

Eugene Trevor had demanded a personal interview with his brother previous to his departure for London, through the lawyer who for many years had been the legal adviser of the family, and whom he still retained on his own account. Eustace Trevor had deemed it expedient to call in another man of business for himself. This person was now at Silverton, with some of the necessary documents connected with the property now devolving upon him; and Mr. de Burgh proposed the meeting of the brothers should take place there.

It was with perfect unconsciousness of what awaited her, that Mary Seaham entered the library some few minutes after, in order to bid adieu to her cousins, who, she had been told, were awaiting her there.

She had closed the door behind her before perceiving her mistake, and stood rooted to the spot with feelings the nature of which may be better imagined than described, at finding herself at this critical moment in the presence of the brothers—those two beings with whom her fate had been so strangely, so intricately involved.

Yes, there stood the one, with look and bearing almost like that said to have distinguished man before the Fall:

Irradiated with that attribute of God himself—a free and full forgiveness of an enemy.

And the other—with whom might his aspect at that moment suggest comparison? Alas! we fear but to

For as there he sat, even as he had done when suddenly confronted that night with his offended, injured brother, in the room of the London hotel, with bent brow and lowering eye, half defiance and half fear; so now still more he seemed to shrink into abject nothingness before him, abashed and confounded by the majestic power of goodness—the awful loveliness of a virtuous and noble revenge. For a few grave, calm, but gentle words from Eustace Trevor's lips had already set his anxious fears at rest—had assured him that the well-merited ruin with which the overthrow, so sudden and unlooked-for, of his unrighteous hopes and machinations had threatened to overwhelm him, would be averted.

And there stood Mary, pale and motionless. Whilst from one to another wandered her distressed and startled glance, she yet saw and marked the contrast; saw—and mourned in spirit that thus too late her eyes were opened; that thus, for the first time, had been presented, side by side to her enlightened perception, the brother whom in her deceived imagination she had so blindly chosen—the one she had so ignorantly refused.

Yes, too late—for could she dare now to lift her eyes to own the full, but tardy abnegation of every thought and feeling of her heart, as well as understanding, to the noble being it had lost?

Oh, no! for those two last days that they had passed under the same roof together—in the same manner, as she had seemed to shrink, with timid, lowly, self-abasement from the brother of her discarded lover, had Eustace Trevor appeared almost equally to avoid any close communion with that brother's alienated love. It was, therefore, influenced by these considerations, that after her first astounded pause, feeling that it was now impossible to retreat, and scarcely knowing what she did, Mary approached the table over which Eugene Trevor had been leaning on her entrance, but now had risen—holding out her hand, as her kindly heart perhaps, under any circumstances, would have instinctively dictated towards any being suffering under like vicissitude; but something in the grasp which closed over it—a detaining grasp, such as that with which the miser may be supposed to clasp some treasure on the point of making itself wings to fly away, seemed to distress and perplex her.

She turned with downcast eyes towards Eustace Trevor. His face, as she had approached his brother, had been averted with an expression in which, perhaps, was more of human weakness than it had before exhibited; but now he turned again and gratefully received the other she extended, in sign of parting, then as gently released it; and standing thus between the brothers, all the noble self-forgetfulness of Mary's nature seemed to revive within her. She felt that through her means the gulph had further widened which kept them apart—that she had been the shadow between their hearts, as now she stood in person—it was over now for ever. She was to go from between them—from him towards whom her heart had too late inclined, and from him from whom it had declined. Let her last act be at least one more blest in its effects, than had been hitherto her destiny to produce concerning them.

With a smile, faint, sad, and tearful, such as might have seemed almost to plead forgiveness from the one whom she ceased, and the one whom she had learnt too late, to love, she again extended her hands, and with a gentle movement joined those of the brothers together; then hurried from the room.

A few moments more, and Mr. de Burgh who was on his way to seek her had conducted her to the carriage, and Arthur springing in by her side; once more Mary Seaham was driven far away from Silverton.

And the brothers—taken by surprise by Mary's abrupt departure, the eyes of both had followed her from the room with an expression in which emotion of no common kind was visible; then turned silently from one another, only too anxious to be released from a situation, of which they could not but mutually feel the increased delicacy and embarrassment; the lawyers were summoned to their presence; and if a few minutes before Eugene Trevor had pursued with wistful glance the retreating form of Mary, the still more anxious brow and eager eye with which he might have been seen soon after entering with those gentlemen into the discussion of the settlement of his intricate affairs, plainly testified that for him at least there was, as there had ever been closer affections twined about his heart—deeper interests at stake than any that were connected with that pale sad girl, who for so long had hovered like a redeeming angel round his path, but who now turned away her light from him for ever.

Not so Eustace Trevor, as absent and inattentive he sat abstractedly by, or paced with anxious steps the boundary of the library, joining only when directly appealed to, or addressed, in the matters under discussion. It was plainly apparent how light and trifling the weight he attached to the heavy demand made under his sanction upon his generous liberality.

Only once he paused, and with more fixed attention looked upon his brother with an expression in which something of noble contempt seemed to curl his lip and to flash forth from his eye.

Perhaps the part he saw him play on this occasion recalled to his remembrance another scene of similar, yet contrary character, when he had found that brother seated in the library of Montrevor, with as much anxious avidity superintending arrangements of no such disinterested nature as those of which he now so graspingly availed himself.

But it was for a moment that any such invidious reminiscences retained their place within that generous soul. Soon had they vanished, as they came—the fire from his eye, the curl from his lip. And again Eustace Trevor paced the room—and thought on Mary.

A few months more, and Eugene Trevor, having settled his affairs to his entire satisfaction—thanks to the most generous and forgiving of brothers—had left England for the continent; and that same space of time found Eustace Trevor established in the neighbourhood of Montrevor, surrounded by admiring, and congratulating friends; superintending the improvement of his property, and making arrangements for the erection of a new mansion on the site of the one destroyed, but chiefly employed in acts of charity and beneficence towards the hitherto neglected poor and necessitous surrounding him, causing many a heart to sing for joy, who for many a long year had prayed and sued in vain at the wealthy miser's door.