'Was she
too crazy to remember that these things really happened?'
This was enough for Henry: the same impression had been produced
on both of them. 'You will do as you please,' he said.
'But if you will be guided by me, spare yourself the reading
of those pages to come, which describe our brother's terrible
expiation of his heartless marriage.'
'Have you read it all, Henry?'
'Not all. I shrank from reading some of the latter part of it.
Neither you nor I saw much of our elder brother after we left school;
and, for my part, I felt, and never scrupled to express my feeling,
that he behaved infamously to Agnes. But when I read that unconscious
confession of the murderous conspiracy to which he fell a victim,
I remembered, with something like remorse, that the same mother bore us.
I have felt for him to-night, what I am ashamed to think I never felt for
him before.'
Lord Montbarry took his brother's hand.
'You are a good fellow, Henry,' he said; 'but are you quite
sure that you have not been needlessly distressing yourself?
Because some of this crazy creature's writing accidentally tells
what we know to be the truth, does it follow that all the rest is
to be relied on to the end?'
'There is no possible doubt of it,' Henry replied.
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