Chapter 9 - Page 2

even for his immediate chance of a modest livelihood.

Nor was Mrs. Trevennack, for her part, entirely free from sundry
qualms of conscience as to her husband's condition and the
rightfulness of concealing it altogether from Cleer's accepted lover.
Trevennack himself was so perfectly sane in every ordinary relation of
life, so able a business head, so dignified and courtly an English
gentleman, that Eustace never even for a moment suspected any
undercurrent of madness in that sound practical intelligence. Indeed,
no man could talk with more absolute common sense about his daughter's
future, or the duties and functions of an Admiralty official, than
Michael Trevennack. It was only to his wife in his most confidential
moments that he ever admitted the truth as to his archangelic
character; to all others whom he met he was simply a distinguished
English civil servant of blameless life and very solid judgment. The
heads of his department placed the most implicit trust in Trevennack's
opinion; there was no man about the place who could decide a knotty
point of detail off-hand like Michael Trevennack. What was his poor
wife to do, then? Was it her place to warn Eustace that Cleer's father
might at any moment unexpectedly develop symptoms of dangerous
insanity? Was she bound thus to wreck her own daughter's happiness?
Was she bound to speak out the very secret of her heart which she had
spent her whole life in inducing Trevennack himself to bottle up with
ceaseless care in his distracted bosom?

And yet ... she saw the other point of view as well--alas, all too
plainly. She was a martyr to conscience, like Walter Tyrrel himself;
was it right of her, then, to tie Eustace for life to a girl who was
really a madman's daughter? This hateful question was up before her
often in the dead dark night, as she lay awake on her bed, tossing and
turning feverishly; it tortured her in addition to her one lifelong
trouble. For the silver-haired lady had borne the burden of that
unknown sorrow locked up in her own bosom for fifteen years; and it
had left on her face such a beauty of holiness as a great trouble
often leaves indelibly stamped on women of the same brave, loving
temperament.

One day, about three months later, in their drawing-room at Bayswater,
Eustace Le Neve happened to let drop a casual remark which cut poor
Mrs. Trevennack to the quick, like a knife at her heart. He was
talking of some friend of his who had lately got engaged. "It's a
terrible thing," he said, seriously. "There's insanity in the family.
I wouldn't marry into such a family as that--no, not if I loved a girl
to distraction, Mrs. Trevennack. The father's in a mad-house, you
know; and the girl's very nice now, but one