stories which gossip would be certain to put
in circulation, they did not decline the invitation they had before
accepted to visit Tubbermore; they came, however, under the express
stipulation that no close intimacy was ever to be resumed between Mr.
Cashel and themselves; he was not even to use the common privilege of a
host,--to visit them in their own apartments. That this degree of cold
distance was maintained between them, on every occasion, all the guests
assembled at the house can testify; and he neither joined the party in
carriage nor on horseback. Perhaps this interdiction was carried out
with too rigid a discipline; perhaps the cold reserve they maintained
had assumed a character of insult, to one whose blood still glowed with
the fire of southern associations; perhaps some circumstance with which
we are unacquainted contributed to render this estrangement significant,
and consequently painful to a man who could not brook the semblance of a
check. It is needless to ask how or whence originating, since we can see
in the fact itself cause sufficient for indignant reproof on one side,
for a wounded self-love and tarnished honor on the other.

"Are we at a loss for such motives, then, in the presence of facts like
these? Ask yourselves, Is a man, bred and trained up in all the riotous
freedom of a service scarcely above the rank of piracy,--accustomed
to the lawless license of a land where each makes the law with his own
right hand,--is such a man one to bear a slight with patient submission,
or to submit to an open shame in tame obedience? Can you not easily
imagine how all the petty differences of opinion they might have had
were merely skirmishes in front of that line where deeper and graver
feelings stood in battle array? Can you suppose that, however ruled over
by the ordinary courtesies of life, this youth nourished his plans of
ultimate revenge, not only upon those who refused with indignation his
traitorous alliance, but who were the depository of a secret that must
interdict all views of marriage in any other quarter?"

CHAPTER XXX. THE DEFENCE

Equal to either fortune.

--Eugene Aram.

As the Crown counsel sat down, a low murmur ran through the Court,
whose meaning it would be difficult to define; for if the greater number
present were carried away by the indignant eloquence of the pleader to
believe Cashel a hardened criminal, some few still seemed to cling to
his side, and bent t