Both sat for some minutes gazing at each other in expressive silence, the one as if waiting to hear, the other as if conscious that he was expected to afford some explanation of the cause of so marked an emotion.  At length Gerald said, and in a tone of deep and touching despondency, “Henry, I fear you find me very unamiable and much altered; but indeed I am very unhappy.”

Here was touched the first chord of their sympathies.  Henry’s already on the elan, flew to meet this demonstration of returning confidence, and he replied in a voice broken by the overflowing of his full heart.

“Oh, my beloved brother, changed must you indeed be, when even the admission that you are unhappy, inspires me with a thankfulness such as I now feel.  Gerald, I entreat, I implore, you by the love we have borne each other from infancy to disguise nothing from me.  Tell me what it is that weighs so heavily at your heart.  Repose implicit confidence in me, your brother, and let me assist and advise you in your extremity, as my poor ability will permit.  Tell me Gerald, wherefore are you thus altered—­ what dreadful disappointment has thus turned the milk of your nature into gall?”

Gerald gazed at him a moment intently.  He was much affected, and a sudden and unbidden tear stole down his pallid cheek.  “If you have found the milk of my nature turned into gall, then indeed am I even more wretched than I thought myself.  But, Henry, you ask me what I cannot yield—­my confidence—­and, even were it so, the yielding would advantage neither.  I am unhappy, as I have said, but the cause of that unhappiness must ever remain buried here,” and he pointed to his chest.  This was said kindly, yet determinedly.

“Enough, Gerald,” and his brother spoke in tones of deep reproach, “since you persist in withholding your confidence, I will no longer urge it; but you cannot wonder that I who love but you alone on earth, should sorrow as one without hope, at beholding you subject to a grief so overwhelming as to have driven you to seek refuge from it, in an unhallowed grave.”

“I do not understand you—­what mean you?” quickly interrupted Gerald, raising his head from the hand which supported it upon the breakfast table, while he colored faintly.

“You cannot well be ignorant of my meaning,” pursued Henry in the same tone, “if you but recur to the circumstances attending your arrival here.”

“I am still in the dark,” continued Gerald, with some degree of impatience.

“Because you know not that I am acquainted with all that took place on the melancholy occasion.  Gerald,” he pursued, “forgive the apparent harshness of what I am about to observe—­but was it generous—­was it kind in you to incur the risk you did, when you must have known that your death would have entailed upon me an eternal grief?  Was it worthy of yourself, moreover, to make the devoted follower of your fortunes, a sharer in the danger you so eagerly and wantonly courted!”