By this time they were at the foot of the stairs, and he led the way up, Madame de Chateauvieux following in a tumult of anxious conjecture.

When they reached his rooms he put her carefully into a chair by the fire, made her take some sandwiches, and set the kettle to boil in his handy bachelor way, that he might make her some tea, and all the time he talked about various nothings, till at last Marie, unable to put up with it any longer, caught his hand as he was bending over the fire.
'Eustace,' she exclaimed, 'be kind to me, and don't perplex me like this .-- Oh, my poor old boy, are you in love with Isabel Bretherton ?' 'He drew himself to his full height on the rug, and gazed steadily into the fire, the lines of his mobile face settling into repose.
'Yes,' he said, as though to himself; 'I love her.

I believe I have loved her from the first moment.' Madame de Chateauvieux was tremblingly silent, her thoughts travelling back over the past with lightning rapidity.

Could she remember one word, one look of Isabel Bretherton's, of which her memory might serve to throw the smallest ray of light on this darkness in which Eustace seemed to be standing?
No, not one.

Gratitude, friendship, esteem--all these had been there abundantly, but nothing else, not one of those many signs by which one woman betrays her love to another! She rose and put her arm round her brother's neck.