overwhelming.

Lionel's soul shuddered to contemplate the consequences to himself. His
fears were self-revelatory. He realized how far from sincere had been
his proposal that they should tell the truth; he perceived that it had
been no more than the emotional outburst of the moment, a proposal which
if accepted he must most bitterly have repented. And then came the
reflection that if he were guilty of emotional outbursts that could so
outrageously play the traitor to his real desires, were not all men
subject to the same? Might not his brother, too, come to fall a prey to
one of those moments of mental storm when in a climax of despair he
would find his burden altogether too overwhelming and in rebellion cast
it from him?

Lionel sought to assure himself that his brother was a man of stern
fibres, a man who never lost control of himself. But against this he
would argue that what had happened in the past was no guarantee of what
might happen in the future; that a limit was set to the endurance of
every man be he never so strong, and that it was far from impossible
that the limit of Sir Oliver's endurance might be reached in this
affair. If that happened in what case should he find himself? The
answer to this was a picture beyond his fortitude to contemplate. The
danger of his being sent to trial and made to suffer the extreme penalty
of the law would be far greater now than if he had spoken at once. The
tale he could then have told must have compelled some attention, for he
was accounted a man of unsmirched honour and his word must carry some
weight. But now none would believe him. They would argue from his
silence and from his having suffered his brother to be unjustly accused
that he was craven-hearted and dishonourable, and that if he had acted
thus it was because he had no good defence to offer for his deed. Not