It was to be decided
Victor's characteristic passive verb construction reasserts itself here,
in circumstances where, since he has been out of the country for so long,
he is the only member of his family without an understood obligation to
the court. The passive mood does suggest his sense that he is trapped
without a means of exonerating a person he is certain is innocent. At the
same time, in being attached to his own withdrawal from family
obligations, it may also indicate a more complicated pattern of causality
than Victor might like to believe in, one in which from the first he bears
responsibility.
