If he had been first in the field, and
Leonard had come in and carried her off, you would have counted it a
perfect mercy all round."
"Ho-oh! it would have been! Leonard would have made her happy. Arthur
never can, and she can never make him so. But what he has done is not
all: look how he did it! Leonard was his beloved and best friend"--
"Except his brother Godfrey"--
"Except no one, Ruth, unless it's you. I'm neither persuasive nor kind,
nor often with him. Proud of him I was, and never prouder than when I
knew him to be furiously in love with her, while yet, for pure, sweet
friendship's sake, he kept standing off, standing off."
"I wish you might have seen it, Godfrey. It was so beautiful--and so
pitiful!"
"It was manly,--gentlemanly; and that was enough. Then all at once he's
taken aback! All control of himself gone, all self-suppression, all
conscience"--
"The conscience has returned," said the girl.
"Oh, not to guide him! Only to goad him! Fifty consciences can't
honorably undo the mischief now!"
"Did I not write you that there was already, then, a coolness between
her and Leonard?"
"Yes; but the whole bigness and littleness of Arthur's small, bad deed
lies in the fact that, though he knew that coolness was but a momentary
tiff, with Isabel in the wrong, he took advantage of it to push his suit
in between and spoil as sweet a match as two hearts were ever making.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25