"In honor too, I swear! That was my first disgrace, and my last. You
bore the weight of my shame? Good God, what can I say? Such nobility,
such sacrifice----"
He would have said enough, more than enough, to satisfy the one who had
lost all for his sake, had there but been once in his voice no fear, but
only love. As it was, that which he still thought of was himself alone.
While crushed with the weight of his brother's surpassing generosity, he
still was filled with only one thought that burned through the darkness
of his bewildered horror, and that thought was his own jeopardy. Even in
the very first hours of his knowledge that the man whom he had believed
dead was living--living and bearing the burden of the guilt he should
have borne--what he was filled with was the imminence of his own peril.
Cecil stood in silence, looking at him. He saw the boyish loveliness he
remembered so well altered into the stronger and fuller beauty of the
man. He saw that life had gone softly, smoothly, joyously, with this
weak and feminine nature; and that, in the absence of temptation to
evil, its career had been fair and straight in the sight of the world.
He saw that his brother had been, in one word, happy. He saw that
happiness had done for this character what adversity had done for his
own. He saw that by it had been saved a temperament that calamity would
have wrecked. He stood and looked at him, but he spoke not one word;
whatever he felt, he restrained from all expression.
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