No matter that the one for whom the sacrifice had been made was
unworthy of it, he held that every law of honor and justice forbade him
now to abandon his brother and yield him up to the retribution of his
early fault. It might have been a folly in the first instance; it might
even have been a madness, that choice of standing in his brother's place
to receive the shame of his brother's action; but it had been done so
long before--done on the spur of generous affection, and actuated by the
strange hazard that made the keeping of a woman's secret demand the same
reticence which also saved the young lad's name; to draw back from it
now would have been a cowardice impossible to his nature.
All seemed uttered, without words, by their gaze at one another. He
could not speak with tenderness to this craven who had been false to
the fair repute of their name--and he would not speak with harshness. He
felt too sick at heart, too weary, too filled with pain, to ask aught
of his brother's life. It had been saved from temptation, and therefore
saved from evil; that knowledge sufficed to him.
The younger man stood half stupefied, half maddened. In the many years
that had passed by, although his character had not changed, his position
had altered greatly; and in the last few months he had enjoyed all the
power that wealth and independence and the accession to his title could
bestow. He felt some dull, hot, angered sense of wrong done to him
by the fact that the rightful heir of them still lived; some chafing,
ingrate, and unreasoning impatience with the savior of his whole
existence; some bitter pangs of conscience that he would be baser yet,
base beyond all baseness, to remain in his elder's place, and accept
this sacrifice still, while knowing now the truth.
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