The
one passion of fear upon him was for himself; even in that moment of
supplication his disordered thoughts hovered wildly over the chances
of whether, if his elder brother even now asserted his innocence and
claimed his birthright, the world and its judges would ever believe him.
Cecil for a while again was silent, standing there by the newly made
grave of the soldier who had been faithful as those of his own race and
of his own Order never had been. His heart was full. The ingratitude and
the self-absorption of this life for which his own had been destroyed
smote him with a fearful suffering. And only a few hours before he
had looked once more on the face of the beloved friend of his youth; a
deadlier sacrifice than to lay down wealth, and name, and heritage, and
the world's love, was to live on, leaving that one comrade of his early
days to believe him dead after a deed of shame.
His brother sank down on the mound of freshly flung earth, sinking his
head upon his arms with a low moan. Time had not changed him greatly;
it had merely made him more intensely desirous of the pleasures and the
powers of life, more intensely abhorrent of pain, of censure, of the
contempt of the world. As, to escape these in his boyhood, he had
stooped to any degradation, so, to escape them in his manhood, he was
capable of descending to any falsehood or any weakness. His was one
of those natures which, having no love of evil for evil's sake, still
embrace any form of evil which may save them from the penalty of their
own weakness.
Pages:
666
667
668
669
670
671
672
673
674
675
676
677
678
679
680
681
682
683
684
685
686
687
688
689
690