world, were it requisite, might be taught to think what it assuredly would not think if she should be seen tripping to the altar with Horace De Craye.  Self-preservation, not vengeance, breathed that whisper.  He glanced at her iniquity for a justification of it, without any desire to do her a permanent hurt:  he was highly civilized:  but with a strong intention to give her all the benefit of a scandal, supposing a scandal, or ordinary tattle.

“And so he handed her to his cousin and secretary, Vernon Whitford, who opened his mouth and shut his eyes.”

You hear the world?  How are we to stop it from chattering?  Enough that he had no desire to harm her.  Some gentle anticipations of her being tarnished were imperative; they came spontaneously to him; otherwise the radiance of that bright Abominable in loss would have been insufferable; he could not have borne it; he could never have surrendered her.  Moreover, a happy present effect was the result.  He conjured up the anticipated chatter and shrug of the world so vividly that her beauty grew hectic with the stain, bereft of its formidable magnetism.  He could meet her calmly; he had steeled himself.  Purity in women was his principal stipulation, and a woman puffed at, was not the person to cause him tremours.

Consider him indulgently:  the Egoist is the Son of Himself.  He is likewise the Father.  And the son loves the father, the father the son; they reciprocate affection through the closest of ties; and shall they view behaviour unkindly wounding either of them, not for each other’s dear sake abhorring the criminal?  They would not injure you, but they cannot consent to see one another suffer or crave in vain.  The two rub together in sympathy besides relationship to an intenser one.  Are you, without much offending, sacrificed by them, it is on the altar of their mutual love, to filial piety or paternal tenderness:  the younger has offered a dainty morsel to the elder, or the elder to the younger.  Absorbed in their great example of devotion do they not think of you.  They are beautiful.

Yet is it most true that the younger has the passions of youth:  whereof will come division between them; and this is a tragic state.  They are then pathetic.  This was the state of Sir Willoughby lending ear to his elder, until he submitted to bite at the fruit proposed to him—­with how wry a mouth the venerable senior chose not to mark.  At least, as we perceive, a half of him was ripe of wisdom in his own interests.  The cruder half had but to be obedient to the leadership of sagacity for his interests to be secured, and a filial disposition assisted him; painfully indeed; but the same rare quality directed the good gentleman to swallow his pain.  That the son should bewail his fate were a dishonour to the sire.  He reverenced, and submitted.  Thus, to say, consider him indulgently, is too much an appeal for charity on behalf of one requiring but initial anatomy—­a slicing in halves—­to