it. He had seen a great
many cases in which not only good behavior had apparently failed of its
reward but bad behavior had failed of its punishment. In the case of bad
behavior, his observation had been that no unhappiness, not even any
discomfort, came from it unless it was found out; for the most part, it
was not found out. This did not shake Northwick's principles; he still
intended to do right, so as to be on the safe side, even in a remote and
improbable contingency; but it enabled him to compromise with his
principles and to do wrong provisionally and then repair the wrong
before he was found out, or before the overruling power noticed him.

But now there were things that made him think, in the surprising misery
of being found out, that this power might have had its eye upon him all
the time, and was not sleeping, or gone upon a journey, as he had
tacitly flattered himself. It seemed to him that there was even a
dramatic contrivance in the circumstances to render his anguish
exquisite. He had not read many books; but sometimes his daughters made
him go to the theatre, and once he had seen the play of Macbeth. The
people round him were talking about the actor who played the part of
Macbeth, but Northwick kept his mind critically upon the play, and it
seemed to him false to what he had seen of life in having all those
things happen just so, to fret the conscience and torment the soul of
the guilty man; he thought that in reality they would not have been
quite so pat; it gave him rather a low opinion of Shakespeare, lower
than he would have dared to have if he had been a more cultivated man.
Now that play came back into his mind, and he owned with a pang that it
was all true. He was being quite as aptly visited for his transgression;
his heart was being wrung, too, by the very things that could hurt it
most. He had not been very well of late, and was not feeling physically
strong; his anxieties had preyed upon him, and he had never felt the
need of the comfort and quiet of his home so much as now when he was
forced to leave it. Never had it all been so precious; never had the
beauty and luxury of it seemed so great. All that was nothing, though,
to the thought of his children, especially of that youngest child, whom
his heart was so wrapt up in, and whom he was going to leave to shame
and ruin. The words she had spoken from her pride in him, her ignorant
censure of that drunkard, as a man who had better die since he