or
Fanny bore up for the sake of cheering her parents, but her face, for
a long time, was rarely without the traces of tears shed in solitude.
Of that household of handsome, merry children, whose playful shouts
had once filled the mansion and garden with life, she was now the only
one left. I sighed to think that my chances of taking her away from
that house were now reduced to the infinitesimal. Her parents, who had
brought into the world so promising a family, to find themselves now
so nearly alone, must not be left entirely so: such would be her
answer to any pleas I might in my selfishness offer.

What a transformation had been wrought in that once cheerful
household! How many lives were darkened!--Mr. Faringfield's, his
wife's, Fanny's, Philip's (when he should know), Madge's (sooner or
later), the sympathetic Cornelius's, my mother's, my own. And what a
promising, manly, gentle life had been cut short in its earliest
bloom! I knew that Tom's life alone had been worth a score of lives
like Captain Falconer's. And the cause of all this, though Margaret
was much to blame, was the idle resolve of a frivolous lady-killer to
add one more conquest to his list, in the person of a woman for whom
he did not entertain more than the most superficial feelings. What a
sacrifice had been made for the transient gratification of a
stranger's vanity! What bitter consequences, heartrending separations,
had come upon all of us who had lived so close together so many
pleasant years, through the careless self-amusement of a chance
interloper whose very name we had not known six months before!

And now, the pleasure-seeker's brief pastime in that quarter being
ended, the lasting sorrows of his victims having begun; his own career
apparently not altered from its current, their lives diverted rudely
into dark channels and one of them stopped short for ever: was the
matter to rest so?

You may easily guess what my answer was to this question. When I
pondered on the situation, I no longer found Captain Falconer a hard
man to hate. The very lightness of his purpose, contrasted with the
heaviness of its consequences, aggravated his crime. To risk so much
upon other people, to gain so little for himself, was the more heinous
sin than its converse would have been. That he might not have foreseen
the evil consequences made possible, was no palliation: he ought to
have examined the situation; or indeed he ought to have heeded what he
must hav