better that he should have waited and taken the letter with him in
his pocket; but in truth he was so wretched that he could not wait.
The thing was fixed and done, and he could but hurry home to hide his
face among his own people. He felt that the glory of his house was
gone from him. He would sit by the hour together thinking of the boy
who had died. He had almost, on occasions, allowed himself to forget
his boy, while hoping that his name and wide domains might be kept
together by the girl that was left to him. He was beginning to
understand now that she was already but little better than a wreck.
Indeed, was not everything shipwreck around him? Was he not going to
pieces on the rocks? Did not the lesson of every hour seem to tell
him that, throughout his long life, he had thought too much of his
house and his name?

It would have been better that he should have waited till the letter
was in his pocket before he returned home, because, when he reached
Humblethwaite, the last argument was wanting to him to prove to Emily
that her hope was vain. Even after his arrival, when the full story
was told to her, she held out in her resolve. She accepted the truth
of that scene at Walker's rooms. She acknowledged that her lover had
cheated the wretched man at cards. After that all other iniquities
were of course as nothing. There was a completeness in that of which
she did not fail to accept, and to use the benefit. When she had once
taken it as true that her lover had robbed his inferior by foul play
at cards, there could be no good in alluding to this or that lie, in
counting up this or that disreputable debt, in alluding to habits of
brandy-drinking, or even in soiling her pure mind with any word as
to Mrs. Morton. It was granted that he was as vile as sin could make
him. Had not her Saviour come exactly for such as this one, because
of His great love for those who were vile; and should not her human
love for one enable her to do that which His great heavenly love did
always for all men? Every reader will know how easily answerable
was the argument. Most readers will also know how hard it is to win
by attacking the reason when the heart is the fortress that is in
question. She had accepted his guilt, and why tell her of it any
further? Did she not pine over his guilt, and weep for it day and
night, and pray that he might yet be made white as snow? But guilty
as he was, a poor piece of broken vilest clay, without the proper