"Why, why respect myself, since no other respects me? Why set a
value on my own feelings when no one else does?"

Degraded in her own judgment, she doubted her own understanding when it
sometimes told her she had deserved better treatment; for she felt
herself a fool in comparison with her learned seducer and the rest who
despised her. "And why," she continued, "should I ungratefully persist
to contemn women who alone are so kind as to accept me for a companion?
Why refuse conformity to their customs, since none of my sex besides will
admit me to their society a partaker of virtuous habits?"

In speculation these arguments appeared reasonable, and she pursued their
dictates; but in the practice of the life in which she plunged she proved
the fallacy of the system, and at times tore her hair with frantic
sorrow, that she had not continued in the mid-way of guilt, and so
preserved some portion of self-approbation, to recompense her in a small
degree, for the total loss of the esteem of all the reputable world.

But she had gone too far to recede. Could she now have recalled her
innocence, even that remnant she brought with her to London, experience
would have taught her to have given up her child, lived apart from him,
and once more with the brute creation, rather than to have mingled with
her present society. Now, alas! the time for flying was past; all
prudent choice was over, even all reflection was gone for ever, or only
admitted on compulsion, when it imperiously forced its way amidst the
scenes of tumultuous mirth or licentious passion, of distracted riot,
shameless effrontery, and wild intoxication, when it _would_ force its
way, even through the walls of a brothel.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

Is there a reader so little experienced in the human heart, so forgetful
of his own, as not to feel the possibility of the following fact?

A series of uncommon calamities had been for many years the lot of the
elder Henry; a succession of prosperous events had fallen to the share of
his brother William. The one was the envy, while the other had the
compassion, of all who thought about them. For the last twenty years,
William had lived in affluence, bordering upon splendour, his friends,
his fame, his fortune, daily increasing, while Henry throughout that very
period had, by degrees, lost all he loved on earth, and was now existing
apart from civilised society; and yet, during those twenty years, where
William knew o