On some such night as this she remembered promising to herself to live as brave and noble a life as any heroine she ever read or heard of in romance, a life sans peur et sans reproche; it had seemed to her then that she had only to will, and such a life would be accomplished.  And now she had learnt that not only to will, but also to pray, was a necessary condition in the truly heroic.  Trusting to herself, she had fallen.  It was a just consequence of her sin, that all excuses for it, all temptation to it, should remain for ever unknown to the person in whose opinion it had sunk her lowest.  She stood face to face at last with her sin.  She knew it for what it was; Mr. Bell’s kindly sophistry that nearly all men were guilty of equivocal actions, and that the motive ennobled the evil, had never had much real weight with her.  Her own first thought of how, if she had known all, she might have fearlessly told the truth, seemed low and poor.  Nay, even now, her anxiety to have her character for truth partially excused in Mr. Thornton’s eyes, as Mr. Bell had promised to do, was a very small and petty consideration, now that she was afresh taught by death what life should be.  If all the world spoke, acted, or kept silence with intent to deceive,—­if dearest interests were at stake, and dearest lives in peril,—­if no one should ever know of her truth or her falsehood to measure out their honour or contempt for her by, straight alone where she stood, in the presence of God, she prayed that she might have strength to speak and act the truth for evermore.

CHAPTER XLIX

BREATHING TRANQUILLITY

’And down the sunny beach she paces slowly,
With many doubtful pauses by the way;
Grief hath an influence so hush’d and holy.’ 
HOOD.

‘Is not Margaret the heiress?’ whispered Edith to her husband, as they were in their room alone at night after the sad journey to Oxford.  She had pulled his tall head down, and stood upon tiptoe, and implored him not to be shocked, before she had ventured to ask this question.  Captain Lennox was, however, quite in the dark; if he had ever heard, he had forgotten; it could not be much that a Fellow of a small college had to leave; but he had never wanted her to pay for her board; and two hundred and fifty pounds a year was something ridiculous, considering that she did not take wine.  Edith came down upon her feet a little bit sadder; with a romance blown to pieces.

A week afterwards, she came prancing towards her husband, and made him a low curtsey: 

’I am right, and you are wrong, most noble Captain.  Margaret has had a lawyer’s letter, and she is residuary legatee—­the legacies being about two thousand pounds, and the remainder about forty thousand, at the present value of property in Milton.’

‘Indeed! and how does she take her good fortune?’

’Oh, it seems she knew she was to have it all along; only she had no idea it was so much.  She looks very white and pale, and says she’s afraid of it; but that’s nonsense, you know, and will soon go off.  I left mamma pouring congratulations down her throat, and stole away to tell you.’