The dikes may be wisely
planned and skillfully built; but one night a wilder wind arises than
any that they have withstood; the legions of the besieging army are
mustering to storm. At one spot in the seawall, where patient miners
have long been working unseen, a narrow breach is made, widening every
instant; it is too late now to fly; the wolfish waves are within the
intrenchments, mad for sack and pillage. On the morrow, where trim
gardens bloomed, and stately palaces shone, there is nothing but a waste
of waters strewn with wrecks and blue, swollen corpses. The Zuyder Zee
rolls, ten fathoms deep, over the ruins of drowned Stavoren.
So we will not enter minutely into the details of poor Cecil's
demoralization--gradual, but fearfully rapid. It was not by words that
she was corrupted; for Royston was still as careful as ever to abstain
from uttering one cynicism in her presence; but none the less was it
true that daily and hourly some fresh scruple was washed away, some holy
principle withered and died. The recklessness which ever carried him on
straight to the attainment of a purpose or the indulgence of a fancy,
trampling down the barriers that divide good from evil, seemed to
communicate itself to Cecil contagiously.
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