She knew her lover's
violent passions and haughty temper, impatient of the most distant
approach to insolence or even contradiction from others, too well not to
be aware that such a man walked ever on the frontier-ground between life
and death. Suppose that he were taken from her?--her spirit, dauntless
as it was, quailed before the ghastly terrors of imagined loneliness. An
evil voice that had whispered perhaps in the ear of more than one of the
"bitter, bad Tresilyans," seemed to murmur, "You, too, can die:" but
Cecil was not yet so lost as to listen to the suggestion of the subtle
fiend. She wasted no regrets on the past, and the wreck of all its
brilliant promises: she was resolute to meet the perils of the future;
nevertheless, her heart was heavy with apprehension. Remember the answer
that the stout Catholic made to Des Adrets, when the savage baron
taunted him with cowardice for shrinking twice from the death-leap on
the tower, "_Je vous le donne, en dix_." So it is not in
womanhood--however ruined in principle or reckless of the consequences,
to venture deliberately, without a shudder, on the fatal plunge from
which no fair fame has ever risen unshattered again.
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