He had been early
taught that restitution to the wronged was one of the evidences of real
penitence. His title and fortune were the right-hand; he could not cut
off the pride of life to which he was wedded. Had he never known
greatness, he would now have been happy as Walter de Vallance, living in
a state of respectable competence. He fell into the common fault of
incorrigible offenders; lamenting that he had not subdued the first
cravings of desire, and wishing to recall the irremediable past, while
to reform the present was too vast a labour.
Sometimes he had persuaded himself, that if he knew Allan Neville were
alive, he would purchase peace of conscience by relinquishing his
usurped possessions; but no sooner was he certified of that fact, and
beheld in Eustace the noble heir he had so basely injured, than his base
spirit shrunk into its narrow cell, and at that moment he would have
given worlds to have had the father and son cut off by any hand but his
own. Equally affected by the fear of death and of adversity, he yielded
Eustace to a fate which some faint remains of humanity made him deplore,
while a consciousness that this slaughter tended to confirm his own
title, reminded him that, by reaping the advantage of a cruel unjust
sentence which he had power to remit, he was virtually his murderer.
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