With all his revived devotion to
Constance, he did not like to think hardly of her rival; in a lesser
degree he had wronged her too.
You will rarely find the sternest or wisest of men disposed to be harsh
toward errors that spring from a devotion to themselves. It is only
just, as well as natural, that it should be so. If the second cause of
the crime did not find an excuse for the defendant, I don't know where
he or she would look for an advocate. St. Kevin need not have troubled
himself: there were plenty of people ready to push poor Kathleen down. I
think it is a pity they canonized him.
Through all Guy's reflections there ran this under-current--"how easily
all might have been avoided if the slightest things had turned out
differently." Just so, after a heavy loss at play, a man _will_ keep
thinking how he might have won a large stake if he had played one card
otherwise, or backed the In instead of the Out. I have heard good judges
say that this pertinacious after-thought is the hardest part to bear of
all the annoyance. Of course he worries himself about it, just as if
"great results from small beginnings" were not the tritest of all
truisms. I don't wish to be historical, or I would reflect how often the
Continent has been convulsed by a dish that disagreed with some one, or
by a ship that did not start to its time.
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