She must have known him for
a dishonest fool. Yet this principle of mutual attachment was never
relinquished. Wiser than her stepbrother, she knew that a house divided
against itself must fall; she therefore approved, forcefully if without
conviction, of his every word and deed. Such approval did him good. It
created a fictitious self-esteem. And this was really rather
unfortunate, since self-esteem, by giving him a sense of importance and
consequence in the world, rendered him a good deal more objectionable
to his fellow-creatures than he need have been.
Meanwhile she lingered on, and a small group of enquirers were gathered
round the physician who was returning late at night from his third
visit. The moralists among them saw the finger of God in the fact that
her mouth, out of which had proceeded so much harm to strong men and
women, should now be sealed by one of the frailest of His creatures.
The doctor shrugged his shoulders at this kind of talk. He was no
moralizer; he was a true Southerner, an aesthete--one of those who could
appreciate the subtlest beauty of a skin disease.
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