Both are
bad enough, but the latter is not "loving a lie," not such a ruinous
taint and evidence of corruption as the former.'
'It is curious to hear you repeating my old excuses for him,' said
Albinia, 'now that he has cast his glamour over you.'
'Not wrongly,' said her brother. 'He is in earnest; there is no
acting about him.'
'Yes, that I believe; I know he loves us with all his heart, poor
boy, especially Maurice and me, and I think he had rather go right
than wrong, if he could only be let alone. But, oh! it is all
"unstable as water." Am I unkind, Maurice? I know how it would be
if I let him talk to me for ten minutes, or look at me with those
pleading brown eyes of his!'
Mr. Ferrars knew it well, and why she was steeled against him, but he
put this aside, saying that he was come to speak of the future, not
of the past, and that he wanted Edmund to reconsider William's
advice. He told her what Gilbert had said of the difficulty of
breaking off old connexions, and the danger to Maurice from his
acquaintance. An exchange into another corps of militia might be for
the worse, the occupation was uncertain, and Mr. Ferrars believed
that a higher position, companions of a better stamp, and the
protection of a man of lively manners, quick sympathy, and sound
principle, like their cousin Fred, might be the opening of a new
life. He had found Gilbert most desirous of such a step, regarding
it as his only hope, but thinking it so offensively presumptuous to
propose it to his father under present circumstances, his Oxford
terms thrown away, and himself disgraced both there and at home, that
the matter would hardly have been brought forward had not Mr.
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