When I
pondered on the situation, I no longer found Captain Falconer a hard
man to hate. The very lightness of his purpose, contrasted with the
heaviness of its consequences, aggravated his crime. To risk so much
upon other people, to gain so little for himself, was the more heinous
sin than its converse would have been. That he might not have foreseen
the evil consequences made possible, was no palliation: he ought to
have examined the situation; or indeed he ought to have heeded what he
must have known, that little offences may always entail dire evils.
Measured by their possibility to work havoc with lives, there are no
_small_ sins. The man who enters carelessly upon a trivial deviation
is therefore as much to be held responsible as he that walks
deliberately into the blackest crime. Not to know this, is not to have
studied life; and not to have studied life is, in a person of mature
years, a mighty sin of omission, because of the great evils that may
arise from ignorance. But Captain Falconer must have known life, must
have seen the hazards of his course. Therefore he was responsible in
any view; and therefore I would do my utmost toward exacting payment
from him. Plainly, in Philip's absence, the right fell to me, as his
friend and Tom's--nay, too, as the provisionally accepted husband of
Mr. Faringfield's second daughter.
But before I got an opportunity to make a quarrel with Falconer (who
had moved his quarters from the Faringfield house, wherein he had not
slept or eaten since the night of Margaret's leaving it, though he had
spent some time in his rooms there on the ensuing day) I had a curious
interview with Mr.
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