After
this the sharpest kind of practice will be all that I shall seem to be
fit for. It isn't the money. I can retire with enough for your wants and
for mine. If I could retire amid the good words of men I should be
happy. But, even if I retire, men will say that I have filled my pockets
with plunder from Tretton."
"That will never be said."
"Were I to publish an account of the whole affair,--which I am bound in
honor not to do,--explaining it all from beginning to end, people would
only say that I was endeavoring to lay the whole weight of the guilt
upon my confederate who was dead. Why did he pick me out for such
usage,--me who have been so true to him?"
There was something almost weak, almost feminine in the tone of Mr.
Grey's complaints. But to Dolly they were neither feminine nor weak. To
her her father's grief was true and well-founded; but for herself in her
own heart there was some joy to be drawn from it. How would it have been
with her if the sharp practice had been his, and the success? What would
have been her state of mind had she known her father to have conceived
these base tricks? Or what would have been her condition had her father
been of such a kind as to have taught her that the doing of such tricks
should be indifferent to her? To have been high above them all,--for him
and for her,--was not that everything? And was she not sure that the
truth would come to light at last? And if not here, would not the truth
come to light elsewhere where light would be of more avail than here?
Such was the consolation with which Dolly consoled herself.
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