I am
afraid it is the development of an hereditary taste in your wife, David,
and nothing will cure it; for I have made many inquiries about her
family, and I hear several of her relations were given to excess; so you
may depend upon it, it is hereditary and incurable."
There was little comfort for him in this speech, which was delivered in
a satisfied and judicial tone. Sophy's sin had been present to Mrs.
Bolton for so many months, and she had grown so accustomed to analyze
it, and argue about it, that she could not enter into the sudden and
direful shock the discovery had been to her nephew. An antagonism had
risen in her mind about it, not only against Mr. Warden, but against
some faint, suppressed reproaches of conscience, which made her secretly
cleave to the idea that this vice was hereditary, and consequently
incurable. She was afraid also of David reproaching her. But he did not.
He was too crushed to reason yet about his wife's fall, or what measures
might have been taken to prevent it. Long after his aunt had left him,
and not a sound was to be heard in the house, he sat alone, scarcely
thinking, but with one deep, poignant, bitter sense of anguish weighing
upon his soul.
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