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 CHAPTER LIII

FAIR FIGHTING

So the duel began. The moral battle that a man wages with his own temper, his own passions, words, actions, his very thoughts, and a few days of the uncongenial struggle seemed to have added years to Sir George's life. Of all the trials that could have been imposed on one of his nature, this was, perhaps, the severest, to live day by day, and hour by hour, on terms of covert enmity with the woman best loved—the friend most frankly trusted in the world. Two of the chief props that uphold the social fabric seemed cut away from under him. Outward sorrows, injuries, vexations can be borne cheerfully enough while domestic happiness remains, and the heart is at peace within. They do but beat outside, like the blast of a storm on a house well warmed and watertight. Neither can the utmost perfidy of woman utterly demoralise him who owns some staunch friend to trust, on whose vigorous nature he can lean, in whose manly counsel he can take comfort, till the sharp anguish has passed away. But when love and friendship fail both at once, there is great danger of a moral recklessness which affirms, and would fain believe, that no truth is left in the world. This is the worst struggle of all. Conduct and character flounder in it hopelessly, because it affords no foothold whence to make an upward spring, so that they are apt to sink and disappear without even a struggle for extrication.

Sir George had indeed a purpose to preserve him from complete demoralisation, but that purpose was in itself antagonistic to every impulse and instinct of his nature. It