‘I do believe it is solely for the O’Mores that you are making a duty of implacability!’
‘It is a duty not to run from one’s word, and debase oneself for one’s own advantage.’
‘One would think some wonderful advantage was held out to you.’
‘The pleasantest hours of my life,’ murmured he sadly, under his breath.
‘Well, Ulick,’ she said, holding out her hand, ‘I’m not quite dissatisfied; I think some day even an O’More will see that there is no exception from the law of forgiveness in their special favour, and that you will not be able to go on resenting what we have suffered from the young of the spider-monkey.’
Even this allusion produced no outward effect; he only shook hands gravely, saying, ‘I never did otherwise than forgive, and regret the consequences: I am very thankful for all your past kindness.’
Worse than the Giant’s Causeway, thought Albinia as she parted from him. Nothing is so hopeless as that sort of forgiveness, because it satisfies the conscience.
Mr. Kendal predicted that, the Keltic dignity having been asserted, good sense and principle would restore things to a rational footing. What this meant might be uncertain, but he certainly missed Prometheus, and found Maurice a poor substitute. Indulgence itself could hardly hold out in unmitigated intercourse with an obstreperous dunce not seven years old, and Maurice, deprived of Gilbert, cut off from Ulick, with mamma busy, and Sophy out of spirits, underwent more snubbing than had ever yet fallen to his lot. Not that he was much concerned thereat; and Mr. Kendal would resume his book after a lecture upon good manners, and then be roused to find his library a gigantic cobweb, strings tied to every leg of table or chair, and Maurice and the little Awk enacting spider and fly, heedless of the unwilling flies who might suffer by their trap. Such being the case, his magnanimity was the less amazing when he said, ‘Albinia, there is no reason that O’More should not eat his Christmas dinner here.’
‘Very well. I trust he will not think it needful still to be self-denying.’
‘It is not our part to press advances which are repelled,’ said Sophy.