When Thomas had applied to his brother for a little help, after he had been suffering from frost-bite, John had spurned him from the door. Yet John had the good opinion of all. John had no doubt very good reasons for refusing to help his good-for-nothing brother. (The story of Mrs. Le Breton had not reached Montreal, where John’s fine house was situated.)
John was handsome. It was from him that both Eweretta and Aimée had got their looks. The girls were refined, feminine répliqués of their father.
The likeness Eweretta bore to the hated John had made the task of Thomas the easier. He hated her because she looked at him with John’s eyes. The plot to rob the girl of money and liberty had seemed to Thomas a right and just retribution at the time when he conceived it. The wrongs of both Mrs. Le Breton and himself would be avenged by the substitution of Eweretta for Aimée. If Eweretta suffered, well and good. Did not the Bible say that children had to suffer for the sins of their fathers? Besides, had not Eweretta had all the sweets of life up to the time of her father’s death? Had she not had education, travel, fine dresses and a carriage to ride in? Let her taste what her father’s victims had tasted!
This had been the attitude of Thomas Alvin, and Eweretta’s gentle words, above all, the tone in which they had been uttered, had completely changed it.
There are people who refuse to believe in “conversion,” which is the sudden and complete over-turn of one kind of life for another. “Can the leopard change his spots?” they ask.
Yet there is such a thing as moral earthquake. Some great emotion sunders the hard rock of character; rifts appear, from which issue new and altogether undreamt-of impulses.
As natural earthquakes change the conformation of the land, so moral earthquake can change the characteristics of a human being.
“Let us forget it! You never had a chance!”
Few words and simple ones, yet a new man arose at the sound of them.