He bowed to the judgment of
Arctura, and seemed to welcome that of his father, to whom he was
now as respectful as moralist could desire. Yet he sometimes faced a
card he did not mean to show: who that is not absolutely true can
escape the mishap!--there was condescension in his politeness to
Donal! and this, had there been nothing else, would have been enough
to revolt Arctura. But in truth he impressed her altogether as a man
of outsides; she felt that she did not see the man he was, but the
nearest approach he could make to the man he would be taken for. He
was gracious, dignified, responsive, kind, amusing, accurate,
ready--everything but true. He would make of his outer man all but
what it was meant for--a revelation of the inner. It was that
notwithstanding. He was a man dressed in a man, and his dress was a
revelation of much that he was, while he intended it only to show
much that he was not. No man can help unveiling himself, however
long he may escape even his own detection. There is nothing covered
that shall not be revealed. Things were meant to come out, and be
read, and understood, in the face of the universe. The soul of every
man is as a secret book, whose content is yet written on its cover
for the reading of the wise. How differently is it read by the fool,
whose very understanding is a misunderstanding! He takes a man for a
God when on the point of being eaten up of worms! he buys for thirty
pieces of silver him whom the sepulchre cannot hold! Well for those
in the world of revelation, who give their sins no quarter in this!
Forgue had been in Edinburgh a part of the time, in England another
part.
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