No person, he said, ought to allow any weakness of pity to prevent
him from bringing to punishment the person who broke the laws upon
which the well-being of the community depended. A man must remember
that the good of the whole, and not the fate of the individual, was
to be regarded.
It was altogether a notable sort of tete-a-tete between two such
perfect specimens of the race, and as at length they entered the
house, they professed to each other to have much enjoyed their walk.
Holding the opinions he did, Bascombe was in one thing inconsistent:
he went to "divine service" on the Sunday with his aunt and
cousin--not to humour Helen's prejudices, but those of Mrs.
Ramshorn, who, belonging, as I have said, to the profession, had
strong opinions as to the wickedness of not going to church. It was
of no use, he said to himself, trying to upset her ideas, for to
succeed would only be to make her miserable, and his design was to
make the race happy. In the grand old Abbey, therefore, they heard
together morning prayers, the Litany, and the Communion, all in one,
after a weariful and lazy modern custom not yet extinct, and then a
dull, sensible sermon, short, and tolerably well read, on the duty
of forgiveness of injuries.
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