Yet there is a pensive and humble air about Lady Bassett, which shows
she still expiates her fault, though she knows it will always be
ignored by him for whose sake she sinned.
In summing her up, it may be as well to compare this with the unmixed
self-complacency of Mrs. Drake.
You men and women, who judge this Bella Bassett, be firm, and do not
let her amiable qualities or her good intentions blind you in a plain
matter of right and wrong: be charitable, and ask yourselves how often
in your lives you have seen yourselves, or any other human being,
resist a terrible temptation.
My experience is, that we resist other people's temptations nobly, and
succumb to our own.
So let me end with a line of England's gentlest satirist--
"Heaven be merciful to us all, sinners as we be."
THE END
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