And he was one; and though modest, he was in good humour with himself,
approved himself, and could say, that without boasting of success, he was
a satisfied man, until he met his touchstone in Lady Camper.
CHAPTER II
This is the pathetic matter of my story, and it requires pointing out,
because he never could explain what it was that seemed to him so cruel in
it, for he was no brilliant son of fortune, he was no great pretender,
none of those who are logically displaced from the heights they have been
raised to, manifestly created to show the moral in Providence. He was
modest, retiring, humbly contented; a gentlemanly residence appeased his
ambition. Popular, he could own that he was, but not meteorically; rather
by reason of his willingness to receive light than his desire to shed it.
Why, then, was the terrible test brought to bear upon him, of all men? He
was one of us; no worse, and not strikingly or perilously better; and he
could not but feel, in the bitterness of his reflections upon an
inexplicable destiny, that the punishment befalling him, unmerited as it
was, looked like absence of Design in the scheme of things, Above.
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