cost, though we know that retribution is sure!






CHAPTER XII.

NEPHEW AND UNCLE.





A serpent heart hid with a flowering face.

-Shakspeare.

HOW ingenious are the expedients to which the mind will resort to
justify itself, and endeavor to still the warnings of conscience. He
who commits a sin, first deceives himself, for he is led to believe
that the culpable deed will be productive of a greater degree of
happiness than evil to himself, else his own selfishness would
deliver him from the act. I did not mean this into evil, he will say
to his conscience, as it prompts him in its own silent way.

Thus Petro, by a like process of reasoning, had brought himself
almost, if not quite to the relief that the end was a justifiable
one, and so did not hesitate at the means necessary to accomplish