The young man pined and changed, so that even Perrine hardly knew
him again, under this cruel system of domestic excommunication;
under the wearing influence of the one unchanging doubt which
never left him; and, more than all, under the incessant
reproaches of his own conscience, aroused by the sense that he
was evading a responsibility which it was his solemn, his
immediate duty to undertake. But no sting of conscience, no ill
treatment at home, and no self-reproaches for failing in his duty
of confession as a good Catholic, were powerful enough in their
influence over Gabriel to make him disclose the secret, under the
oppression of which his very life was wasting away. He knew that
if he once revealed it, whether his father was ultimately proved
to be guilty or innocent, there would remain a slur and a
suspicion on the family, and on Perrine besides, from her
approaching connection with it, which in their time and in their
generation could never be removed. The reproach of the world is
terrible even in the crowded city, where many of the dwellers in
our abiding-place are strangers to us--but it is far more
terrible in the country, where none near us are strangers, where
all talk of us and know of us, where nothing intervenes between
us and the tyranny of the evil tongue. Gabriel had not courage to
face this, and dare the fearful chance of life-long ignominy--no,
not even to serve the sacred interests of justice, of atonement,
and of truth.
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