"
"Well, Master, I am glad to see that the devil deals as cunningly with
other folk as he deals with me; for whenever I am about to commit any
folly, he persuades me it is the most necessary, gallant, gentlemanlike
thing on earth, and I am up to saddlegirths in the bog before I see that
the ground is soft. And you, Master, might have turned out a murd----a
homicide, just out of pure respect for your father's memory."
"There is more sense in your language, Bucklaw," replied the Master,
"than might have been expected from your conduct. It is too true, our
vices steal upon us in forms outwardly as fair as those of the demons
whom the superstitious represent as intriguing with the human race, and
are not discovered in their native hideousness until we have clasped
them in our arms."
"But we may throw them from us, though," said Bucklaw, "and that is
what I shall think of doing one of these days--that is, when old Lady
Girnington dies."
"Did you ever hear the expression of the English divine?" said
Ravenswood--"'Hell is paved with good intentions,'--as much as to say,
they are more often formed than executed.
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