Read "Sink or Swim? , Volume I" by Matilda Charlotte Houstoun online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Arthur Vavasour, in all that he had said to his brother regarding the / state of things at Updown Paddocks, had not willingly diverged a / hair's-breadth from the truth. It had caused him more vexation than / surprise to learn that other voices besides the "still small" whisper of / his own conscience were beginning to enlarge upon a course of conduct, / the imprudence of which -- to use no harsher term -- had long been manifest / to himself. Young as he was in years, Arthur had not, after a _jeunesse / orageuse_, still to learn how soon and easily the fair fame of a woman / is breathed upon and tarnished. In more ways than one is the breath of / man poisonous to his fellows. Well did Arthur Vavasour know that while / he -- the heir-apparent to wealth and honour -- he, the strong man, armed at / all points for the battle of life -- would come unscathed out of the / tainted atmosphere of suspicion, she, the tender bird exposed to its / baneful influence, would flutter her feeble wings, and fall killed / _morally_ by the strong insidious poison. Of this melancholy truth Sophy / Duberly's affianced husband was as cognisant as the oldest sage that / lives; and yet so selfish was he and so graceless -- you perceive that / there is nothing singular and abnormal in this young man's character and / conduct -- that he could not bring himself to forego a pleasure, many of / the infallible evils to result therefrom, he, in his rare moments of / reflection, so plainly foresaw.
His first visit to the Paddocks was the consequence (and this young / sinner sometimes twisted the fact into a strange kind of condonation) of / a pressing invitation from honest John himself. Partly from former / respect and affection for the deceased Squire, and in some degree from a / liking which he took to the open cheerful manners of the heir-apparent, / John Beacham seized the earliest opportunity of making that young / gentleman "free," as it were, of the house in which his father had been / so frequent and honoured a guest.