Moll Davis by Bernard Capes — Read

Little Lady Chesterfield sat in her private boudoir, looking out on a glowing section of the palace gardens. Thirty feet away a marble basin, shaped like a tazza, bubbled with a tiny jet of water; and on the rim of the basin, as if posed for a picture, sat a single peacock. Great white clouds loitered in a sapphire sky, a thousand flowers starred the beds, the box borders were lush with growth, and all between went a maze of little paths, frilled with green sweetness. It was an endearing prospect, spacious and peaceful, hardly ruffled by the murmurs of the great life in whose midmost it was cloistered; yet small consciousness of its tranquillity was apparent in the blue eyes whose introspective vision reflected only the mists and turbulence of a troubled heart.

Now, as regards physical infection, one may be susceptible to the predaceous germ on one occasion and not on another: it is a question of bodily condition. So, there is a moral microbe whose insidious approaches may find us pregnable or not according to our spiritual temper of the time. The healthiest constitutions enjoy no absolute immunity in this respect, and those which do escape harm often owe their reputation for incorruptibility to no better than the accident which found them free from attack at the weak moments. Evil disposition makes no more sinners than the lack of it does saints. It is mostly a question of coincidence between the alighting seed-down and the soil suitable to its germination.