Richard Bassett said one day to Wheeler, “Old fellow, there is not a worse poison than Hate. It has made me old before my time. And what does it all come to? We might just as well have kept quiet; for my grandson will inherit Huntercombe and Bassett, after all--” “Thanks to the girl you would not ring the bells for.” Sir Charles and Lady Bassett lead a peaceful life after all their troubles, and renew their youth in their children, of whom Ruperta is one, and as dear as any. Yet there is a pensive and humble air about Lady Bassett, which shows she still expiates her fault, though she knows it will always be ignored by him for whose sake she sinned. In summing her up, it may be as well to compare this with the unmixed self-complacency of Mrs. Drake. You men and women, who judge this Bella Bassett, be firm, and do not let her amiable qualities or her good intentions blind you in a plain matter of right and wrong: be charitable, and ask yourselves how often in your lives you have seen yourselves, or any other human being, resist a terrible temptation. My experience is, that we resist other people's temptations nobly, and succumb to our own. So let me end with a line of England's gentlest satirist-- “Heaven be merciful to us all, sinners as we be.” THE END End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Terrible Temptation, by Charles Reade