As for our friend the Doctor, we trust our readers will appreciate the
magnanimity with which he proved a real and disinterested love, in a
point where so many men experience only the graspings of a selfish one.
A mind so severely trained as his had been brings to a great crisis,
involving severe self-denial, an amount of reserved moral force quite
inexplicable to those less habituated to self-control. He was like a
warrior whose sleep even was in armor, always ready to be roused to the
conflict.
In regard to his feelings for Mary, he made the sacrifice of himself to
her happiness so wholly and thoroughly that there was not a moment of
weak hesitation,--no going back over the past,--no vain regret.
Generous and brave souls find a support in such actions, because the
very exertion raises them to a higher and purer plane of existence.
His diary records the event only in these very calm and temperate
words:--"It was a trial to me,--_a very great_ trial; but as she did
not deceive me, I shall never lose my friendship for her."
The Doctor was always a welcome inmate in the house of Mary and James,
as a friend revered and dear.
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