She saw the dread mark on his face, felt like one of the
dead--staggered, and would have fallen. But the arm that through her son
had struck her heart, caught and supported her. The husband bore the
wife once more to her chamber, and the foolish son, the heaviness of his
mother, was left alone on the floor, smarting, ashamed, and full of fear
for his wife, yet in ignorance that his father had hurt her.
A moment and he rose. But, lo, in that shameful time a marvel had been
wrought! The terror of his father which had filled him was gone. They
had met; his father had put himself in the wrong; he was no more afraid
of him. It was not hate that had cast out fear. I do not say that he
felt no resentment, he is a noble creature who, deserving to be beaten,
approves and accepts: there are not a few such children: Cornelius was
none of such; but it consoled him that he had been hardly used by his
father. He had been accustomed to look vaguely up to his father as a
sort of rigid but righteous divinity; and in a disobedient,
self-indulgent, poverty-stricken nature like his, reverence could only
take the form of fear; and now that he had seen his father in a rage,
the feeling of reverence, such as it was, had begun to give way, and
with it the fear: they were more upon a level.
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