At
present she was in a very strong position. Ernest's official purity was
firmly established, but at the same time he had shown himself so
susceptible that she was able to fuse two contradictory impressions
concerning him into a single idea, and consider him as a kind of Joseph
and Don Juan in one. This was what she had wanted all along, but her
vanity being gratified by the possession of such a son, there was an end
of it; the son himself was naught.
No doubt if John had not interfered, Ernest would have had to expiate his
offence with ache, penury and imprisonment. As it was the boy was "to
consider himself" as undergoing these punishments, and as suffering pangs
of unavailing remorse inflicted on him by his conscience into the
bargain; but beyond the fact that Theobald kept him more closely to his
holiday task, and the continued coldness of his parents, no ostensible
punishment was meted out to him. Ernest, however, tells me that he looks
back upon this as the time when he began to know that he had a cordial
and active dislike for both his parents, which I suppose means that he
was now beginning to be aware that he was reaching man's estate.
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