"I was to be taught by a terrible experience that hatred is a deadly
sin; that God punishes it more severely than all other sins, for it is
the poison which turns the whole heart to bitterness. I had indulged
it--made no effort to banish it--nourished it like a snake in the
recesses of my breast, and now God decreed, as a punishment, that the
snake should turn and sting me.
"To go back for a moment, however. George had married--a year afterward
I had imitated him. My wife was an angel upon earth--she is an angel in
heaven now--and in comparison with the deep affection which I felt for
her, the ephemeral fancy for the young lady whom my rival had married,
appeared the veriest trifle. William Conway had also married, and he
and George, with their wives, were living at Five Forks. William was
judge of the circuit--George managed the estate--and their affection
for each other, at this period of their mature manhood, was said to
exceed that of their youth.
"'Was said to,' I say, colonel; for I never saw either of them. All
intercourse between "The Pines" and "Five Forks" had ceased twenty
years before; and George and William Conway were as much strangers to
me, as if we lived in opposite quarters of the globe; for time had not
changed--or rather restored--the _entente cordial_ of the past.
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