It is more than rashness for any mortal to say to the strong, treacherous ocean, "Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther;" it is trenching on the privilege of Omnipotence. The dikes may be wisely planned and skillfully built; but one night a wilder wind arises than any that they have withstood; the legions of the besieging army are mustering to storm. At one spot in the seawall, where patient miners have long been working unseen, a narrow breach is made, widening every instant; it is too late now to fly; the wolfish waves are within the intrenchments, mad for sack and pillage. On the morrow, where trim gardens bloomed, and stately palaces shone, there is nothing but a waste of waters strewn with wrecks and blue, swollen corpses. The Zuyder Zee rolls, ten fathoms deep, over the ruins of drowned Stavoren.
So we will not enter minutely into the details of poor Cecil's demoralization--gradual, but fearfully rapid. It was not by words that she was corrupted; for Royston was still as careful as ever to abstain from uttering one cynicism in her presence; but none the less was it true that daily and hourly some fresh scruple was washed away, some holy principle withered and died. The recklessness which ever carried him on straight to the attainment of a purpose or the indulgence of a fancy, trampling down the barriers that divide good from evil, seemed to communicate itself to Cecil contagiously. She seldom ventured on reflection now--still less on self-examination; but she could not help being herself sensible of the change: thoughts that she would have shrunk back from in horror not so long ago (if she could have comprehended them fully) had ceased now to startle or repel her as she looked them in the face. Do not suppose for an instant that there was a corresponding alteration in her outward demeanor, or that it displayed any wildness or eccentricity. Melodrama, etc., may be very successful at a trans-pontine theatre, but it is unpardonably out of place in our _salons_. The Tresilyan understood the duties of her social, if not of her moral position (so long as the first was not forfeited) as well as the strictest duenna alive. Though she might choose to defy the world's censure, she never dreamed of giving an opening to its ridicule; she was less capable of _gaucherie_ than of a crime. In her bearing toward others she was just the same as ever; if any thing, rather more brilliant and fascinating, and, if crossed or interfered with, perhaps a shade more haughtily independent.