tten!
Forgotten! As soon as he had won her he had thought of nothing but
self-indulgence, pleasure, capricious delights. His tailor still
languished for money long justly due. He had not even restored the
defalcations in Horrocleave's petty cash. Of course it would have
been difficult to restore a sum comparatively so large without causing
suspicion. To restore it would have involved a long series of minute
acts, alterations of alterations in the cash entries, and constant
ingenuity in a hundred ways. But it ought to have been done, and might
have been done. It might have been done. He admitted that candidly,
fully, with despicable tremblings....

And the worst of all, naturally, was the theft from his aunt. Theft?
Was it a theft? He had never before consented to define the affair
as a theft; it had been a misfortune, an indiscretion. But now he was
ready to call it a theft, in order to be on the safe side. For the
sake of placating Omnipotence let it be deemed a theft, and even a
mean theft, entailing dire consequences on a weak old woman! Let it be
as bad as the severest judge chose to make it! He would not complain.
He would accept the arraignment (though really he had not been so
blameworthy, etc....). He knew that with all his sins he, possessed
the virtues of good nature, kindness, and politeness. He was not
wholly vile. In some ways he honestly considered himself a model to
mankind.

And then he had recalled certain information received in childhood
from authoritative persons about the merciful goodness of God. His
childhood had been rather ceremoniously religious, for his step-uncle,
the Lieutenant-General, was a great defender of Christianity as well
as of the British Empire. The Lieutenant-General had even written
a pamphlet against a ribald iconoclastic book published by the
Rationalist Press Association, in which pamphlet he had made a sorry
mess of Herbert Spencer. All the Lieutenant-General's relatives and
near admirers went to church, and they all went to precisely the same
kind of church, for no other kind would have served. Louis, however,
had really liked going to church. There had once even been a
mad suggestion that he should become a choir-boy, but the
Lieutenant-General had naturally decided that it was not meet for a
child of breeding to associate with plebeians in order to chant the
praises of the Almighty.

Louis at his worst had never quite ceased to attend church, though he
was under the