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+The Project Gutenberg EBook Paul Clifford, by Lytton, Volume 6.
+#160 in our series by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
+
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+Title: Paul Clifford, Volume 6.
+
+Author: Edward Bulwer-Lytton
+
+Release Date: March 2005  [EBook #7733]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on May 13, 2003]
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+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PAUL CLIFFORD, BY LYTTON, V6 ***
+
+
+
+
+This eBook was produced by Bryan Sherman
+and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+PAUL CLIFFORD, Volume 6.
+
+By Edward Bulwer-Lytton
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+               God bless our King and Parliament,
+               And send he may make such knaves repent!
+                         Loyal Songs against the Rump Parliament.
+
+
+               Ho, treachery! my guards, my cimeter!
+                                                  BYRON.
+
+When the irreverent Mr. Pepper had warmed his hands sufficiently to be
+able to transfer them from the fire, he lifted the right palm, and with
+an indecent jocularity of spirits, accosted the _ci-devant_ ornament of
+"The Asinaeum" with a sounding slap on his back, or some such part of his
+conformation.
+
+"Ah, old boy!" said he, "is this the way you keep house for us?  A fire
+not large enough to roast a nit, and a supper too small to fatten him
+beforehand!  But how the deuce should you know how to provender for
+gentlemen?  You thought you were in Scotland, I'll be bound!"
+
+"Perhaps he did when he looked upon you, Ned!" said Tomlinson, gravely;
+"'t is but rarely out of Scotland that a man can see so big a rogue in so
+little a compass!"
+
+Mr. MacGrawler, into whose eyes the palmistry of Long Ned had brought
+tears of sincere feeling, and who had hitherto been rubbing the afflicted
+part, now grumbled forth,--
+
+"You may say what you please, Mr. Pepper, but it is not often in my
+country that men of genius are seen performing the part of cook to
+robbers!"
+
+"No!" quoth Tomlinson, "they are performing the more profitable part of
+robbers to cooks, eh!"
+
+"Damme, you're out," cried Long Ned,--"for in that country there are
+either no robbers, because there is nothing to rob; or the inhabitants
+are all robbers, who have plundered one another, and made away with the
+booty!"
+
+"May the de'il catch thee!" said MacGrawler, stung to the quick,--for,
+like all Scots, he was a patriot; much on the same principle as a woman
+who has the worst children makes the best mother.
+
+"The de'il," said Ned, mimicking the "silver sound," as Sir W.  Scott had
+been pleased facetiously to call the "mountain tongue" (the Scots in
+general seem to think it is silver, they keep it so carefully) "the
+de'il,--_MacDeil_, you mean, sure, the gentleman must have been a
+Scotchman!"
+
+The sage grinned in spite; but remembering the patience of Epictetus when
+a slave, and mindful also of the strong arm of Long Ned, he curbed his
+temper, and turned the beefsteaks with his fork.
+
+"Well, Ned," said Augustus, throwing himself into a chair, which he drew
+to the fire, while he gently patted the huge limbs of Mr. Pepper, as if
+to admonish him that they were not so transparent as glass, "let us look
+at the fire; and, by the by, it is your turn to see to the horses."
+
+"Plague on it!" cried Ned; "it is always my turn, I think.  Holla, you
+Scot of the pot! can't you prove that I groomed the beasts last?  I'll
+give you a crown to do it."
+
+The wise MacGrawler pricked up his ears.
+
+"A crown!" said he,--"a crown!  Do you mean to insult me, Mr. Pepper?
+But, to be sure, you did see to the horses last; and this worthy
+gentleman, Mr. Tomlinson, must remember it too."
+
+"How!" cried Augustus; "you are mistaken, and I'll give you half a guinea
+to prove it."
+
+MacGrawler opened his eyes larger and larger, even as you may see a small
+circle in the water widen into enormity, if you disturb the equanimity of
+the surface by the obtrusion of a foreign substance.
+
+"Half a guinea!" said he; "nay, nay, you joke.  I'm not mercenary.  You
+think I am!  Pooh, pooh!  you are mistaken; I'm a man who means weel, a
+man of veracity, and will speak the truth in spite of all the half-
+guineas in the world.  But certainly, now I begin to think of it, Mr.
+Tomlinson did see to the creatures last; and, Mr. Pepper, it is your
+turn."
+
+"A very Daniel!" said Tomlinson, chuckling in his usual dry manner.
+"Ned, don't you hear the horses neigh?"
+
+"Oh, hang the horses!" said the volatile Pepper, forgetting everything
+else, as he thrust his hands in his pockets, and felt the gains of the
+night; "let us first look to our winnings!"
+
+So saying, he marched towards the table, and emptied his pockets thereon.
+Tomlinson, nothing loath, followed the example.  Heavens! what
+exclamations of delight issued from the scoundrels' lips, as, one by one,
+they inspected their new acquisitions!
+
+"Here's a magnificent creature!" cried Ned, handling that superb watch
+studded with jewels which the poor earl had once before unavailingly
+redeemed,--"a repeater, by Jove!"
+
+"I hope not," said the phlegmatic Augustus; "repeaters will not tell well
+for your conversation, Ned!  But, powers that be! look at this ring,--a
+diamond of the first water!"
+
+"Oh, the sparkler!  it makes one's mouth water as much as itself.
+'Sdeath, here's a precious box for a sneezer,--a picture inside, and
+rubies outside!  The old fellow had excellent taste; it would charm him
+to see how pleased we are with his choice of jewelry!"
+
+"Talking of jewelry," said Tomlinson, "I had almost forgotten the morocco
+case.  Between you and me, I imagine we have a prize there; it looks like
+a jewel casket!"
+
+So saying, the robber opened that case which on many a gala day had lent
+lustre to the polished person of Mauleverer.  Oh, reader, the burst of
+rapture that ensued!  Imagine it! we cannot express it.  Like the Grecian
+painter, we drop a veil over emotions too deep for words.
+
+"But here," said Pepper, when they had almost exhausted their transports
+at sight of the diamonds,--"here's a purse,--fifty guineas!  And what's
+this?  Notes, by Jupiter!  We must change them to-morrow before they are
+stopped.  Curse those fellows at the Bank! they are always imitating us,
+we stop their money, and they don't lose a moment in stopping it too.
+Three hundred pounds!  Captain, what say you to our luck?" Clifford had
+sat gloomily looking on during the operations of the robbers; he now,
+assuming a correspondent cheerfulness of manner, made a suitable reply,
+and after some general conversation the work of division took place.
+
+"We are the best arithmeticians in the world," said Augustus, as he
+pouched his share; "addition, subtraction, division, reduction,--we have
+them all as pat as 'The Tutor's Assistant;' and, what is better, we make
+them all applicable to the _Rule of Three_."
+
+"You have left out multiplication!" said Clifford, smiling.  "Ah!
+because that works differently.  The other rules apply to the specie-s of
+the kingdom; but as for multiplication, we multiply, I fear, no species
+but our own!"
+
+"Fie, gentlemen!" said MacGrawler, austerely,--for there is a wonderful
+decorum in your true Scotsmen.  "Actions are trifles; nothing can be
+cleaner than their words!"
+
+"Oh, you thrust in your wisdom, do you?" said Ned.  "I suppose you want
+your part of the booty!"
+
+"Part!" said the subtilizing Tomlinson.  "He has nine times as many parts
+as we have already.  Is he not a critic, and has he not the parts of
+speech at his fingers' end?"
+
+"Nonsense!" said MacGrawler, instinctively holding up his hands, with the
+fork dropping between the outstretched fingers of the right palm.
+
+"Nonsense yourself," cried Ned; "you have a share in what you never took!
+A pretty fellow, truly!  Mind your business, Mr. Scot, and fork nothing
+but the beefsteaks!"
+
+With this Ned turned to the stables, and soon disappeared among the
+horses; but Clifford, eying the disappointed and eager face of the
+culinary sage, took ten guineas from his own share, and pushed them
+towards his quondam tutor.
+
+"There!" said he, emphatically.
+
+"Nay, nay," grunted MacGrawler; "I don't want the money,--it is my way
+to scorn such dross!"  So saying, he pocketed the coins, and turned,
+muttering to himself, to the renewal of his festive preparations.
+
+Meanwhile a whispered conversation took place between Augustus and the
+captain, and continued till Ned returned.
+
+"And the night's viands smoked along the board!"
+
+Souls of Don Raphael and Ambrose Lamela, what a charming thing it is to
+be a rogue for a little time!  How merry men are when they have cheated
+their brethren!  Your innocent milksops never made so jolly a supper as
+did our heroes of the way.  Clifford, perhaps acted a part, but the
+hilarity of his comrades was unfeigned.  It was a delicious contrast,--
+the boisterous "ha, ha!" of Long Ned, and the secret, dry, calculating
+chuckle of Augustus Tomlinson.  It was Rabelais against Voltaire.  They
+united only in the objects of their jests, and foremost of those objects
+(wisdom is ever the but of the frivolous!) was the great Peter
+MacGrawler.
+
+The graceless dogs were especially merry upon the subject of the sage's
+former occupation.
+
+"Come, Mac, you carve this ham," said Ned; "you have had practice in
+cutting up."
+
+The learned man whose name was thus disrespectfully abbreviated proceeded
+to perform what he was bid.  He was about to sit down for that purpose,
+when Tomlinson slyly subtracted his chair,--the sage fell.
+
+"No jests at MacGrawler," said the malicious Augustus; "whatever be his
+faults as a critic, you see that he is well grounded, and he gets at once
+to the bottom of a subject.  Mac, suppose your next work be entitled a
+Tail of Woe!"
+
+Men who have great minds are rarely flexible,--they do not take a jest
+readily; so it was with MacGrawler.  He rose in a violent rage; and had
+the robbers been more penetrating than they condescended to be, they
+might have noticed something dangerous in his eye.  As it was, Clifford,
+who had often before been the protector of his tutor, interposed in his
+behalf, drew the sage a seat near to himself, and filled his plate for
+him.  It was interesting to see this deference from Power to Learning!
+It was Alexander doing homage to Aristotle!
+
+"There is only one thing I regret," cried Ned, with his mouth full,
+"about the old lord,--it was a thousand pities we did not make him dance!
+I remember the day, Captain, when you would have insisted on it.  What a
+merry fellow you were once!  Do you recollect, one bright moonlight
+night, just like the present, for instance, when we were doing duty near
+Staines, how you swore every person we stopped, above fifty years old,
+should dance a minuet with you?"
+
+"Ay!" added Augustus, "and the first was a bishop in a white wig.  Faith,
+how stiffly his lordship jigged it!  And how gravely Lovett bowed to him,
+with his hat off, when it was all over, and returned him his watch and
+ten guineas,--it was worth the sacrifice!"
+
+"And the next was an old maid of quality," said Ned, "as lean as a
+lawyer.  Don't you remember how she curvetted?"
+
+"To be sure," said Tomlinson; "and you very wittily called her a hop-
+pole!"
+
+"How delighted she was with the captain's suavity!  When he gave her back
+her earrings and aigrette, she bade him with a tender sigh keep them for
+her sake,--ha! ha!"
+
+"And the third was a beau!" cried Augustus; "and Lovett surrendered his
+right of partnership to me.  Do you recollect how I danced his beauship
+into the ditch?  Ah! we were mad fellows then; but we get sated--
+_blases_, as the French say--as we grow older!"
+
+"We look only to the main chance now," said Ned.  "Avarice supersedes
+enterprise," added the sententious Augustus.
+
+"And our captain takes to wine with an _h_ after the _w_!" continued the
+metaphorical Ned.
+
+"Come, we are melancholy," said Tomlinson, tossing off a bumper.
+"Methinks we are really growing old, we shall repent soon, and the next
+step will be-hanging!"
+
+"'Fore Gad!" said Ned, helping himself, "don't be so croaking.  There are
+two classes of maligned gentry, who should always be particular to avoid
+certain colours in dressing; I hate to see a true boy in black, or a
+devil in blue.  But here's my last glass to-night!  I am confoundedly
+sleepy, and we rise early to-morrow."
+
+"Right, Ned," said Tomlinson; "give us a song before you retire, and let
+it be that one which Lovett composed the last time we were here."
+
+Ned, always pleased with an opportunity of displaying himself, cleared
+his voice and complied.
+
+
+                    A DITTY FROM SHERWOOD.
+
+                             I.
+          Laugh with us at the prince and the palace,
+          In the wild wood-life there is better cheer;
+          Would you board your mirth from your neighbour's malice,
+          Gather it up in our garners here.
+          Some kings their wealth from their subjects wring,
+          While by their foes they the poorer wax;
+          Free go the men of the wise wood-king,
+          And it is only our foes we tax.
+          Leave the cheats of trade to the shrewd gude-wife
+          Let the old be knaves at ease;
+          Away with the tide of that dashing life
+          Which is stirred by a constant breeze!
+
+                            II.
+          Laugh with us when you hear deceiving
+          And solemn rogues tell you what knaves we be
+          Commerce and law have a method of thieving
+          Worse than a stand at the outlaw's tree.
+          Say, will the maiden we love despise
+          Gallants at least to each other true?
+          I grant that we trample on legal ties,
+          But I have heard that Love scorns them too,
+          Courage, then,--courage, ye jolly boys,
+          Whom the fool with the knavish rates
+          Oh! who that is loved by the world enjoys
+          Half as much as the man it hates?
+
+
+"Bravissimo, Ned!" cried Tomlinson, rapping the table; "bravissimo!  Your
+voice is superb to-night, and your song admirable.  Really, Lovett, it
+does your poetical genius great credit; quite philosophical, upon my
+honour."
+
+"Bravissimo!" said MacGrawler, nodding his head awfully.  "Mr. Pepper's
+voice is as sweet as a bagpipe!  Ah! such a song would have been
+invaluable to 'The Asinaeum,' when I had the honour to--"
+
+"Be Vicar of _Bray_ to that establishment," interrupted Tomlinson.
+"Pray, MacGrawler, why do they call Edinburgh the Modern Athens?"
+
+"Because of the learned and great men it produces," returned MacGrawler,
+with conscious pride.
+
+"Pooh! pooh!--you are thinking of ancient Athens.  Your city is called
+the modern Athens because you are all so like the modern Athenians,--the
+greatest scoundrels imaginable, unless travellers belie them."
+
+"Nay," interrupted Ned, who was softened by the applause of the critic,
+"Mac is a good fellow, spare him.  Gentlemen, your health.  I am going to
+bed, and I suppose you will not tarry long behind me."
+
+"Trust us for that," answered Tomlinson; "the captain and I will consult
+on the business of the morrow, and join you in the twinkling of a
+bedpost, as it has been shrewdly expressed."
+
+Ned yawned his last "good-night," and disappeared within the dormitory.
+MacGrawler, yawning also, but with a graver yawn, as became his wisdom,
+betook himself to the duty of removing the supper paraphernalia: after
+bustling soberly about for some minutes, he let down a press-bed in the
+corner of the cave (for he did not sleep in the robbers' apartment), and
+undressing himself, soon appeared buried in the bosom of Morpheus.  But
+the chief and Tomlinson, drawing their seats nearer to the dying embers,
+defied the slothful god, and entered with low tones into a close and
+anxious commune.
+
+"So, then," said Augustus, "now that you have realized sufficient funds
+for your purpose, you will really desert us?  Have you well weighed the
+pros and cons?  Remember that nothing is so dangerous to our state as
+reform; the moment a man grows honest, the gang forsake him; the
+magistrate misses his fee; the informer peaches; and the recusant hangs."
+
+"I have well weighed all this," answered Clifford, "and have decided on
+my course.  I have only tarried till my means could assist my will.  With
+my share of our present and late booty, I shall betake myself to the
+Continent.  Prussia gives easy trust and ready promotion to all who will
+enlist in her service.  But this language, my dear friend, seems strange
+from your lips.  Surely you will join me in my separation from the corps?
+What! you shake your head!  Are you not the same Tomlinson who at Bath
+agreed with me that we were in danger from the envy of our comrades, and
+that retreat had become necessary to our safety?  Nay, was not this your
+main argument for our matrimonial expedition?"
+
+"Why, look you, dear Lovett," said Augustus, "we are all blocks of
+matter, formed from the atoms of custom; in other words, we are a
+mechanism, to which habit is the spring.  What could I do in an honest
+career?  I am many years older than you.  I have lived as a rogue till I
+have no other nature than roguery.  I doubt if I should not be a coward
+were I to turn soldier.  I am sure I should be the most consummate of
+rascals were I to affect to be honest.  No: I mistook myself when I
+talked of separation.  I must e'en jog on with my old comrades, and in my
+old ways; till I jog into the noose hempen or--melancholy alternative!--
+the noose matrimonial."
+
+"This is mere folly," said Clifford, from whose nervous and masculine
+mind habits were easily shaken.  "We have not for so many years discarded
+all the servile laws of others, to be the abject slaves of our own
+weaknesses.  Come, my dear fellow, rouse yourself.  Heaven knows, were I
+to succumb to the feebleness of my own heart, I should be lost indeed.
+And perhaps, wrestle I ever so stoutly, I do not wrestle away that which
+clings within me, and will kill me, though by inches.  But let us not be
+cravens, and suffer fate to drown us rather than swim.  In a word, fly
+with me ere it be too late.  A smuggler's vessel waits me off the coast
+of Dorset: in three days from this I sail.  Be my companion.  We can both
+rein a fiery horse, and wield a good sword.  As long as men make war one
+against another, those accomplishments will prevent their owner from
+starving, or--"
+
+"If employed in the field, not the road," interrupted Tomlinson, with a
+smile,--"from hanging.  But it cannot be!  I wish you all joy, all
+success in your career.  You are young, bold, and able; and you always
+had a loftier spirit than I have.  Knave I am, and knave I must be to the
+end of the chapter!"
+
+"As you will," said Clifford, who was not a man of many words, but he
+spoke with reluctance: "if so, I must seek my fortune alone."
+
+"When do you leave us?" asked Tomlinson.
+
+"To-morrow, before noon.  I shall visit London for a few hours, and then
+start at once for the coast."
+
+"London!" exclaimed Tomlinson; "what, the very den of danger?  Pooh! you
+do not know what you say: or do you think it filial to caress Mother
+Lobkins before you depart?"
+
+"Not that," answered Clifford.  "I have already ascertained that she is
+above the reach of all want; and her days, poor soul! cannot, I fear, be
+many.  In all probability she would scarcely recognize me; for her habits
+cannot much have improved her memory.  Would I could say as much for her
+neighbours!  Were I to be seen in the purlieus of low thievery, you know,
+as well as I do, that some stealer of kerchiefs would turn informer
+against the notorious Captain Lovett."
+
+"What, then, takes you to town?  Ah! you turn away your face.  I guess!
+Well, Love has ruined many a hero before; may you not be the worse for
+his godship!"
+
+Clifford did not answer, and the conversation made a sudden and long
+pause; Tomlinson broke it.
+
+"Do you know, Lovett," said he, "though I have as little heart as most
+men, yet I feel for you more than I could have thought it possible.
+I would fain join you; there is devilish good tobacco in Germany,
+I believe; and, after all, there is not so much difference between
+the life of a thief and of a soldier."
+
+"Do profit by so sensible a remark," said Clifford.  "Reflect! how
+certain of destruction is the path you now tread; the gallows and the
+hulks are the only goals!"
+
+"The prospects are not pleasing, I allow," said Tomlinson; "nor is it
+desirable to be preserved for another century in the immortality of a
+glass case in Surgeons' Hall, grinning from ear to ear, as if one had
+made the merriest finale imaginable.  Well! I will sleep on it, and you
+shall have my answer tomorrow; but poor Ned?"
+
+"Would he not join us?"
+
+"Certainly not; his neck is made for a rope, and his mind for the Old
+Bailey.  There is no hope for him; yet he is an excellent fellow.  We
+must not even tell him of our meditated desertion."
+
+"By no means.  I shall leave a letter to our London chief; it will
+explain all.  And now to bed.  I look to your companionship as settled."
+
+"Humph!" said Augustus Tomlinson.
+
+So ended the conference of the robbers.  About an hour after it had
+ceased, and when no sound save the heavy breath of Long Ned broke the
+stillness of the night, the intelligent countenance of Peter MacGrawler
+slowly elevated itself from the lonely pillow on which it had reclined.
+
+By degrees the back of the sage stiffened into perpendicularity, and he
+sat for a few moments erect on his seat of honour, apparently in
+listening deliberation.  Satisfied with the deep silence that, save the
+solitary interruption we have specified, reigned around, the learned
+disciple of Vatel rose gently from the bed, hurried on his clothes, stole
+on tiptoe to the door, unbarred it with a noiseless hand, and vanished.
+Sweet reader! while thou art wondering at his absence, suppose we account
+for his appearance.
+
+One evening Clifford and his companion Augustus had been enjoying the
+rational amusement at Ranelagh, and were just leaving that celebrated
+place when they were arrested by a crowd at the entrance.  That crowd was
+assembled round a pickpocket; and that pickpocket--O virtue, O wisdom,
+O Asinaeum!--was Peter MacGrawler!  We have before said that Clifford was
+possessed of a good mien and an imposing manner, and these advantages
+were at that time especially effectual in preserving our Orbilius from
+the pump.  No sooner did Clifford recognize the magisterial face of the
+sapient Scot, than he boldly thrust himself into the middle of the crowd,
+and collaring the enterprising citizen who had collared MacGrawler,
+declared himself ready to vouch for the honesty of the very respectable
+person whose identity had evidently been so grossly mistaken.  Augustus,
+probably foreseeing some ingenious ruse, of his companion, instantly
+seconded the defence.  The mob, who never descry any difference between
+impudence and truth, gave way; a constable came up, took part with the
+friend of two gentlemen so unexceptionally dressed; our friends walked
+off; the crowd repented of their precipitation, and by way of amends
+ducked the gentleman whose pockets had been picked.  It was in vain for
+him to defend himself, for he had an impediment in his speech; and
+Messieurs the mob, having ducked him once for his guilt, ducked him a
+second time for his embarrassment.
+
+In the interim Clifford had withdrawn his quondam Mentor to the asylum of
+a coffee-house; and while MacGrawler's soul expanded itself by wine, he
+narrated the causes of his dilemma.  It seems that that incomparable
+journal "The Asinaeum," despite a series of most popular articles upon
+the writings of "Aulus Prudentius," to which were added an exquisite
+string of dialogues, written in a tone of broad humour, namely, broad
+Scotch (with Scotchmen it is all the same thing), despite these
+invaluable miscellanies, to say nothing of some glorious political
+articles, in which it was clearly proved to the satisfaction of the rich,
+that the less poor devils eat the better for their constitutions,--
+despite, we say, these great acquisitions to British literature, "The
+Asinaeum" tottered, fell, buried its bookseller, and crushed its author.
+MacGrawler only,--escaping, like Theodore from the enormous helmet of
+Otranto,--MacGrawler only survived.  "Love," says Sir Philip Sidney.
+"makes a man see better than a pair of spectacles."  Love of life has a
+very different effect on the optics,--it makes a man wofully dim of
+inspection, and sometimes causes him to see his own property in another
+man's purse!  This _deceptio visus_, did it impose upon Peter MacGrawler?
+He went to Ranelagh.  Reader, thou knowest the rest!
+
+Wine and the ingenuity of the robbers having extorted this narrative from
+MacGrawler, the barriers of superfluous delicacy were easily done away
+with.
+
+Our heroes offered to the sage an introduction to their club; the offer
+was accepted; and MacGrawler, having been first made drunk, was next made
+a robber.  The gang engaged him in various little matters, in which we
+grieve to relate that though his intentions were excellent, his success
+was so ill as thoroughly to enrage his employers; nay, they were about at
+one time, when they wanted to propitiate justice, to hand him over to the
+secular power, when Clifford interposed in his behalf.  From a robber the
+sage dwindled into a drudge; menial offices (the robbers, the lying
+rascals, declared that such offices were best fitted to the genius of his
+country!) succeeded to noble exploits, and the worst of robbers became
+the best of cooks.  How vain is all wisdom but that of long experience!
+Though Clifford was a sensible, and keen man, though he knew our sage to
+be a knave, he never dreamed he could be a traitor.  He thought him too
+indolent to be malicious, and--short-sighted humanity!--too silly to be
+dangerous.  He trusted the sage with the secret of the cavern; and
+Augustus, who was a bit of an epicure, submitted, though forebodingly,
+to the choice, because of the Scotchman's skill in broiling.
+
+But MacGrawler, like Brutus, concealed a scheming heart under a stolid
+guise.  The apprehension of the noted Lovett had become a matter of
+serious desire; the police was no longer to be bribed, nay, they were now
+eager to bribe.  MacGrawler had watched his time, sold his chief, and was
+now on the road to Reading to meet and to guide to the cavern Mr. Nabbem
+of Bow Street and four of his attendants.
+
+Having thus, as rapidly as we were able, traced the causes which brought
+so startlingly before your notice the most incomparable of critics, we
+now, reader, return to our robbers.
+
+"Hist, Lovett!" said Tomlinson, half asleep, "methought I heard something
+in the outer cave."
+
+"It is the Scot, I suppose," answered Clifford: "you saw, of course, to
+the door?"
+
+"To be sure!" muttered Tomlinson, and in two minutes more he was asleep.
+
+Not so Clifford: many and anxious thoughts kept him waking.  At one
+while, when he anticipated the opening to a new career, somewhat of the
+stirring and high spirit which still moved amidst the guilty and confused
+habits of his mind made his pulse feverish and his limbs restless; at
+another time, an agonizing remembrance,--the remembrance of Lucy in all
+her charms, her beauty, her love, her tender and innocent heart,--Lucy
+all perfect, and lost to him forever,--banished every other reflection,
+and only left him the sick sensation of despondency and despair.  "What
+avails my struggle for a better name?" he thought.  "Whatever my future
+lot, she can never share it.  My punishment is fixed,--it is worse than a
+death of shame; it is a life without hope!  Every moment I feel, and
+shall feel to the last, the pressure of a chain that may never be broken
+or loosened!  And yet, fool that I am!  I cannot leave this country
+without seeing her again, without telling her that I have really looked
+my last.  But have I not twice told her that?  Strange fatality!  But
+twice have I spoken to her of love, and each time it was to tear myself
+from her at the moment of my confession.  And even now something that I
+have no power to resist compels me to the same idle and weak indulgence.
+Does destiny urge me?  Ay, perhaps to my destruction!  Every hour a
+thousand deaths encompass me.  I have now obtained all for which I seemed
+to linger.  I have won, by a new crime, enough to bear me to another
+land, and to provide me there a soldier's destiny.  I should not lose an
+hour in flight, yet I rush into the nest of my enemies, only for one
+unavailing word with her; and this, too, after I have already bade her
+farewell!  Is this fate?  If it be so, what matters it?  I no longer care
+for a life which, after all, I should reform in vain if I could not
+reform it for her; yet--yet, selfish and lost that I am! will it be
+nothing to think hereafter that I have redeemed her from the disgrace of
+having loved an outcast and a felon?  If I can obtain honour, will it
+not, in my own heart at least,--will it not reflect, however dimly and
+distantly, upon her?"
+
+Such, bewildered, unsatisfactory, yet still steeped in the colours of
+that true love which raises even the lowest, were the midnight
+meditations of Clifford; they terminated, towards the morning, in an
+uneasy and fitful slumber.  From this he was awakened by a loud yawn from
+the throat of Long Ned, who was always the earliest riser of his set.
+
+"Hullo!" said he, "it is almost daybreak; and if we want to cash our
+notes and to move the old lord's jewels, we should already be on the
+start."
+
+"A plague on you!" said Tomlinson, from under cover of his woollen
+nightcap; "it was but this instant that I was dreaming you were going to
+be hanged, and now you wake me in the pleasantest part of the dream!"
+
+"You be shot!" said Ned, turning one leg out of bed; "by the by, you took
+more than your share last night, for you owed me three guineas for our
+last game at cribbage!  You'll please to pay me before we part to-day:
+short accounts make long friends!"
+
+"However true that maxim may be," returned Tomlinson, "I know one much
+truer,--namely, long friends will make short accounts!  You must ask Jack
+Ketch this day month if I'm wrong!"
+
+"That's what you call wit, I suppose!" retorted Ned, as he now,
+struggling into his inexpressibles, felt his way into the outer cave.
+
+"What, ho, Mac!" cried he, as he went, "stir those bobbins of thine,
+which thou art pleased to call legs; strike a light, and be d---d to
+you!"
+
+"A light for you," said Tomlinson, profanely, as he reluctantly left his
+couch, "will indeed be a 'light to lighten the Gentiles!'"
+
+"Why, Mac, Mac!" shouted Ned, "why don't you answer?  faith, I think the
+Scot's dead!"
+
+"Seize your men!--Yield, sirs!" cried a stern, sudden voice from the
+gloom; and at that instant two dark lanterns were turned, and their light
+streamed full upon the astounded forms of Tomlinson and his gaunt
+comrade!  In the dark shade of the background four or five forms were
+also indistinctly visible; and the ray of the lanterns glimmered on the
+blades of cutlasses and the barrels of weapons still less easily
+resisted.
+
+Tomlinson was the first to recover his self-possession.  The light just
+gleamed upon the first step of the stairs leading to the stables, leaving
+the rest in shadow.  He made one stride to the place beside the cart,
+where, we have said, lay some of the robbers' weapons; he had been
+anticipated,--the weapons were gone.  The next moment Tomlinson had
+sprung up the steps.
+
+"Lovett!  Lovett!  Lovett!" shouted he.
+
+The captain, who had followed his comrades into the cavern, was already
+in the grasp of two men.  From few ordinary mortals, however, could any
+two be selected as fearful odds against such a man as Clifford,--a man in
+whom a much larger share of sinews and muscle than is usually the lot
+even of the strong had been hardened, by perpetual exercise, into a
+consistency and iron firmness which linked power and activity into a
+union scarcely less remarkable than that immortalized in the glorious
+beauty of the sculptured gladiator.  His right hand is upon the throat of
+one assailant; his left locks, as in a vice, the wrist of the other; you
+have scarcely time to breathe!  The former is on the ground, the pistol
+of the latter is wrenched from his grip, Clifford is on the step; a ball
+--another--whizzes by him; he is by the side of the faithful Augustus!
+
+"Open the secret door!" whispered Clifford to his friend; "I will draw up
+the steps alone."
+
+Scarcely had he spoken, before the steps were already, but slowly,
+ascending beneath the desperate strength of the robber.  Meanwhile Ned
+was struggling, as he best might, with two sturdy officers, who appeared
+loath to use their weapons without an absolute necessity, and who
+endeavoured, by main strength, to capture and detain their antagonist.
+
+"Look well to the door!" cried the voice of the principal officer, "and
+hang out more light!"
+
+Two or three additional lanterns were speedily brought forward; and over
+the whole interior of the cavern a dim but sufficient light now rapidly
+circled, giving to the scene and to the combatants a picturesque and wild
+appearance.
+
+The quick eye of the head-officer descried in an instant the rise of the
+steps, and the advantage the robbers were thereby acquiring.  He and two
+of his men threw themselves forward, seized the ladder, if so it may be
+called, dragged it once more to the ground, and ascended.  But Clifford,
+grasping with both hands the broken shaft of a cart that lay in reach,
+received the foremost invader with a salute that sent him prostrate and
+senseless back among his companions.  The second shared the same fate;
+and the stout leader of the enemy, who, like a true general, had kept
+himself in the rear, paused now in the middle of the steps, dismayed
+alike by the reception of his friends and the athletic form towering
+above, with raised weapons and menacing attitude.  Perhaps that moment
+seemed to the judicious Mr. Nabbem more favourable to parley than to
+conflict.  He cleared his throat, and thus addressed the foe:
+
+"You, sir, Captain Lovett, alias Howard, alias Jackson, alias Cavendish,
+alias Solomons, alias Devil,--for I knows you well, and could swear to
+you with half an eye, in your clothes or without,--you lay down your club
+there, and let me come alongside of you, and you'll find me as gentle as
+a lamb; for I've been used to gemmen all my life, and I knows how to
+treat 'em when I has 'em!"
+
+"But if I will not let you 'come alongside of me,' what then?"
+
+"Why, I must send one of these here pops through your skull, that's all!"
+
+"Nay, Mr. Nabbem, that would be too cruel!  You surely would not harm one
+who has such an esteem for you?  Don't you remember the manner in which I
+brought you off from Justice Burnflat, when you were accused, you know
+whether justly or--"
+
+"You're a liar, Captain!" cried Nabbem, furiously, fearful that something
+not meet for the ears of his companions should transpire.  "You knows you
+are!  Come down, or let me mount; otherwise I won't be 'sponsible for the
+consequences!"
+
+Clifford cast a look over his shoulder.  A gleam of the gray daylight
+already glimmered through a chink in the secret door, which Tomlinson had
+now unbarred and was about to open.
+
+"Listen to me, Mr. Nabbem," said he, "and perhaps I may grant what you
+require!  What would you do with me if you had me?"
+
+"You speaks like a sensible man now," answered Nabbem; "and that's after
+my own heart.  Why, you sees, Captain, your time is come, and you can't
+shilly-shally any longer.  You have had your full swing; your years are
+up, and you must die like a man!  But I gives you my honour as a gemman,
+that if you surrenders, I'll take you to the justice folks as tenderly as
+if you were made of cotton."
+
+"Give way one moment," said Clifford, "that I may plant the steps firmer
+for you."
+
+Nabbem retreated to the ground; and Clifford, who had, good-naturedly
+enough, been unwilling unnecessarily to damage so valuable a functionary,
+lost not the opportunity now afforded him.  Down thundered the steps,
+clattering heavily among the other officers, and falling like an
+avalanche on the shoulder of one of the arresters of Long Ned.
+
+Meanwhile Clifford sprang after Tomlinson through the aperture, and found
+himself--in the presence of four officers, conducted by the shrewd
+MacGrawler.  A blow from a bludgeon on the right cheek and temple of
+Augustus felled that hero.  But Clifford bounded over his comrade's body,
+dodged from the stroke aimed at himself, caught the blow aimed by another
+assailant in his open hand, wrested the bludgeon from the officer, struck
+him to the ground with his own weapon, and darting onward through the
+labyrinth of the wood, commenced his escape with a step too fleet to
+allow the hope of a successful pursuit.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+          "In short, Isabella, I offer you myself!"
+          "Heavens!" cried Isabella, "what do I hear?  You, my lord?"
+                                             Castle of Otranto.
+
+A novel is like a weatherglass,--where the man appears out at one time,
+the woman at another.  Variable as the atmosphere, the changes of our
+story now re-present Lucy to the reader.
+
+That charming young person--who, it may be remarked, is (her father
+excepted) the only unsophisticated and unsullied character in the pages
+of a story in some measure designed to show, in the depravities of
+character, the depravities of that social state wherein characters are
+formed--was sitting alone in her apartment at the period in which we
+return to her.  As time, and that innate and insensible fund of healing,
+which Nature has placed in the bosoms of the young in order that her
+great law, the passing away of the old, may not leave too lasting and
+keen a wound, had softened her first anguish at her father's death, the
+remembrance of Clifford again resumed its ancient sway in her heart.  The
+loneliness of her life, the absence of amusement, even the sensitiveness
+and languor which succeed to grief, conspired to invest the image of her
+lover in a tenderer and more impressive guise.  She recalled his words,
+his actions, his letters, and employed herself whole hours, whole days
+and nights, in endeavouring to decipher their mystery.  Who that has been
+loved will not acknowledge the singular and mighty force with which a
+girl, innocent herself, clings to the belief of innocence in her lover?
+In breasts young and unacquainted with the world, there is so pure a
+credulity in the existence of unmixed good, so firm a reluctance to think
+that where we love there can be that which we would not esteem, or where
+we admire there can be that which we ought to blame, that one may almost
+deem it an argument in favour of our natural power to attain a greater
+eminence in virtue than the habits and arts of the existing world will
+allow us to reach.  Perhaps it is not paradoxical to say that we could
+scarcely believe perfection in others, were not the germ of
+perfectibility in our own minds!  When a man has lived some years among
+the actual contests of faction without imbibing the prejudice as well as
+the experience, how wonderingly be smiles at his worship of former idols,
+how different a colour does history wear to him, how cautious is he now
+to praise, how slow to admire, how prone to cavil!  Human nature has
+become the human nature of art; and he estimates it not from what it
+may be, but from what, in the corruptions of a semi-civilization, it is!
+But in the same manner as the young student clings to the belief that the
+sage or the minstrel, who has enlightened his reason or chained his
+imagination, is in character as in genius elevated above the ordinary
+herd, free from the passions, the frivolities, the little meannesses,
+and the darkening vices which ordinary flesh is heir to, does a woman who
+loves for the first time cling to the imagined excellence of him she
+loves.  When Evelina is so shocked at the idea of an occasional fit of
+intoxication in her "noble, her unrivalled" lover, who does not
+acknowledge how natural were her feelings?  Had Evelina been married six
+years, and the same lover, then her husband, been really guilty of what
+she suspected, who does not feel that it would have been very unnatural
+to have been shocked in the least at the occurrence?  She would not have
+loved him less, nor admired him less, nor would he have been less "the
+noble and the unrivalled,"--he would have taken his glass too much, have
+joked the next morning on the event, and the gentle Evelina would have
+made him a cup of tea; but that which would have been a matter of
+pleasantry in the husband would have been matter of damnation in a lover.
+But to return to Lucy.
+
+If it be so hard, so repellent, to believe a lover guilty even of a
+trivial error, we may readily suppose that Lucy never for a moment
+admitted the supposition that Clifford had been really guilty of gross
+error or wilful crime.  True that expressions in his letter were more
+than suspicious; but there is always a charm in the candour of self-
+condemnation.  As it is difficult to believe the excellence of those
+who praise themselves, so it is difficult to fancy those criminal who
+condemn.  What, too, is the process of a woman's reasoning?  Alas! she
+is too credulous a physiognomist.  The turn of a throat, with her, is the
+unerring token of nobleness of mind; and no one can be guilty of a sin
+who is blessed with a beautiful forehead!  How fondly, how fanatically
+Lucy loved!  She had gathered together a precious and secret hoard,--
+a glove, a pen, a book, a withered rose-leaf,--treasures rendered
+inestimable because he had touched them; but more than all, had she the
+series of his letters,--from the first formal note written to her father,
+meant for her, in which he answered an invitation, and requested Miss
+Brandon's acceptance of the music she had wished to have, to the last
+wild and, to her, inexplicable letter in which he had resigned her
+forever.  On these relics her eyes fed for hours; and as she pored over
+them, and over thoughts too deep not only for tears but for all utterance
+or conveyance, you might have almost literally watched the fading of her
+rich cheek and the pining away of her rounded and elastic form.
+
+It was just in such a mood that she was buried when her uncle knocked at
+her door for admittance.  She hurried away her treasures, and hastened to
+admit and greet him.
+
+"I have come," said he, smiling, "to beg the pleasure of your company for
+an old friend who dines with us to-day.  But, stay, Lucy, your hair is
+ill-arranged.  Do not let me disturb so important an occupation as your
+toilette; dress yourself, my love, and join us."
+
+Lucy turned, with a suppressed sigh, to the glass.  The uncle lingered
+for a few moments, surveying her with mingled pride and doubt; he then
+slowly left the chamber.
+
+Lucy soon afterwards descended to the drawing-room, and beheld with a
+little surprise (for she had not had sufficient curiosity to inquire the
+name of the guest), the slender form and comely features of Lord
+Mauleverer.  The earl approached with the same grace which had in his
+earlier youth rendered him almost irresistible, but which now, from the
+contrast of years with manner, contained a slight mixture of the comic.
+He paid his compliments, and in paying them declared that he must leave
+it to his friend, Sir William, to explain all the danger he had dared,
+for the sake of satisfying himself that Miss Brandon was no less lovely
+than when he had last beheld her.
+
+"Yes, indeed," said Brandon, with a scarcely perceptible sneer, "Lord
+Mauleverer has literally endured the moving accidents of flood and
+field,--for he was nearly exterminated by a highwayman, and all but
+drowned in a ditch!"
+
+"Commend me to a friend for setting one off to the best advantage," said
+Mauleverer, gayly.  "Instead of attracting your sympathy, you see,
+Brandon would expose me to your ridicule; judge for yourself whether I
+deserve it!" and Mauleverer proceeded to give, with all the animation
+which belonged to his character, the particulars of that adventure with
+which the reader is so well acquainted.  He did not, we may be sure, feel
+any scruple in representing himself and his prowess in the most
+favourable colours.
+
+The story was scarcely ended when dinner was announced.  During that meal
+Mauleverer exerted himself to be amiable with infinite address.  Suiting
+his conversation, more than he had hitherto deigned to do, to the temper
+of Lucy, and more anxious to soften than to dazzle, he certainly never
+before appeared to her so attractive.  We are bound to add that the point
+of attraction did not reach beyond the confession that he was a very
+agreeable old man.
+
+Perhaps, if there had not been a certain half-melancholy vein in his
+conversation, possibly less uncongenial to his lordship from the
+remembrance of his lost diamonds, and the impression that Sir William
+Brandon's cook was considerably worse than his own, he might not have
+been so successful in pleasing Lucy.  As for himself, all the previous
+impressions she had made on him returned in colours yet more vivid; even
+the delicate and subdued cast of beauty which had succeeded to her
+earlier brilliancy, was far more charming to his fastidious and courtly
+taste than her former glow of spirits and health.  He felt himself very
+much in love during dinner; and after it was over, and Lucy had retired,
+he told Brandon, with a passionate air, that he adored his niece to
+distraction!
+
+The wily judge affected to receive the intimation with indifference; but
+knowing that too long an absence is injurious to a grande passion, he did
+not keep Mauleverer very late over his wine.
+
+The earl returned rapturously to the drawing-room, and besought Lucy, in
+a voice in which affectation seemed swooning with delight, to indulge him
+with a song.  More and more enchanted by her assent, he drew the music-
+stool to the harpsichord, placed a chair beside her, and presently
+appeared lost in transport.  Meanwhile Brandon, with his back to the
+pair, covered his face with his handkerchief, and to all appearance
+yielded to the voluptuousness of an after-dinner repose.
+
+Lucy's song-book opened accidentally at a song which had been praised by
+Clifford; and as she sang, her voice took a richer and more tender tone
+than in Mauleverer's presence it had ever before assumed.
+
+       THE COMPLAINT OF THE VIOLETS WHICH LOSE THEIR SCENT IN MAY.
+
+          In the shadow that falls from the silent hill
+          We slept, in our green retreats
+          And the April showers were wont to fill
+          Our hearts with sweets.
+
+          And though we lay in a lowly bower,
+          Yet all things loved us well,
+          And the waking bee left her fairest flower,
+          With us to dwell.
+
+          But the warm May came in his pride to woo
+          The wealth of our honeyed store;
+          And our hearts just felt his breath, and knew
+          Their sweets no more!
+
+          And the summer reigns on the quiet spot
+          Where we dwell, and its suns and showers
+          Bring balm to our sisters' hearts, but not--
+          Ah! not to ours.
+
+
+          We live, we bloom, but forever o'er
+          Is the charm of the earth and sky;
+          To our life, ye heavens, that balm restore,
+          Or--bid us die!
+
+As with eyes suffused with many recollections, and a voice which melted
+away in an indescribable and thrilling pathos, Lucy ceased her song,
+Mauleverer, charmed out of himself, gently took her hand, and holding the
+soft treasure in his own, scarcely less soft, he murmured,--
+
+"Angel, sing on!  Life would be like your own music, if I could breathe
+it away at your feet!"
+
+There had been a time when Lucy would have laughed outright at this
+declaration; and even as it was, a suppressed and half-arch smile played
+in the dimples of her beautiful mouth, and bewitchingly contrasted the
+swimming softness of her eyes.
+
+Drawing rather an erroneous omen from the smile, Mauleverer rapturously
+continued, still detaining the hand which Lucy endeavoured to
+extricate,--
+
+"Yes, enchanting Miss Brandon!  I, who have for so many years boasted of
+my invulnerable heart, am subdued at last.  I have long, very long,
+struggled against my attachment to you.  Alas! it is in vain; and you
+behold me now utterly at your mercy.  Make me the most miserable of men
+or the most enviable.  Enchantress, speak!"
+
+"Really, my lord," said Lucy, hesitating, yet rising, and freeing herself
+from his hand, "I feel it difficult to suppose you serious; and perhaps
+this is merely a gallantry to me by way of practice on others."
+
+"Sweet Lucy, if I may so call you," answered Mauleverer, with an ardent
+gaze, "do not, I implore you, even for a moment, affect to mistake me!
+Do not for a moment jest at what, to me, is the bane or bliss of life!
+Dare I hope that my hand and heart, which I now offer you, are not
+deserving of your derision?"
+
+Lucy gazed on her adorer with a look of serious inquiry; Brandon still
+appeared to sleep.
+
+"If you are in earnest, my lord," said Lucy, after a pause, "I am truly
+and deeply sorry.  For the friend of my uncle I shall always have esteem;
+believe that I am truly sensible of the honour you render me, when I add
+my regret that I can have no other sentiment than esteem."
+
+A blank and puzzled bewilderment for a moment clouded the expressive
+features of Mauleverer; it passed away.  "How sweet is your rebuke!" said
+he.  "Yes; I do not yet deserve any other sentiment than esteem.  You are
+not to be won precipitately; a long trial, a long course of attentions,
+a long knowledge of my devoted and ardent love, alone will entitle me to
+hope for a warmer feeling in your breast.  Fix then your own time of
+courtship, angelic Lucy!---a week, nay, a month!  Till then, I will not
+even press you to appoint that day which to me will be the whitest of my
+life!"
+
+"My lord!" said Lucy, smiling now no longer half archly, "you must pardon
+me for believing your proposal can be nothing but a jest; but here, I
+beseech you, let it rest forever.  Do not mention this subject to me
+again."
+
+"By heavens!"  cried  Mauleverer,  "this  is  too cruel.  Brandon,
+intercede with me for your niece."
+
+Sir William started, naturally enough, from his slumber, and Mauleverer
+continued,
+
+"Yes, intercede for me; you, my oldest friend, be my greatest benefactor!
+I sue to your niece; she affects to disbelieve.  Will you convince her of
+my truth, my devotion, my worship?"
+
+"Disbelieve you!" said the bland judge, with the same secret sneer that
+usually lurked in the corners of his mouth.  "I do not wonder that she is
+slow to credit the honour you have done her, and for which the noblest
+damsels in England have sighed in vain.  Lucy, will you be cruel to Lord
+Mauleverer?  Believe me, he has often confided to me his love for you;
+and if the experience of some years avails, there is not a question of
+his honour and his truth.  I leave his fate in your hands."
+
+Brandon turned to the door.
+
+"Stay, dear sir," said Lucy, "and instead of interceding for Lord
+Mauleverer, intercede for me."  Her look now settled into a calm and
+decided seriousness of expression.  "I feel highly flattered by his
+lordship's proposal, which, as you say, I might well doubt to be gravely
+meant.  I wish him all happiness with a lady of higher deserts; but I
+speak from an unalterable determination, when I say that I can never
+accept the dignity with which he would invest me."
+
+So saying, Lucy walked quickly to the door and vanished, leaving the two
+friends to comment as they would upon her conduct.
+
+"You have spoiled all with your precipitation," said the uncle.
+
+"Precipitation! d---n it, what would you have?  I have been fifty years
+making up my mind to marry; and now when I have not a day to lose, you
+talk of precipitation!" answered the lover, throwing himself into an
+easy-chair.
+
+"But you have not been fifty years making up your mind to marry my
+niece," said Brandon, dryly.
+
+"To be refused, positively refused, by a country girl!" continued
+Mauleverer, soliloquizing aloud; "and that too at my age and with all my
+experience!--a country girl without rank, _ton_, accomplishments!  By
+heavens!  I don't care if all the world heard it,--for not a soul in the
+world will ever believe it."
+
+Brandon sat speechless, eying the mortified face of the courtier with a
+malicious complacency, and there was a pause of several minutes.  Sir
+William then, mastering the strange feeling which made him always rejoice
+in whatever threw ridicule on his friend, approached, laid his hand
+kindly on Mauleverer's shoulder, and talked to him of comfort and of
+encouragement.  The reader will believe that Mauleverer was not a man
+whom it was impossible to encourage.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+
+     Before he came, everything loved me, and I had more things to love
+     than I could reckon by the hairs of my head.  Now I feel I can love
+     but one, and that one has deserted me.  .  .  .  Well, be it so,--
+     let her perish, let her be anything but mine!--Melmoth.
+
+Early the next morning Sir William Brandon was closeted for a long time
+with his niece, previous to his departure to the duties of his office.
+Anxious and alarmed for the success of one of the darling projects of his
+ambition, he spared no art in his conversation with Lucy, that his great
+ingenuity of eloquence and wonderful insight into human nature could
+suggest, in order to gain at least a foundation for the raising of his
+scheme.  Among other resources of his worldly tact, he hinted at Lucy's
+love for Clifford; and (though darkly and subtly, as befitting the purity
+of the one he addressed) this abandoned and wily person did not scruple
+to hint also at the possibility of indulging that love _after_ marriage;
+though he denounced, as the last of indecorums, the crime of encouraging
+it _before_.  This hint, however, fell harmless upon the innocent ear of
+Lucy.  She did not in the remotest degree comprehend its meaning; she
+only, with a glowing cheek and a pouting lip, resented the allusion to a
+love which she thought it insolent in any one even to suspect.
+
+When Brandon left the apartment, his brow was clouded, and his eye
+absent and thoughtful: it was evident that there had been little in the
+conference with his niece to please or content him.  Miss Brandon herself
+was greatly agitated; for there was in her uncle's nature that silent and
+impressive secret of influencing or commanding others which almost so
+invariably and yet so quietly attains the wishes of its owner; and Lucy,
+who loved and admired him sincerely,--not the less, perhaps, for a
+certain modicum of fear,--was greatly grieved at perceiving how rooted in
+him was the desire of that marriage which she felt was a moral
+impossibility.  But if Brandon possessed the secret of sway, Lucy was
+scarcely less singularly endowed with the secret of resistance.  It may
+be remembered, in describing her character, that we spoke of her as one
+who seemed, to the superficial, as of too yielding and soft a temper.
+But circumstances gave the lie to manner, and proved that she eminently
+possessed a quiet firmness and latent resolution, which gave to her mind
+a nobleness and trustworthy power that never would have been suspected by
+those who met her among the ordinary paths of life.
+
+Brandon had not been long gone, when Lucy's maid came to inform her that
+a gentleman, who expressed himself very desirous of seeing her, waited
+below.  The blood rushed from Lucy's cheek at this announcement, simple
+as it seemed.  "What gentleman could be desirous of seeing her?  Was it--
+was it Clifford?"  She remained for some moments motionless, and
+literally unable to move; at length she summoned courage, and smiling
+with self-contempt at a notion which appeared to her after thoughts
+utterly absurd, she descended to the drawing-room.  The first glance she
+directed towards the stranger, who stood by the fireplace with folded
+arms, was sufficient,--it was impossible to mistake, though the face was
+averted, the unequalled form of her lover.  She advanced eagerly with a
+faint cry, checked herself, and sank upon the sofa.
+
+Clifford turned towards her, and fixed his eyes upon her countenance with
+an intense and melancholy gaze, but he did not utter a syllable; and
+Lucy, after pausing in expectation of his voice, looked up, and caught,
+in alarm, the strange and peculiar aspect of his features.  He approached
+her slowly, and still silent; but his gaze seemed to grow more earliest
+and mournful as he advanced.
+
+"Yes," said he at last, in a broken and indistinct voice, "I see you once
+more, after all my promises to quit you forever,--after, my solemn
+farewell, after all that I have cost you; for, Lucy, you love me, you
+love me, and I shudder while I feel it; after all I myself have borne and
+resisted, I once more come wilfully into your presence!  How have I
+burned and sickened for this moment!  How have I said, 'Let me behold her
+once more, only once more, and Fate may then do her worst!'  Lucy! dear,
+dear Lucy!  forgive me for my weakness.  It is now in bitter and stern
+reality the very last I can be guilty of!"
+
+As he spoke, Clifford sank beside her.  He took both her hands in his,
+and holding them, though without pressure, again looked passionately upon
+her innocent yet eloquent face.  It seemed as if he were moved beyond all
+the ordinary feelings of reunion and of love.  He did not attempt to kiss
+the hands he held; and though the touch thrilled through every vein and
+fibre of his frame, his clasp was as light as that in which the first
+timidity of a boy's love ventures to stamp itself!
+
+"You are pale, Lucy," said he, mournfully, "and your cheek is much
+thinner than it was when I first saw you.  When I first saw you!  Ah!
+would for your sake that that had never been!  Your spirits were light
+then, Lucy; your laugh came from the heart, your step spurned the earth.
+Joy broke from your eyes, everything that breathed around you seemed full
+of happiness and mirth; and now, look upon me, Lucy! lift those soft
+eyes, and teach them to flash upon me indignation and contempt!  Oh, not
+thus, not thus!  I could leave you happy,--yes, literally blessed,--if I
+could fancy you less forgiving, less gentle, less angelic!"
+
+"What have I to forgive?" said Lucy, tenderly.
+
+"What! everything for which one human being can pardon another.  Have not
+deceit and injury been my crimes against you?  Your peace of mind, your
+serenity of heart, your buoyancy of temper,--have I marred these or not?"
+
+"Oh, Clifford!" said Lucy, rising from herself and from all selfish
+thoughts, "why, why will you not trust me?  You do not know me, indeed
+you do not,--you are ignorant even of the very nature of a woman, if you
+think me unworthy of your confidence!  Do you believe I could betray it,
+or do you think that if you had done that for which all the world forsook
+you, I could forsake?"
+
+Lucy's voice faltered at the last words; but it sank, as a stone sinks
+into deep waters, to the very core of Clifford's heart.  Transported from
+all resolution and all forbearance, he wound his arms around her in one
+long and impassioned caress; and Lucy, as her breath mingled with his,
+and her cheek drooped upon his bosom, did indeed feel as if the past
+could contain no secret powerful enough even to weaken the affection with
+which her heart clung to his.  She was the first to extricate herself
+from their embrace.  She drew back her face from his, and smiling on him
+through her tears, with a brightness that the smiles of her earliest
+youth had never surpassed, she said,--
+
+"Listen to me.  Tell me your history or not, as you will.  But believe
+me, a woman's wit is often no despicable counsellor.  They who accuse
+themselves the most bitterly are not often those whom it is most
+difficult to forgive; and you must pardon me if I doubt the extent of the
+blame you would so lavishly impute to yourself.  I am now alone in the
+world" (here the smile withered from Lucy's lips).  "My poor father is
+dead.  I can injure no one by my conduct; there is no one on earth to
+whom I am bound by duty.  I am independent, I am rich.  You profess to
+love me.  I am foolish and vain, and I believe you.  Perhaps, also, I
+have the fond hope which so often makes dupes of women,--the hope that if
+you have erred, I may reclaim you; if you have been unfortunate, I may
+console you!  I know, Mr. Clifford, that I am saying that for which many
+would despise me, and for which, perhaps, I ought to despise myself; but
+there are times when we speak only as if some power at our hearts
+constrained us, despite ourselves,--and it is thus that I have now spoken
+to you."
+
+It was with an air very unwonted to herself that Lucy had concluded her
+address, for her usual characteristic was rather softness than dignity;
+but, as if to correct the meaning of her words, which might otherwise
+appear unmaidenly, there was a chaste, a proud, yet not the less a tender
+and sweet propriety and dignified frankness in her look and manner; so
+that it would have been utterly impossible for one who heard her not to
+have done justice to the nobleness of her motives, or not to have felt
+both touched and penetrated, as much by respect as by any warmer or more
+familiar feeling.
+
+Clifford, who had risen while she was speaking, listened with a
+countenance that varied at every word she uttered,--now all hope, now all
+despondency.  As she ceased, the expression hardened into a settled and
+compulsive resolution.
+
+"It is well!" said he, mutteringly.  "I am worthy of this,--very, very
+worthy!  Generous, noble girl! had I been an emperor, I would have bowed
+down to you in worship; but to debase, to degrade you,--no! no!"
+
+"Is there debasement in love?" murmured Lucy.
+
+Clifford gazed upon her with a sort of enthusiastic and self-gratulatory
+pride; perhaps he felt to be thus loved and by such a creature was matter
+of pride, even in the lowest circumstances to which he could ever be
+exposed.  He drew his breath hard, set his teeth, and answered,--
+
+"You could love, then, an outcast, without birth, fortune, or character?
+No! you believe this now, but you could not.
+
+"Could you desert your country, your friends, and your home,--all that you
+are born and fitted for?  Could you attend one over whom the sword hangs,
+through a life subjected every hour to discovery and disgrace?  Could you
+be subjected yourself to the moodiness of an evil memory and the gloomy
+silence of remorse?  Could you be the victim of one who has no merit but
+his love for you, and who, if that love destroy you, becomes utterly
+redeemed?  Yes, Lucy, I was wrong--I will do you justice; all this, nay,
+more, you could bear, and your generous nature would disdain the
+sacrifice.  But am I to be all selfish, and you all devoted?  Are you to
+yield everything to me, and I to accept everything and yield none?  Alas!
+I have but one good, one blessing to yield, and that is yourself.  Lucy,
+I deserve you; I outdo you in generosity.  All that you would desert for
+me is nothing--O God!--nothing to the sacrifice I make to you!  And now,
+Lucy, I have seen you, and I must once more bid you farewell; I am on the
+eve of quitting this country forever.  I shall enlist in a foreign
+service.  Perhaps" (and Clifford's dark eyes flashed with fire) "you will
+yet hear of me, and not blush when you hear!  But" (and his voice
+faltered, for Lucy, hiding her face with both hands, gave way to her
+tears and agitation),--"but, in one respect, you have conquered.  I had
+believed that you could never be mine,--that my past life had forever
+deprived me of that hope!  I now begin, with a rapture that can bear me
+through all ordeals, to form a more daring vision.  A soil maybe
+effaced,--an evil name maybe redeemed,--the past is not set and sealed,
+without the power of revoking what has been written.  If I can win the
+right of meriting your mercy, I will throw myself on it without reserve;
+till then, or till death, you will see me no more!"
+
+He dropped on his knee, left his kiss and his tears upon Lucy's cold
+hand; the next moment she heard his step on the stairs, the door closed
+heavily and jarringly upon him, and Lucy felt one bitter pang, and, for
+some time at least, she felt no more!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+               Many things fall between the cup and the lip!
+                                 Your man does please me
+               With his conceit.
+                  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
+               Comes Chanon Hugh accoutred as you see
+               Disguised!
+               And thus am I to gull the constable?
+               Now have among you for a man at arms.
+                  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
+               High-constable was more, though
+               He laid Dick Tator by the heels.
+                                   BEN JONSON--Tale of a Tub.
+
+Meanwhile Clifford strode rapidly through the streets which surrounded
+the judge's house, and turning to an obscurer quartier of the town,
+entered a gloomy lane or alley.  Here he was abruptly accosted by a man
+wrapped in a shaggy great-coat, of somewhat a suspicious appearance.
+
+"Aha, Captain!" said he, "you are beyond your time, but all 's well!"
+
+Attempting, with indifferent success, the easy self-possession which
+generally marked his address to his companions, Clifford, repeating the
+stranger's words, replied,--
+
+"All's well!  What! are the prisoners released?"
+
+"No, faith!" answered the man, with a rough laugh, "not yet; but all in
+good time.  It is a little too much to expect the justices to do our
+work, though, by the Lord Harry, we often do theirs!"
+
+"What then?" asked Clifford, impatiently.
+
+"Why, the poor fellows had been carried to the town of -----, and brought
+before the queer cuffin (Magistrate) ere I arrived, though I set off the
+moment you told me, and did the journey in four hours.  The examination
+lasted all yesterday, and they were remanded till to-day,--let's see, it
+is not yet noon; we may be there before it's over."
+
+"And this is what you call well!" said Clifford, angrily.  "No, Captain,
+don't be glimflashy!  You have not heard all yet!  It seems that the only
+thing buffed hard against them was by a stout grazier, who was cried
+'Stand!' to, some fifty miles off the town; so the queer coffin thinks of
+sending the poor fellows to the jail of the county where they did the
+business!"
+
+"Ah! that may leave some hopes for them!  We must look sharp to their
+journey; if they once get to prison, their only chances are the file and
+the bribe.  Unhappily, neither of them is so lucky as myself at that
+trade!"
+
+"No, indeed, there is not a stone-wall in England that the great Captain
+Lovett could not creep through, I'll swear!" said the admiring satellite.
+
+"Saddle the horses and load the pistols!  I will join you in ten minutes.
+Have my farmer's dress ready, the false hair, etc.  Choose your own trim.
+Make haste; the Three Feathers is the house of meeting."
+
+"And in ten minutes only, Captain?"
+
+"Punctually!"
+
+The stranger turned a corner and was out of sight.  Clifford, muttering,
+"Yes, I was the cause of their apprehension; it was I who was sought; it
+is but fair that I should strike a blow for their escape before I attempt
+my own," continued his course till he came to the door of a public-house.
+The sign of a seaman swung aloft, portraying the jolly tar with a fine
+pewter pot in his hand, considerably huger than his own circumference.
+An immense pug sat at the door, lolling its tongue out, as if, having
+stuffed itself to the tongue, it was forced to turn that useful member
+out of its proper place.  The shutters were half closed, but the sounds
+of coarse merriment issued jovially forth.
+
+Clifford disconcerted the pug; and crossing the threshold, cried in aloud
+tone, "Janseen!"
+
+"Here!" answered a gruff voice; and Clifford, passing on, came to a small
+parlour adjoining the tap.  There, seated by a round oak table, he found
+mine host,--a red, fierce, weather-beaten, but bloated-looking personage,
+like Dick Hatteraick in a dropsy.
+
+"How now, Captain!" cried he, in a gutteral accent, and interlarding his
+discourse with certain Dutch graces, which with our reader's leave we
+will omit, as being unable to spell them; "how now!--not gone yet!"
+
+"No!  I start for the coast to-morrow; business keeps me to-day.  I came
+to ask if Mellon may be fully depended on?"
+
+"Ay, honest to the back-bone."
+
+"And you are sure that in spite of my late delays he will not have left
+the village?"
+
+"Sure!  What else can I be?  Don't I know Jack Mellon these twenty years!
+He would lie like a log in a calm for ten months together, without moving
+a hair's-breadth, if he was under orders."
+
+"And his vessel is swift and well manned, in case of an officer's chase?"
+
+"The 'Black Molly' swift?  Ask your grandmother.  The 'Black Molly' would
+outstrip a shark."
+
+"Then good-by, Janseen; there is something to keep your pipe alight.  We
+shall not meet within the three seas again, I think.  England is as much
+too hot for me as Holland for you!"
+
+"You are a capital fellow!" cried mine host, shaking Clifford by the
+hand; "and when the lads come to know their loss, they will know they
+have lost the bravest and truest gill that ever took to the toby; so
+good-by, and be d---d to you!"
+
+With this valedictory benediction mine host released Clifford; and the
+robber hastened to his appointment at the Three Feathers.
+
+He found all prepared.  He hastily put on his disguise; and his follower
+led out his horse,--a noble animal of the grand Irish breed, of
+remarkable strength and bone, and save only that it was somewhat sharp in
+the quarters (a fault which they who look for speed as well as grace will
+easily forgive), of most unequalled beauty in its symmetry and
+proportions.
+
+Well did the courser know, and proudly did it render obeisance to, its
+master; snorting impatiently and rearing from the hand of the attendant
+robber, the sagacious animal freed itself of the rein, and as it tossed
+its long mane in the breeze of the fresh air, came trotting to the place
+where Clifford stood.
+
+"So ho, Robin! so ho!  What, thou chafest that I have left thy fellow
+behind at the Red Cave!  Him we may never see more.  But while I have
+life, I will not leave thee, Robin!"  With these words the robber fondly
+stroked the shining neck of his favourite steed; and as the animal
+returned the caress by rubbing its head against the hands and the
+athletic breast of its master, Clifford felt at his heart somewhat of
+that old racy stir of the blood which had been once to him the chief
+charm of his criminal profession, and which in the late change of his
+feelings he had almost forgotten.
+
+"Well, Robin, well," he renewed, as he kissed the face of his steed,--
+"well, we will have some days like our old ones yet; thou shalt say, Ha!
+ha! to the trumpet, and bear thy master along on more glorious
+enterprises than he has yet thanked thee for sharing.  Thou wilt now be
+my only familiar, my only friend, Robin; we two shall be strangers in a
+foreign land.  But thou wilt make thyself welcome easier than thy lord,
+Robin; and thou wilt forget the old days and thine old comrades and thine
+old loves, when--Ha!" and Clifford turned abruptly to his attendant, who
+addressed him; "It is late, you say.  True!  Look you, it will be unwise
+for us both to quit London together.  You know the sixth milestone; join
+me there, and we can proceed in company!"
+
+Not unwilling to linger for a parting cup, the comrade assented to the
+prudence of the plan proposed; and after one or two additional words of
+caution and advice, Clifford mounted and rode from the yard of the inn.
+As he passed through the tall wooden gates into the street, the imperfect
+gleam of the wintry sun falling over himself and his steed, it was
+scarcely possible, even in spite of his disguise and rude garb, to
+conceive a more gallant and striking specimen of the lawless and daring
+tribe to which he belonged; the height, strength, beauty, and exquisite
+grooming visible in the steed; the sparkling eye, the bold profile, the
+sinewy chest, the graceful limbs, and the careless and practised
+horsemanship of the rider.
+
+Looking after his chief with a long and an admiring gaze, the robber said
+to the hostler of the inn, an aged and withered man, who had seen nine
+generations of highwaymen rise and vanish,--
+
+"There, Joe, when did you ever look on a hero like that?  The bravest
+heart, the frankest hand, the best judge of a horse, and the handsomest
+man that ever did honour to Hounslow!"
+
+"For all that," returned the hostler, shaking his palsied head, and
+turning back to the tap-room,--"for all that, master, his time be up.
+Mark my whids, Captain Lovett will not be over the year,--no, nor mayhap
+the month!"
+
+"Why, you old rascal, what makes you so wise?  You will not peach, I
+suppose!"
+
+"I peach!  Devil a bit!  But there never was the gemman of the road,
+great or small, knowing or stupid, as outlived his seventh year.  And
+this will be the captain's seventh, come the 21st of next month; but he
+be a fine chap, and I'll go to his hanging!"
+
+"Fish!" said the robber, peevishly,--he himself was verging towards the
+end of his sixth year,--"pish!"
+
+"Mind, I tells it you, master; and somehow or other I thinks--and I has
+experience in these things--by the fey, of his eye and the drop of his
+lip, that the captain's time will be up to-day!"
+
+     [Fey--A word difficult to translate; but the closest interpretation
+     of which is, perhaps, "the ill omen."]
+
+Here the robber lost all patience, and pushing the hoary boder of evil
+against the wall, he turned on his heel, and sought some more agreeable
+companion to share his stirrup-cup.
+
+It was in the morning of the day following that in which the above
+conversations occurred, that the sagacious Augustus Tomlinson and the
+valorous Edward Pepper, handcuffed and fettered, were jogging along the
+road in a postchaise, with Mr. Nabbem squeezed in by the side of the
+former, and two other gentlemen in Mr. Nabbem's confidence mounted on the
+box of the chaise, and interfering sadly, as Long Ned growlingly
+remarked, with "the beauty of the prospect."
+
+"Ah, well!" quoth Nabbem, unavoidably thrusting his elbow into
+Tomlinson's side, while he drew out his snuffbox, and helped himself
+largely to the intoxicating dust; "you had best prepare yourself, Mr.
+Pepper, for a change of prospects.  I believes as how there is little to
+please you in _guod_ [prison]."
+
+"Nothing makes men so facetious as misfortune to others!" said Augustus,
+moralizing, and turning himself, as well as he was able, in order to
+deliver his body from the pointed elbow of Mr. Nabbem.  "When a man is
+down in the world, all the bystanders, very dull fellows before, suddenly
+become wits!"
+
+"You reflects on I," said Mr. Nabbem.  "Well, it does not sinnify a pin;
+for directly we does our duty, you chaps become howdaciously ungrateful!"
+
+"Ungrateful!" said Pepper; "what a plague have we got to be grateful for?
+I suppose you think we ought to tell you you are the best friend we have,
+because you have scrouged us, neck and crop, into this horrible hole,
+like turkeys fatted for Christmas.  'Sdeath! one's hair is flatted down
+like a pancake; and as for one's legs, you had better cut them off at
+once than tuck them up in a place a foot square,--to say nothing of these
+blackguardly irons!"
+
+"The only irons pardonable in your eyes, Ned," said Tomlinson, "are the
+curling-irons, eh?"
+
+"Now, if this is not too much!" cried Nabbem, crossly; "you objects to go
+in a cart like the rest of your profession; and when I puts myself out of
+the way to obleedgie you with a shay, you slangs I for it!"
+
+"Peace, good Nabbem!" said Augustus, with a sage's dignity; "you must
+allow a little bad humour in men so unhappily situated as we are."
+
+The soft answer turneth away wrath.  Tomlinson's answer softened Nabbem;
+and by way of conciliation, he held his snuff-box to the nose of his
+unfortunate prisoner.  Shutting his eyes, Tomlinson long and earnestly
+sniffed up the luxury, and as soon as, with his own kerchief of spotted
+yellow, the officer had wiped from the proboscis some lingering grains,
+Tomlinson thus spoke:
+
+"You see us now, Mr. Nabbem, in a state of broken-down opposition; but
+our spirits are not broken too.  In our time we have had something to do
+with the administration; and our comfort at present is the comfort of
+fallen ministers!"
+
+"Oho! you were in the Methodist line before you took to the road?" said
+Nabbem.
+
+"Not so!" answered Augustus, gravely.  "We were the Methodists of
+politics, not of the church; namely, we lived upon our flock without a
+legal authority to do so, and that which the law withheld from us our
+wits gave.  But tell me, Mr. Nabbem, are you addicted to politics?"
+
+"Why, they says I be," said Mr. Nabbem, with a grin; "and for my part, I
+thinks all who sarves the king should stand up for him, and take care of
+their little families!"
+
+"You speak what others think!" answered Tomlinson, smiling also.  "And I
+will now, since you like politics, point out to you what I dare say you
+have not observed before."
+
+"What be that?" said Nabbem.
+
+"A wonderful likeness between the life of the gentlemen adorning his
+Majesty's senate and the life of the gentlemen whom you are conducting to
+his Majesty's jail."
+
+
+              THE LIBELLOUS PARALLEL OF AUGUSTUS TOMLINSON.
+
+     "We enter our career, Mr. Nabbem, as your embryo ministers enter
+     parliament,--by bribery and corruption.  There is this difference,
+     indeed, between the two cases: we are enticed to enter by the
+     bribery and corruptions of others; they enter spontaneously by dint
+     of their own.  At first, deluded by romantic visions, we like the
+     glory of our career better than the profit, and in our youthful
+     generosity we profess to attack the rich solely from consideration
+     for the poor!  By and by, as we grow more hardened, we laugh at
+     these boyish dreams,--peasant or prince fares equally at our
+     impartial hands; we grasp at the bucket, but we scorn not the
+     thimbleful; we use the word 'glory' only as a trap for proselytes
+     and apprentices; our fingers, like an office-door, are open for all
+     that can possibly come into them; we consider the wealthy as our
+     salary, the poor as our perquisites.  What is this, but a picture of
+     your member of parliament ripening into a minister, your patriot
+     mellowing into your placeman?  And mark me, Mr. Nabbem! is not the
+     very language of both as similar as the deeds?  What is the phrase
+     either of us loves to employ?  'To deliver.'  What?  'The Public.'
+     And do not both invariably deliver it of the same thing,--namely,
+     its purse?  Do we want an excuse for sharing the gold of our
+     neighbours, or abusing them if they resist?  Is not our mutual, our
+     pithiest plea, 'Distress'?  True, your patriot calls it 'distress of
+     the country;' but does he ever, a whit more than we do, mean any
+     distress but his own?  When we are brought low, and our coats are
+     shabby, do we not both shake our heads and talk of 'reform'?  And
+     when, oh! when we are up in the world, do we not both kick 'reform'
+     to the devil?  How often your parliament man 'vacates his seat,'
+     only for the purpose of resuming it with a weightier purse!  How
+     often, dear Ned, have our seats been vacated for the same end!
+     Sometimes, indeed, he really finishes his career by accepting the
+     Hundreds,--it is by 'accepting the hundreds' that ours may be
+     finished too!  [Ned drew a long sigh.]  Note us now, Mr. Nabbem, in
+     the zenith of our prosperity,--we have filled our pockets, we have
+     become great in the mouths of our party.  Our pals admire us, and
+     our blowens adore.  What do we in this short-lived summer?  Save and
+     be thrifty?  Ah, no! we must give our dinners, and make light of our
+     lush.  We sport horses on the race-course, and look big at the
+     multitude we have bubbled.  Is not this your minister come into
+     office?  Does not this remind you of his equipage, his palace, his
+     plate?  In both cases lightly won, lavishly wasted; and the public,
+     whose cash we have fingered, may at least have the pleasure of
+     gaping at the figure we make with it!  This, then, is our harvest of
+     happiness; our foes, our friends, are ready to eat us with envy,--
+     yet what is so little enviable as our station?  Have we not both our
+     common vexations and our mutual disquietudes?  Do we not both bribe
+     [Nabbem shook his head and buttoned his waistcoat] our enemies,
+     cajole our partisans, bully our dependants, and quarrel with our
+     only friends,--namely, ourselves?  Is not the secret question with
+     each, 'It is all confoundedly fine; but how long will it last?'
+     Now, Mr. Nabbem, note me,--reverse the portrait: we are fallen, our
+     career is over,--the road is shut to us, and new plunderers are
+     robbing the carriages that once we robbed.  Is not this the lot of--
+     No, no!  I deceive myself!  Your ministers, your jobmen, for the
+     most part milk the popular cow while there's a drop in the udder.
+     Your chancellor declines on a pension; your minister attenuates on a
+     grant; the feet of your great rogues may be gone from the treasury
+     benches, but they have their little fingers in the treasury.  Their
+     past services are remembered by his Majesty; ours only noted by the
+     Recorder.  They save themselves, for they hang by one another; we go
+     to the devil, for we hang by ourselves.  We have our little day of
+     the public, and all is over; but it is never over with them.  We
+     both hunt the same fox; but we are your fair riders, they are your
+     knowing ones,--we take the leap, and our necks are broken; they
+     sneak through the gates, and keep it up to the last!"
+
+
+As he concluded, Tomlinson's head dropped on his bosom, and it was easy
+to see that painful comparisons, mingled perhaps with secret murmurs at
+the injustice of fortune, were rankling in his breast.  Long Ned sat in
+gloomy silence; and even the hard heart of the severe Mr. Nabbem was
+softened by the affecting parallel to which he had listened.  They had
+proceeded without speaking for two or three miles, when Long Ned, fixing
+his eyes on Tomlinson, exclaimed,--
+
+"Do you know, Tomlinson, I think it was a burning shame in Lovett to
+suffer us to be carried off like muttons, without attempting to rescue us
+by the way!  It is all his fault that we are here; for it was he whom
+Nabbem wanted, not us."
+
+"Very true," said the cunning policeman; "and if I were you, Mr. Pepper,
+hang me if I would not behave like a man of spirit, and show as little
+consarn for him as he shows for you!  Why, Lord now, I doesn't want to
+'tice you; but this I does know, the justices are very anxious to catch
+Lovett; and one who gives him up, and says a word or two about his
+c'racter, so as to make conviction sartain, may himself be sartain of a
+free pardon for all little sprees and so forth!"
+
+"Ah!" said Long Ned, with a sigh, "that is all very well, Mr. Nabbem, but
+I'll go to the crap like a gentleman, and not peach of my comrades; and
+now I think of it, Lovett could scarcely have assisted us.  One man
+alone, even Lovett, clever as he is, could not have forced us out of the
+clutches of you and your myrmidons, Mr. Nabbem!  And when we were once at
+-----, they took excellent care of us.  But tell me now, my dear Nabbem,"
+and Long Ned's voice wheedled itself into something like softness,--"tell
+me, do you think the grazier will buff it home?"
+
+"No doubt of that," said the unmoved Nabbem.  Long Ned's face fell.  "And
+what if he does?" said he; "they can but transport us!"
+
+"Don't desave yourself, Master Pepper!" said Nabbem: "you're too old a
+hand for the herring-pond.  They're resolved to make gallows apples of
+all such numprels [Nonpareils] as you!"
+
+Ned cast a sullen look at the officer.
+
+"A pretty comforter you are!" said he.  "I have been in a post chaise
+with a pleasanter fellow, I'll swear!  You may call me an apple if you
+will, but, I take it, I am not an apple you'd like to see peeled."
+
+With this pugilistic and menacing pun, the lengthy hero relapsed into
+meditative silence.
+
+Our travellers were now entering a road skirted on one side by a common
+of some extent, and on the other by a thick hedgerow, which through its
+breaks gave occasional glimpses of woodland and fallow, interspersed with
+cross-roads and tiny brooklets.
+
+"There goes a jolly fellow!" said Nabbem, pointing to an athletic-looking
+man, riding before the carriage, dressed in a farmer's garb, and mounted
+on a large and powerful horse of the Irish breed.  "I dare say he is well
+acquainted with your grazier, Mr. Tomlinson; he looks mortal like one of
+the same kidney; and here comes another chap" (as the stranger, was
+joined by a short, stout, ruddy man in a carter's frock, riding on a
+horse less showy than his comrade's, but of the lengthy, reedy, lank, yet
+muscular race, which a knowing jockey would like to bet on).  "Now that's
+what I calls a comely lad!" continued Nabbem, pointing to the latter
+horseman; "none of your thin-faced, dark, strapping fellows like that
+Captain Lovett, as the blowens raves about, but a, nice, tight little
+body, with a face like a carrot!  That's a beauty for my money!
+Honesty's stamped on his face, Mr. Tomlinson!  I dare says" (and the
+officer grinned, for he had been a lad of the cross in his own day),--
+"I dare says, poor innocent booby, he knows none of the ways of Lunnun
+town; and if he has not as merry a life as some folks, mayhap he may have
+a longer.  But a merry one forever for such lads as us, Mr. Pepper!  I
+say, has you heard as how Bill Fang went to Scratchland [Scotland] and
+was stretched for smashing queer screens [that is, hung for uttering
+forged notes]?  He died 'nation game; for when his father, who was a
+gray-headed parson, came to see him after the sentence, he says to the
+governor, say he, 'Give us a tip, old 'un, to pay the expenses, and die
+dacently.'  The parson forks him out ten shiners, preaching all the while
+like winkey.  Bob drops one of the guineas between his fingers, and says,
+'Holla, dad, you have only tipped us nine of the yellow boys!  Just now
+you said as how it was ten!'  On this the parish-bull, who was as poor as
+if he had been a mouse of the church instead of the curate, lugs out
+another; and Bob, turning round to the jailer, cries, 'Flung the governor
+out of a guinea, by God!--[Fact]--Now, that's what I calls keeping it up
+to the last!"
+
+Mr. Nabbem had scarcely finished this anecdote, when the farmer-like
+stranger, who had kept up by the side of the chaise, suddenly rode to the
+window, and touching his hat, said in a Norfolk accent,--
+
+"Were the gentlemen we met on the road belonging to your party?  They
+were asking after a chaise and pair."
+
+"No!" said Nabbem, "there be no gentlemen as belongs to our party!"
+So saying, he tipped a knowing wink at the farmer, and glanced over his
+shoulder at the prisoners.
+
+"What! you are going all alone?" said the farmer.
+
+"Ay, to be sure," answered Nabbem; "not much danger, I think, in the
+daytime, with the sun out as big as a sixpence, which is as big as ever I
+see'd him in this country!"
+
+At that moment the shorter stranger, whose appearance had attracted the
+praise of Mr. Nabbem (that personage was himself very short and ruddy),
+and who had hitherto been riding close to the post-horses, and talking to
+the officers on the box, suddenly threw himself from his steed, and in
+the same instant that he arrested the horses of the chaise, struck the
+postilion to the ground with a short heavy bludgeon which he drew from
+his frock.  A whistle was heard and answered, as if by a signal: three
+fellows, armed with bludgeons, leaped from the hedge; and in the interim
+the pretended farmer, dismounting, flung open the door of the chaise, and
+seizing Mr. Nabbem by the collar, swung him to the ground with a celerity
+that became the circular rotundity of the policeman's figure rather than
+the deliberate gravity of his dignified office.
+
+Rapid and instantaneous as had been this work, it was not without a
+check.  Although the policemen had not dreamed of a rescue in the very
+face of the day and on the high-road, their profession was not that which
+suffered them easily to be surprised.  The two guardians of the dicky
+leaped nimbly to the ground; but before they had time to use their
+firearms, two of the new aggressors, who had appeared from the hedge,
+closed upon them, and bore them to the ground.  While this scuffle took
+place, the farmer had disarmed the prostrate Nabbem, and giving him in
+charge to the remaining confederate, extricated Tomlinson and his comrade
+from the chaise.
+
+"Hist!" said he in a whisper, "beware my name; my disguise hides me at
+present.  Lean on me,--only through the hedge; a cart waits there, and
+you are safe!"
+
+With these broken words he assisted the robbers as well as he could, in
+spite of their manacles, through the same part of the hedge from which
+the three allies had sprung.  They were already through the barrier,--
+only the long legs of Ned Pepper lingered behind,--when at the far end of
+the road, which was perfectly straight, a gentleman's carriage became
+visible.  A strong hand from the interior of the hedge, seizing Pepper,
+dragged him through; and Clifford,--for the reader need not be told who
+was the farmer, perceiving the approaching reinforcement, shouted at once
+for flight.  The robber who had guarded Nabbem, and who indeed was no
+other than Old Bags, slow as he habitually was, lost not an instant in
+providing for himself; before you could say "Laudamus," he was on the
+other side of the hedge.  The two men engaged with the police-officers
+were not capable of an equal celerity; but Clifford, throwing himself
+into the contest and engaging the policemen, gave the robbers the
+opportunity of escape.  They scrambled through the fence; the officers,
+tough fellows and keen, clinging lustily to them, till one was felled by
+Clifford, and the other, catching against a stump, was forced to
+relinquish his hold; he then sprang back into the road and prepared for
+Clifford, who now, however, occupied himself rather in fugitive than
+warlike measures.  Meanwhile, the moment the other rescuers had passed
+the Rubicon of the hedge, their flight, and that of the gentlemen who had
+passed before them, commenced.  On this mystic side of the hedge was a
+cross-road, striking at once through an intricate and wooded part of the
+country, which allowed speedy and ample opportunities of dispersion.
+Here a light cart, drawn by two swift horses in a tandem fashion, awaited
+the fugitives.  Long Ned and Augustus were stowed down at the bottom of
+this vehicle; three fellows filed away at their irons, and a fourth, who
+had hitherto remained inglorious with the cart, gave the lash--and he
+gave it handsomely--to the coursers.  Away rattled the equipage; and thus
+was achieved a flight still memorable in the annals of the elect, and
+long quoted as one of the boldest and most daring exploits that illicit
+enterprise ever accomplished.
+
+Clifford and his equestrian comrade only remained in the field, or rather
+the road.  The former sprang at once on his horse; the latter was not
+long in following the example.  But the policeman, who, it has been said,
+baffled in detaining the fugitives of the hedge, had leaped back into the
+road, was not idle in the meanwhile.  When he saw Clifford about to
+mount, instead of attempting to seize the enemy, he recurred to his
+pistol, which in the late struggle hand to hand he had been unable to
+use, and taking sure aim at Clifford, whom he judged at once to be the
+leader of the rescue, he lodged a ball in the right side of the robber at
+the very moment he had set spurs in his horse and turned to fly.
+Clifford's head drooped to the saddle-bow.  Fiercely the horse sprang on.
+The robber endeavoured, despite his reeling senses, to retain his seat;
+once he raised his head, once he nerved his slackened and listless limbs,
+and then, with a faint groan, he fell to the earth.  The horse bounded
+but one step more, and, true to the tutorship it had received, stopped
+abruptly.  Clifford raised himself with great difficulty on one arm; with
+the other hand he drew forth a pistol.  He pointed it deliberately
+towards the officer that wounded him.  The man stood motionless, cowering
+and spellbound, beneath the dilating eye of the robber.  It was but for a
+moment that the man had cause for dread; for muttering between his ground
+teeth, "Why waste it on _an enemy_?" Clifford turned the muzzle towards
+the head of the unconscious steed, which seemed sorrowfully and wistfully
+to incline towards him.  "Thou," he said, "whom I have fed and loved,
+shalt never know hardship from another!" and with a merciful cruelty he
+dragged himself one pace nearer to his beloved steed, uttered a well-
+known word, which brought the docile creature to his side, and placing
+the muzzle of the pistol close to his ear, he fired, and fell back
+senseless at the exertion.  The animal staggered, and dropped down dead.
+
+Meanwhile Clifford's comrade, profiting by the surprise and sudden panic
+of the officer, was already out of reach, and darting across the common,
+he and his ragged courser speedily vanished.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+                                 Lose I not
+          With him what fortune could in life allot?
+          Lose I not hope, life's cordial?
+               . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
+          In fact, the lessons he from prudence took
+          Were written in his mind as in a book;
+          There what to do he read, and what to shun,
+          And all commanded was with promptness done.
+          He seemed without a passion to proceed,
+               . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
+          Yet some believed those passions only slept!
+                                             CRABBE.
+
+          Relics of love, and life's enchanted spring!
+                    A. WATTS: On burning a Packet of Letters.
+
+          Many and sad and deep
+          Were the thoughts folded in thy silent breast!
+          Thou, too, could'st watch and weep!
+                                        MRS. HEMANS.
+
+While Sir William Brandon was pursuing his ambitious schemes, and,
+notwithstanding Lucy's firm and steady refusal of Lord Mauleverer, was
+still determined on that ill-assorted marriage; while Mauleverer himself
+day after day attended at the judge's house, and, though he spoke not of
+love, looked it with all his might,--it became obvious to every one but
+the lover and the guardian, that Lucy herself was rapidly declining in
+appearance and health.  Ever since the day she had last seen Clifford,
+her spirits, before greatly shattered, had refused to regain even a
+likeness to their naturally cheerful and happy tone.  She became silent
+and abstracted; even her gentleness of temper altered at times into a
+moody and fretful humour.  Neither to books nor music, nor any art by
+which time is beguiled, she recurred for a momentary alleviation of the
+bitter feelings at her heart, or for a transient forgetfulness of their
+sting.  The whole world of her mind had been shaken.  Her pride was
+wounded, her love galled; her faith in Clifford gave way at length to
+gloomy and dark suspicion.  Nothing, she now felt, but a name as well as
+fortunes utterly abandoned, could have justified him for the stubbornness
+of heart in which he had fled and deserted her.  Her own self-acquittal
+no longer consoled her in affliction.  She condemned herself for her
+weakness, from the birth of her ill-starred affection to the crisis it
+had now acquired.  "Why did I not wrestle with it at first?" she said
+bitterly.  "Why did I allow myself so easily to love one unknown to me,
+and equivocal in station, despite the cautions of my uncle and the
+whispers of the world?"  Alas! Lucy did not remember that at the time she
+was guilty of this weakness, she had not learned to reason as she since
+reasoned.  Her faculties were but imperfectly awakened; her experience of
+the world was utter ignorance.  She scarcely knew that she loved, and she
+knew not at all that the delicious and excited sentiment which filled her
+being could ever become as productive of evil and peril as it had done
+now; and even had her reason been more developed, and her resolutions
+more strong, does the exertion of reason and resolution always avail
+against the master passion?  Love, it is true, is not unconquerable; but
+how few have ever, mind and soul, coveted the conquest!  Disappointment
+makes a vow, but the heart records it not.  Or in the noble image of one
+who has so tenderly and so truly portrayed the feelings of her own sex,--
+
+                                       "We make
+               A ladder of our thoughts where angels step,
+               But sleep ourselves at the foot!"
+                             [The History of the Lyre, by L. E. L.]
+
+Before Clifford had last seen her, we have observed that Lucy had (and it
+was a consolation) clung to the belief that, despite of appearances and
+his own confession, his past life had not been such as to place him
+without the pale of her just affections; and there were frequent moments
+when, remembering that the death of her father had removed the only being
+who could assert an unanswerable claim to the dictation of her actions,
+she thought that Clifford, hearing her hand was utterly at her own
+disposal, might again appear, and again urge a suit which he felt so few
+circumstances could induce her to deny.  All this half-acknowledged yet
+earnest train of reasoning and hope vanished from the moment he had
+quitted her uncle's house.  His words bore no misinterpretation.  He had
+not yielded even to her own condescension, and her cheek burned as she
+recalled it.  Yet he loved her.  She saw, she knew it in his every word
+and look!  Bitter, then, and dark must be that remorse which could have
+conquered every argument but that which urged him to leave her, when he
+might have claimed her forever.  True, that when his letter formally bade
+her farewell, the same self-accusing language was recurred to, the same
+dark hints and allusions to infamy or guilt; yet never till now had she
+interpreted them rigidly, and never till now had she dreamed how far
+their meaning could extend.  Still, what crimes could he have committed?
+The true ones never occurred to Lucy.  She shuddered to ask herself, and
+hushed her doubts in a gloomy and torpid silence.  But through all her
+accusations against herself, and through all her awakened suspicions
+against Clifford, she could not but acknowledge that something noble and
+not unworthy of her mingled in his conduct, and occasioned his resistance
+to her and to himself; and this belief, perhaps, irritated even while it
+touched her, and kept her feelings in a perpetual struggle and conflict
+which her delicate frame and soft mind were little able to endure.  When
+the nerves once break, how breaks the character with them!  How many
+ascetics, withered and soured, do we meet in the world, who but for one
+shock to the heart and form might have erred on the side of meekness!
+Whether it come from woe or disease, the stroke which mars a single fibre
+plays strange havoc with the mind.  Slaves we are to our muscles, and
+puppets to the spring of the capricious blood; and the great soul, with
+all its capacities, its solemn attributes, and sounding claims, is, while
+on earth, but a jest to this mountebank,--the body,--from the dream which
+toys with it for an hour, to the lunacy which shivers it into a
+driveller, laughing as it plays with its own fragments, and reeling
+benighted and blinded to the grave!
+
+We have before said that Lucy was fond both of her uncle and his society;
+and still, whenever the subject of Lord Mauleverer and his suit was left
+untouched, there was that in the conversation of Sir William Brandon
+which aroused an interest in her mind, engrossed and self-consuming as it
+had become.  Sorrow, indeed, and sorrow's companion, reflection, made her
+more and more capable of comprehending a very subtle and intricate
+character.  There is no secret for discovering the human heart like
+affliction, especially the affliction which springs from passion.  Does a
+writer startle you with his insight into your nature, be sure that he has
+mourned; such lore is the alchemy of tears.  Hence the insensible and
+almost universal confusion of idea which confounds melancholy with depth,
+and finds but hollow inanity in the symbol of a laugh.  Pitiable error!
+Reflection first leads us to gloom, but its next stage is to brightness.
+The Laughing Philosopher had reached the goal of Wisdom; Heraclitus
+whimpered at the starting-post.  But enough for Lucy to gain even the
+vestibule of philosophy.
+
+Notwithstanding the soreness we naturally experience towards all who
+pertinaciously arouse an unpleasant subject, and in spite therefore of
+Brandon's furtherance of Mauleverer's courtship, Lucy felt herself
+inclined strangely, and with something of a daughter's affection, towards
+this enigmatical being; in spite, too, of all the cold and measured vice
+of his character,--the hard and wintry grayness of heart with which he
+regarded the welfare of others, or the substances of Truth, Honour, and
+Virtue,--the callousness of his fossilized affections, which no human
+being softened but for a moment, and no warm and healthful impulse
+struck, save into an evanescent and idle flash;--in spite of this
+consummate obduracy and worldliness of temperament, it is not paradoxical
+to say that there was something in the man which Lucy found at times
+analogous to her own vivid and generous self.  This was, however, only
+noticeable when she led him to talk over earlier days, and when by
+degrees the sarcastic lawyer forgot the present, and grew eloquent, not
+over the actions, but the feelings of the past.  He would speak to her
+for hours of his youthful dreams, his occupations, or his projects, as a
+boy.  Above all, he loved to converse with her upon Warlock, its remains
+of ancient magnificence, the green banks of the placid river that
+enriched its domains, and the summer pomp of wood and heath-land, amidst
+which his noonday visions had been nursed.
+
+When he spoke of these scenes and days, his countenance softened, and
+something in its expression, recalling to Lucy the image of one still
+dearer, made her yearn to him the more.  An ice seemed broken from his
+mind, and streams of released and gentle feelings, mingled with kindly
+and generous sentiment, flowed forth.  Suddenly a thought, a word,
+brought him back to the present,--his features withered abruptly into
+their cold placidity or latent sneer; the seal closed suddenly on the
+broken spell, and, like the victim of a fairy-tale, condemned at a stated
+hour to assume another shape, the very being you had listened to seemed
+vanished, and replaced by one whom you startled to behold.  But there was
+one epoch of his life on which he was always silent, and that was his
+first onset into the actual world,--the period of his early struggle into
+wealth and fame.  All that space of time seemed as a dark gulf, over
+which he had passed, and become changed at once,--as a traveller landing
+in a strange climate may adopt, the moment he touches its shore, its
+costume and its language.
+
+All men--the most modest--have a common failing; but it is one which
+often assumes the domino and mask,--pride!  Brandon was, however, proud
+to a degree very rare in men who have risen and flourished in the world.
+Out of the wrecks of all other feelings this imperial survivor made one
+great palace for its residence, and called the fabric "Disdain."  Scorn
+was the real essence of Brandon's nature; even in the blandest disguises,
+the smoothness of his voice, the insinuation of his smile, the popular
+and supple graces of his manners, an oily derision floated, rarely
+discernible, it is true, but proportioning its strength and quantum to
+the calm it produced.
+
+In the interim, while his character thus displayed and contradicted
+itself in private life, his fame was rapidly rising in public estimation.
+Unlike many of his brethren, the brilliant lawyer had exceeded
+expectation, and shone even yet more conspicuously in the less
+adventitiously aided duties of the judge.  Envy itself--and Brandon's
+political virulence had, despite his personal affability, made him many
+foes--was driven into acknowledging the profundity of his legal
+knowledge, and in admiring the manner in which the peculiar functions of
+his novel dignity were discharged.  No juvenile lawyer browbeat, no
+hackneyed casuist puzzled, him; even his attention never wandered from
+the dullest case subjected to his tribunal.  A painter, desirous of
+stamping on his canvas the portrait of an upright judge, could scarcely
+have found a finer realization for his beau-ideal than the austere,
+collected, keen, yet majestic countenance of Sir William Brandon, such as
+it seemed in the trappings of office and from the seat of justice.
+
+The newspapers were not slow in recording the singular capture of the
+notorious Lovett.  The boldness with which he had planned and executed
+the rescue of his comrades, joined to the suspense in which his wound for
+some time kept the public, as to his escape from one death by the postern
+gate of another, caused a very considerable ferment and excitation in the
+popular mind; and, to feed the impulse, the journalists were little
+slothful in retailing every anecdote, true or false, which they could
+collect touching the past adventures of the daring highwayman.  Many a
+good story then came to light, which partook as much of the comic as the
+tragic,--for not a single one of the robber's adventures was noted for
+cruelty or bloodshed; many of them betokened rather an hilarious and
+jovial spirit of mirthful enterprise.  It seemed as if he had thought the
+highway a capital arena for jokes, and only robbed for the sake of
+venting a redundant affection for jesting.  Persons felt it rather a sin
+to be severe with a man of so merry a disposition; and it was especially
+observable that not one of the ladies who had been despoiled by the
+robber could be prevailed on to prosecute; on the contrary, they always
+talked of the event as one of the most agreeable remembrances in their
+lives, and seemed to bear a provoking gratitude to the comely offender,
+rather than resentment.  All the gentlemen were not, however, of so
+placable a temper; and two sturdy farmers, with a grazier to boot, were
+ready to swear, "through thick and thin," to the identity of the prisoner
+with a horseman who had civilly borne each of them company for an hour in
+their several homeward rides from certain fairs, and had carried the
+pleasure of his society, they very gravely asserted, considerably beyond
+a joke; so that the state of the prisoner's affairs took a very sombre
+aspect, and the counsel--an old hand--intrusted with his cause declared
+confidentially that there was not a chance.  But a yet more weighty
+accusation, because it came from a much nobler quarter, awaited Clifford.
+In the robbers' cavern were found several articles answering exactly to
+the description of those valuables feloniously abstracted from the person
+of Lord Mauleverer.  That nobleman attended to inspect the articles, and
+to view the prisoner.  The former he found himself able to swear to, with
+a very tranquillized conscience; the latter he beheld feverish,
+attenuated, and in a moment of delirium, on the sick-bed to which his
+wound had brought him.  He was at no loss, however, to recognize in the
+imprisoned felon the gay and conquering Clifford, whom he had once even
+honoured with his envy.  Although his former dim and vague suspicions of
+Clifford were thus confirmed, the good-natured peer felt some slight
+compunction at appearing as his prosecutor.  This compunction, however,
+vanished the moment he left the sick man's apartment; and after a little
+patriotic conversation with the magistrates about the necessity of public
+duty,--a theme which brought virtuous tears into the eyes of those
+respectable functionaries,--he re-entered his carriage, returned to town,
+and after a lively dinner _tete-a-tete_ with an old _chere amie_, who, of
+all her charms, had preserved only the attraction of conversation and the
+capacity of relishing a _salami_, Mauleverer, the very evening of his
+return, betook himself to the house of Sir William Brandon.
+
+When he entered the hall, Barlow, the judge's favourite servant, met him,
+with rather a confused and mysterious air, and arresting him as he was
+sauntering into Brandon's library, informed him that Sir William was
+particularly engaged, but would join his lordship in the drawing-room.
+While Barlow was yet speaking, and Mauleverer was bending his right ear
+(with which he heard the best) towards him, the library door opened, and
+a man in a very coarse and ruffianly garb awkwardly bowed himself out.
+
+"So this is the particular engagement," thought Mauleverer,--"a strange
+Sir Pandarus; but those old fellows have droll tastes."
+
+"I may go in now, my good fellow, I suppose?" said his lordship to
+Barlow; and without waiting an answer, he entered the library.  He found
+Brandon alone, and bending earnestly over some letters which strewed his
+table.  Mauleverer carelessly approached, and threw himself into an
+opposite chair.  Sir William lifted his head, as he heard the movement;
+and Mauleverer, reckless as was that personage, was chilled and almost
+awed by the expression of his friend's countenance.  Brandon's face was
+one which, however pliant, nearly always wore one pervading character,--
+calmness; whether in the smoothness of social courtesy, or the austerity
+of his official station, or the bitter sarcasm which escaped him at no
+unfrequent intervals, still a certain hard and inflexible dryness stamped
+both his features and his air.  But at this time a variety of feelings
+not ordinarily eloquent in the outward man struggled in his dark face,
+expressive of all the energy and passion of his powerful and masculine
+nature; there seemed to speak from his features and eyes something of
+shame and anger and triumph and regret and scorn.  All these various
+emotions, which it appears almost a paradox to assert met in the same
+expression, nevertheless were so individually and almost fearfully
+stamped as to convey at once their signification to the mind of
+Mauleverer.  He glanced towards the letters, in which the writing seemed
+faint and discoloured by time or damp; and then once more regarding the
+face of Brandon, said in rather an anxious and subdued tone,--
+
+"Heavens, Brandon! are you ill; or has anything happened?  You alarm me!"
+
+"Do you recognize these locks?" said Brandon, in a hollow voice; and from
+under the letters he drew some ringlets of an auburn hue, and pushed them
+with an averted face towards Mauleverer.
+
+The earl took them up, regarded them for a few moments, changed colour,
+but shook his head with a negative gesture, as he laid them once more on
+the table.
+
+"This handwriting, then?" renewed the judge, in a yet more impressive and
+painful voice; and he pointed to the letters.
+
+Mauleverer raised one of them, and held it between his face and the lamp,
+so that whatever his features might have betrayed was hidden from his
+companion.  At length he dropped the letter with an affected nonchalance,
+and said,--
+
+"Ah, I know the writing even at this distance of time; this letter is
+directed to you!"
+
+"It is; so are all these," said Brandon, with the same voice of
+preternatural and strained composure.  "They have come back to me after
+an absence of nearly twenty-five years; they are the letters she wrote to
+me in the days of our courtship" (here Brandon laughed scornfully),--"she
+carried them away with her, you know when; and (a pretty clod of
+consistency is woman!) she kept them, it seems, to her dying day."
+
+The subject in discussion, whatever it might be, appeared a sore one to
+Mauleverer; he turned uneasily on his chair, and said at length,--
+
+"Well, poor creature! these are painful remembrances, since it turned out
+so unhappily; but it was not our fault, dear Brandon.  We were men of the
+world; we knew the value of--of women, and treated them accordingly!"
+
+"Right! right! right!" cried Brandon, vehemently, laughing in a wild and
+loud disdain, the intense force of which it would be in vain to attempt
+expressing.  "Right! and, faith, my lord, I repine not, nor repent."
+
+"So, so, that's well!" said Mauleverer, still not at his ease, and
+hastening to change the conversation.  "But, my dear Brandon, I have
+strange news for you!  You remember that fellow Clifford, who had the
+insolence to address himself to your adorable niece?  I told you I
+suspected that long friend of his of having made my acquaintance somewhat
+unpleasantly, and I therefore doubted of Clifford himself.  Well, my dear
+friend, this Clifford is--whom do you think?--no other than Mr. Lovett
+of Newgate celebrity!"
+
+"You do not say so!" rejoined Brandon, apathetically, as he slowly
+gathered his papers together and deposited them in a drawer.
+
+"Indeed it is true; and what is more, Brandon, this fellow is one of the
+very identical highwaymen who robbed me on my road from Bath.  No doubt
+he did me the same kind office on my road to Mauleverer Park."
+
+"Possibly," said Brandon, who appeared absorbed in a revery.
+
+"Ay!" answered Mauleverer, piqued at this indifference.  "But do you not
+see the consequences to your niece?"
+
+"My niece!" repeated Brandon, rousing himself.
+
+"Certainly.  I grieve to say it, my dear friend,--but she was young, very
+young, when at Bath.  She suffered this fellow to address her too openly.
+Nay,--for I will be frank,--she was suspected of being in love with him!"
+
+"She was in love with him," said Brandon, dryly, and fixing the malignant
+coldness of his eye upon the suitor.  "And, for aught I know," added he,
+"she is so at this moment."
+
+"You are cruel!" said Mauleverer, disconcerted.  "I trust not, for the
+sake of my continued addresses."
+
+"My dear lord," said Brandon, urbanely taking the courtier's hand, while
+the _anguis in herba_ of his sneer played around his compressed lips,--
+"my dear lord, we are old friends, and need not deceive each other.  You
+wish to marry my niece because she is an heiress of great fortune, and
+you suppose that my wealth will in all probability swell her own.
+Moreover, she is more beautiful than any other young lady of your
+acquaintance, and, polished by your example, may do honour to your taste
+as well as your prudence.  Under these circumstances, you will, I am
+quite sure, look with lenity on her girlish errors, and not love her the
+less because her foolish fancy persuades her that she is in love with
+another."
+
+"Ahem!" said Mauleverer, "you view the matter with more sense than
+sentiment; but look you, Brandon, we must try, for both our sakes, if
+possible, to keep the identity of Lovett with Clifford from being known.
+I do not see why it should be.  No doubt he was on his guard while
+playing the gallant, and committed no atrocity at Bath.  The name of
+Clifford is hitherto perfectly unsullied.  No fraud, no violence are
+attached to the appellation; and if the rogue will but keep his own
+counsel, we may hang him out of the way without the secret transpiring."
+
+"But if I remember right," said Brandon, "the newspapers say that this
+Lovett will be tried some seventy or eighty miles only from Bath, and
+that gives a chance of recognition."
+
+"Ay, but he will be devilishly altered, I imagine; for his wound has
+already been but a bad beautifier to his face.  Moreover, if the dog has
+any delicacy, he will naturally dislike to be known as the gallant of
+that gay city where he shone so successfully, and will disguise himself
+as well as he is able.  I hear wonders of his powers of self-
+transformation."
+
+"But he may commit himself on the point between this and his trial," said
+Brandon.
+
+"I think of ascertaining how far that is likely, by sending my valet down
+to him (you know one treats these gentlemen highwaymen with a certain
+consideration, and hangs them with all due respect to their feelings), to
+hint that it will be doubtless very unpleasant to him, under his 'present
+unfortunate circumstances' (is not that the phrase?), to be known as the
+gentleman who enjoyed so deserved a popularity at Bath, and that, though
+'the laws of my country compel me' to prosecute him, yet, should he
+desire it, he may be certain that I will preserve his secret.  Come,
+Brandon, what say you to that manoeuvre?  It will answer my purpose, and
+make the gentleman--for doubtless he is all sensibility--shed tears at my
+generous forbearance!"
+
+"It is no bad idea," said Brandon.  "I commend you for it.  At all
+events, it is necessary that my niece should not know the situation of
+her lover.  She is a girl of a singular turn of mind, and fortune has
+made her independent.  Who knows but that she might commit some folly or
+another, write petitions to the king, and beg me to present them, or go--
+for she has a world of romance in her--to prison, to console him; or, at
+all events, she would beg my kind offices on his behalf,--a request
+peculiarly awkward, as in all probability I shall have the honour of
+trying him."
+
+"Ay, by the by, so you will.  And I fancy the poor rogue's audacity will
+not cause you to be less severe than you usually are.  They say you
+promise to make more human pendulums than any of your brethren."
+
+"They do say that, do they?" said Brandon.  "Well, I own I have a bile
+against my species; I loathe their folly and their half vices.  'Ridet et
+odit'--["He laughs and hates"]--is my motto; and I allow that it is not
+the philosophy that makes men merciful!"
+
+"Well, Juvenal's wisdom be yours, mine be Horace's!" rejoined Mauleverer,
+as he picked his teeth; "but I am glad you see the absolute necessity of
+keeping this secret from Lucy's suspicion.  She never reads the papers, I
+suppose?  Girls never do!"
+
+"No! and I will take care not to have them thrown in her way; and as, in
+consequence of my poor brother's recent death, she sees nobody but us,
+there is little chance, should Lovett's right to the name of Clifford be
+discovered, that it should reach her ears."
+
+"But those confounded servants?"
+
+"True enough!  But consider that before they know it, the newspapers
+will; so that, should it be needful, we shall have our own time to
+caution them.  I need only say to Lucy's woman, 'A poor gentleman, a
+friend of the late squire, whom your mistress used to dance with, and you
+must have seen,--Captain Clifford,--is to be tried for his life.  It will
+shock her, poor thing!  in her present state of health, to tell her of so
+sad an event to her father's friend; therefore be silent, as you value
+your place and ten guineas,'--and I may be tolerably sure of caution!"
+
+"You ought to be chairman to the Ways and Means Committee!" cried
+Mauleverer.  "My mind is now easy; and when once poor Clifford is gone,--
+fallen from a high estate,--we may break the matter gently to her; and as
+I intend thereon to be very respectful, very delicate, etc., she cannot
+but be sensible of my kindness and real affection!"
+
+"And if a live dog be better than a dead lion," added Brandon, "surely a
+lord in existence will be better than a highwayman hanged!"
+
+"According to ordinary logic," rejoined Mauleverer, "that syllogism is
+clear enough; and though I believe a girl may cling now and then to the
+memory of a departed lover, I do not think she will when the memory is
+allied with shame.  Love is nothing more than vanity pleased; wound the
+vanity, and you destroy the love!  Lucy will be forced, after having made
+so bad a choice of a lover, to make a good one in a husband, in order to
+recover her self-esteem!"
+
+"And therefore you are certain of her!" said Brandon, ironically.
+
+"Thanks to my star,--my garter,--my ancestor, the first baron, and
+myself, the first earl,--I hope I am," said Mauleverer; and the
+conversation turned.  Mauleverer did not stay much longer with the judge;
+and Brandon, left alone, recurred once more to the, perusal of his
+letters.
+
+We scarcely know what sensations it would have occasioned in one who had
+known Brandon only in his later years, could he have read those letters
+referring to so much earlier a date.  There was in the keen and arid
+character of the man so little that recalled any idea of courtship or
+youthful gallantry that a correspondence of that nature would have
+appeared almost as unnatural as the loves of plants, or the amatory
+softenings of a mineral.  The correspondence now before Brandon was
+descriptive of various feelings, but all appertaining to the same class;
+most of them were apparent answers to letters from him.  One while they
+replied tenderly to expressions of tenderness, but intimated a doubt
+whether the writer would be able to constitute his future happiness, and
+atone for certain sacrifices of birth and fortune and ambitious
+prospects, to which she alluded: at other times, a vein of latent
+coquetry seemed to pervade the style,--an indescribable air of coolness
+and reserve contrasted former passages in the correspondence, and was
+calculated to convey to the reader an impression that the feelings of the
+lover were not altogether adequately returned.  Frequently the writer, as
+if Brandon had expressed himself sensible of this conviction, reproached
+him for unjust jealousy and unworthy suspicion.  And the tone of the
+reproach varied in each letter; sometimes it was gay and satirizing; at
+others soft and expostulatory; at others gravely reasoning, and often
+haughtily indignant.  Still, throughout the whole correspondence, on the
+part of the mistress, there was a sufficient stamp of individuality to
+give a shrewd examiner some probable guess at the writer's character.  He
+would have judged her, perhaps, capable of strong and ardent feeling, but
+ordinarily of a light and capricious turn, and seemingly prope to imagine
+and to resent offence.  With these letters were mingled others in
+Brandon's writing,--of how different, of how impassioned a description!
+All that a deep, proud, meditative, exacting character could dream of
+love given, or require of love returned, was poured burningly over the
+pages; yet they were full of reproach, of jealousy, of a nice and
+torturing observation, as calculated to wound as the ardour might be
+fitted to charm; and often the bitter tendency to disdain that
+distinguished his temperament broke through the fondest enthusiasm of
+courtship or the softest outpourings of love.
+
+     "You saw me not yesterday," he wrote in one letter, "but I saw you;
+     all day I was by you: you gave not a look which passed me unnoticed;
+     you made not a movement which I did not chronicle in my memory.
+     Julia, do you tremble when I tell you this?  Yes, if you have a
+     heart, I know these words would stab it to the core!  You may affect
+     to answer me indignantly!  Wise dissembler! it is very skilful,
+     very, to assume anger when you have no reply.  I repeat during the
+     whole of that party of pleasure (pleasure! well, your tastes, it
+     must be acknowledged, are exquisite!) which you enjoyed yesterday,
+     and which you so faintly asked me to share, my eye was on you.  You
+     did not know that I was in the wood when you took the grin of the
+     incomparable Digby, with so pretty a semblance of alarm at the
+     moment the snake which my foot disturbed glided across your path.
+     You did not know I was within hearing of the tent where you made so
+     agreeable a repast, and from which your laughter sent peals so many
+     and so numerous.  Laughter!  O Julia, can you tell me that you love,
+     and yet be happy, even to mirth, when I am away!  Love!  O God, how
+     different a sensation is mine!  Mine makes my whole principle of
+     life!  Yours!  I tell you that I think at moments I would rather
+     have your hate than the lukewarm sentiment you bear to me, and
+     honour by the name of affection.'  Pretty phrase!  I have no
+     affection for you!  Give me not that sickly word; but try with me,
+     Julia, to invent some expression that has never filtered a paltry
+     meaning through the lips of another!  Affection!  why, that is a
+     sister's word, a girl's word to her pet squirrel!  Never was it made
+     for that ruby and most ripe mouth!  Shall I come to your house this
+     evening?  Your mother has asked me, and you--you heard her, and said
+     nothing.  Oh! but that was maiden reserve, was it? and maiden
+     reserve caused you to take up a book the moment I left you, as if my
+     company made but an ordinary amusement instantly to be replaced by
+     another!  When I have seen you, society, books, food, all are
+     hateful to me; but you, sweet Julia, you can read, can you?  Why,
+     when I left you, I lingered by the parlour window for hours, till
+     dusk, and you never once lifted your eyes, nor saw me pass and
+     repass.  At least I thought you would have watched my steps when I
+     left the house; but I err, charming moralist!  According to you,
+     that vigilance would have been meanness."
+
+In another part of the correspondence a more grave if not a deeper gush
+of feeling struggled for expression.
+
+     "You say, Julia, that were you to marry one who thinks so much of
+     what he surrenders for you, and who requires from yourself so vast a
+     return of love, you should tremble for the future happiness of both
+     of us.  Julia, the triteness of that fear proves that you love not
+     at all.  I do not tremble for our future happiness; on the contrary,
+     the intensity of my passion for you makes me know that we never can
+     be happy, never beyond the first rapture of our union.  Happiness is
+     a quiet and tranquil feeling.  No feeling that I can possibly bear
+     to you will ever receive those epithets,--I know that I shall be
+     wretched and accursed when I am united to you.  Start not!  I will
+     presently tell you why.  But I do not dream of happiness, neither
+     (could you fathom one drop of the dark and limitless ocean of my
+     emotions) would you name to me that word.  It is not the mercantile
+     and callous calculation of chances for 'future felicity' (what
+     homily supplied you with so choice a term?) that enters into the
+     heart that cherishes an all-pervading love.  Passion looks only to
+     one object, to nothing beyond; I thirst, I consume, not for
+     happiness, but you.  Were your possession inevitably to lead me to a
+     gulf of anguish and shame, think you I should covet it one jot the
+     less!  If you carry one thought, one hope, one dim fancy, beyond the
+     event that makes you mine, you may be more worthy of the esteem of
+     others, but you are utterly undeserving of my love.
+
+             . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
+
+     "I will tell you now why I know we cannot be happy.  In the first
+     place, when you say that I am proud of birth, that I am morbidly
+     ambitious, that I am anxious to shine in the great world, and that
+     after the first intoxication of love has passed away I shall feel
+     bitterness against one who has so humbled my pride and darkened my
+     prospects, I am not sure that you wholly err.  But I am sure that
+     the instant remedy is in your power.  Have you patience, Julia, to
+     listen to a kind Of history of myself, or rather of my feelings?  If
+     so, perhaps it may be the best method of explaining all that I would
+     convey.  You will see, then, that my family pride and my worldly
+     ambition are not founded altogether on those basements which move my
+     laughter in another; if my feelings thereon are really, however, as
+     you would insinuate, equal matter for derision, behold, my Julia, I
+     can laugh equally at them!  So pleasant a thing to me is scorn, that
+     I would rather despise myself than have no one to despise!  But to
+     my narrative!  You must know that there are but two of us, sons of a
+     country squire, of old family, which once possessed large
+     possessions and something of historical renown.  We lived in an old
+     country-place; my father was a convivial dog, a fox-hunter, a
+     drunkard, yet in his way a fine gentleman,--and a very disreputable
+     member of society.  The first feelings towards him that I can
+     remember were those of shame.  Not much matter of family pride here,
+     you will say!  True, and that is exactly the reason which made me
+     cherish family pride elsewhere.  My father's house was filled with
+     guests,--some high and some low; they all united in ridicule of the
+     host.  I soon detected the laughter, and you may imagine that it did
+     not please me.  Meanwhile the old huntsman, whose family was about
+     as ancient as ours, and whose ancestors had officiated in his
+     capacity for the ancestors of his master time out of mind, told me
+     story after story about the Brandons of yore.  I turned from the
+     stories to more legitimate history, and found the legends were
+     tolerably true.  I learned to glow at this discovery; the pride,
+     humbled when I remembered my sire, revived when I remembered my
+     ancestors.  I became resolved to emulate them, to restore a sunken
+     name, and vowed a world of nonsense on the subject.  The habit of
+     brooding over these ideas grew on me.  I never heard a jest broken
+     on my paternal guardian, I never caught the maudlin look of his
+     reeling eyes, nor listened to some exquisite inanity from his
+     besotted lips, but that my thoughts flew instantly back to the Sir
+     Charleses and the Sir Roberts of my race, and I comforted myself
+     with the hope that the present degeneracy should pass away.  Hence,
+     Julia, my family pride; hence, too, another feeling you dislike in
+     me,--disdain!  I first learned to despise my father, the host, and I
+     then despised my acquaintances, his guests; for I saw, while they
+     laughed at him, that they flattered, and that their merriment was
+     not the only thing suffered to feed at his expense.  Thus contempt
+     grew up with me, and I had nothing to check it; for when I looked
+     around I saw not one living thing that I could respect.  This father
+     of mine had the sense to think I was no idiot.  He was proud (poor
+     man!) of 'my talents,' namely, of prizes won at school, and
+     congratulatory letters from my masters.  He sent me to college.
+     My mind took a leap there; I will tell you, prettiest, what it was!
+     Before I went thither I had some fine vague visions about virtue.
+     I thought to revive my ancestral honours by being good; in short, I
+     was an embryo King Pepin.  I awoke from this dream at the
+     University.  There, for the first time, I perceived the real
+     consequence of rank.
+
+     "At school, you know, Julia, boys care nothing for a lord.  A good
+     cricketer, an excellent fellow, is worth all the earls in the
+     peerage.  But at college all that ceases; bats and balls sink into
+     the nothingness in which corals and bells had sunk before.  One
+     grows manly, and worships coronets and carriages.  I saw it was a
+     fine thing to get a prize, but it was ten times a finer thing to get
+     drunk with a peer.  So, when I had done the first, my resolve to be
+     worthy of my sires made me do the second,--not, indeed, exactly; I
+     never got drunk: my father disgusted me with that vice betimes.  To
+     his gluttony I owe my vegetable diet, and to his inebriety my
+     addiction to water.  No, I did not get drunk with peers; but I was
+     just as agreeable to them as if I had been equally embruted.  I knew
+     intimately all the 'Hats' in the University, and I was henceforth
+     looked up to by the 'Caps,' as if my head had gained the height of
+     every hat that I knew.
+
+          [At Cambridge the sons of noblemen and the eldest sons of
+          baronets are allowed to wear hats instead of the academical
+          cap.]
+
+     But I did not do this immediately.  I must tell you two little
+     anecdotes that first initiated me into the secret of real greatness.
+
+     "The first was this: I was sitting at dinner with some fellows of a
+     college, grave men and clever.  Two of them, not knowing me, were
+     conversing about me; they heard, they said, that I should never be
+     so good a fellow as my father,--have such a cellar or keep such a
+     house.  'I have met six earls there and a marquess,' quoth the other
+     senior.  'And his son,' returned the first don, 'only keeps company
+     with sizars, I believe.'  'So then,' said I to myself, 'to deserve
+     the praise even of clever men, one must have good wines, know plenty
+     of earls, and for swear sizars.'  Nothing could be truer than my
+     conclusion.
+
+     "Anecdote the second is this: On the day I gained a high university
+     prize I invited my friends to dine with me.  Four of them refused
+     because they were engaged (they had been asked since I asked them),
+    --to whom? the richest man at the University.  These occurrences,
+     happening at the same time, threw me into a profound revery.  I
+     awoke, and became a man of the world.  I no longer resolved to be
+     virtuous, and to hunt after the glory of your Romans and your
+     Athenians,--I resolved to become rich, powerful, and of worldly
+     repute.
+
+     "I abjured my honest sizars, and as I said before, I courted some
+     rich 'Hats.'  Behold my first grand step in the world!  I became the
+     parasite and the flatterer.  What! would my pride suffer this?
+     Verily, yes, my pride delighted in it; for it soothed my spirit of
+     contempt to put these fine fellows to my use!  It soothed me to see
+     how easily I could cajole them, and to what a variety of purposes I
+     could apply even the wearisome disgust of their acquaintance.
+     Nothing is so foolish as to say the idle great are of no use; they
+     can be put to any use whatsoever that a wise man is inclined to make
+     of them.  Well, Julia, lo! my character already formed; the family
+     pride, disdain, and worldly ambition,--there it is for you.  After
+     circumstances only strengthened the impression already made.  I
+     desired, on leaving college, to go abroad; my father had no money to
+     give me.  What signified that?  I looked carelessly around for some
+     wealthier convenience than the paternal board; I found it in a Lord
+     Mauleverer.  He had been at college with me, and I endured him
+     easily as a companion,--for he had accomplishments, wit, and good-
+     nature.  I made him wish to go abroad, and I made him think he
+     should die of ennui if I did not accompany him.  To his request to
+     that effect I reluctantly agreed, and saw everything in Europe,
+     which he neglected to see, at his expense.  What amused me the most
+     was the perception that I, the parasite, was respected by him; and
+     he, the patron, was ridiculed by me!  It would not have been so if I
+     had depended on 'my virtue.'  Well, sweetest Julia, the world, as I
+     have said, gave to my college experience a sacred authority.  I
+     returned to England; and my father died, leaving to me not a
+     sixpence, and to my brother an estate so mortgaged that he could not
+     enjoy it, and so restricted that he could not sell it.  It was now
+     the time for me to profit by the experience I boasted of.  I saw
+     that it was necessary I should take some profession.  Professions
+     are the masks to your pauper-rogue; they give respectability to
+     cheating, and a diploma to feed upon others.  I analyzed my talents,
+     and looked to the customs of my country; the result was my
+     resolution to take to the Bar.  I had an inexhaustible power of
+     application; I was keen, shrewd, and audacious.  All these qualities
+     'tell' at the courts of justice.  I kept my legitimate number of
+     terms; I was called; I went the circuit; I obtained not a brief,--
+     not a brief, Julia!  My health, never robust, gave way beneath study
+     and irritation.  I was ordered to betake myself to the country.  I
+     came to this village, as one both salubrious and obscure.  I lodged
+     in the house of your aunt; you came hither daily,--I saw you,--you
+     know the rest.  But where, all this time, were my noble friends?
+     you will say.  'Sdeath, since we had left college, they had learned
+     a little of the wisdom I had then possessed; they were not disposed
+     to give something for nothing; they had younger brothers, and
+     cousins, and mistresses, and, for aught I know, children to provide
+     for.  Besides, they had their own expenses; the richer a man is, the
+     less he has to give.  One of them would have bestowed on me a
+     living, if I had gone into the Church; another, a commission if I
+     had joined his regiment.  But I knew the day was past both for
+     priest and soldier; and it was not merely to live, no, nor to live
+     comfortably, but to enjoy power, that I desired; so I declined these
+     offers.  Others of my friends would have been delighted to have kept
+     me in their house, feasted me, joked with me, rode with me, nothing
+     more!  But I had already the sense to see that if a man dances
+     himself into distinction, it is never by the steps of attendance.
+     One must receive favours and court patronage, but it must be with
+     the air of an independent man.  My old friends thus rendered
+     useless, my legal studies forbade me to make new, nay, they even
+     estranged me from the old; for people may say what they please about
+     a similarity of opinions being necessary to friendship,--a
+     similarity of habits is much more so.  It is the man you dine,
+     breakfast, and lodge with, walk, ride, gamble, or thieve with, that
+     is your friend; not the man who likes Virgil as well as you do, and
+     agrees with you in an admiration of Handel.  Meanwhile my chief
+     prey, Lord Mauleverer, was gone; he had taken another man's
+     Dulcinea, and sought out a bower in Italy.  From that time to this I
+     have never heard of him nor seen him; I know not even his address.
+     With the exception of a few stray gleanings from my brother, who,
+     good easy man!  I could plunder more, were I not resolved not to
+     ruin the family stock, I have been thrown on myself; the result is
+     that, though as clever as my fellows, I have narrowly shunned
+     starvation,--had my wants been less simple, there would have been no
+     shunning in the case; but a man is not easily starved who drinks
+     water, and eats by the ounce.  A more effectual fate might have
+     befallen me.  Disappointment, wrath, baffled hope, mortified pride,
+     all these, which gnawed at my heart, might have consumed it long
+     ago; I might have fretted away as a garment which the moth eateth,
+     had it not been for that fund of obstinate and iron hardness which
+     nature--I beg pardon, there is no nature--circumstance bestowed upon
+     me.  This has borne me up, and will bear me yet through time and
+     shame and bodily weakness and mental fever, until my ambition has
+     won a certain height, and my disdain of human pettiness rioted in
+     the external sources of fortune, as well as an inward fountain of
+     bitter and self-fed consolation.  Yet, oh, Julia!  I know not if
+     even this would have supported me, if at that epoch of life, when I
+     was most wounded, most stricken in body, most soured in mind, my
+     heart had not met and fastened itself to yours.  I saw you, loved
+     you; and life became to me a new object.  Even now, as I write to
+     you, all my bitterness, my pride, vanish; everything I have longed
+     for disappears; my very ambition is gone.  I have no hope but for
+     you, Julia; beautiful, adored Julia! when I love you, I love even my
+     kind.  Oh, you know not the power you possess over me!  Do not
+     betray it; you can yet make me all that my boyhood once dreamed, or
+     you can harden every thought, feeling, sensation, into stone.
+
+                  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
+
+     "I was to tell you why I look not for happiness in our union.  You
+     have now seen my nature.  You have traced the history of my life, by
+     tracing the history of my character.  You see what I surrender in
+     gaining you.  I do not deny the sacrifice.  I surrender the very
+     essentials of my present mind and soul.  I cease to be worldly.  I
+     cannot raise myself, I cannot revive my ancestral name; nay, I shall
+     relinquish it forever.  I shall adopt a disguised appellation.  I
+     shall sink into another grade of life.  In some remote village, by
+     means of some humbler profession than that I now follow, we must
+     earn our subsistence, and smile at ambition.  I tell you frankly,
+     Julia, when I close the eyes of my heart, when I shut you from my
+     gaze, this sacrifice appalls me.  But even then you force yourself
+     before me, and I feel that one glance from your eye is more to me
+     than all.  If you could bear with me,--if you could soothe me,--if
+     when a cloud is on me you could suffer it to pass away unnoticed,
+     and smile on me the moment it is gone,--O Julia! there would be then
+     no extreme of poverty, no abasement of fortune, no abandonment of
+     early dreams which would not seem to me rapture if coupled with the
+     bliss of knowing that you are mine.  Never should my lip, never
+     should my eye tell you that there is that thing on earth for which I
+     repine or which I could desire.  No, Julia, could I flatter my heart
+     with this hope, you would not find me dream of unhappiness and you
+     united.  But I tremble, Julia, when I think of your temper and my
+     own; you will conceive a gloomy look from one never mirthful is an
+     insult, and you will feel every vent of passion on Fortune or on
+     others as a reproach to you.  Then, too, you cannot enter into my
+     nature; you cannot descend into its caverns; you cannot behold, much
+     less can you deign to lull, the exacting and lynx-eyed jealousy that
+     dwells there.  Sweetest Julia! every breath of yours, every touch of
+     yours, every look of yours, I yearn for beyond all a mother's
+     longing for the child that has been torn from her for years.  Your
+     head leaned upon an old tree (do you remember it, near ------?), and
+     I went every day, after seeing you, to kiss it.  Do you wonder that
+     I am jealous?  How can I love you as I do and be otherwise!  My
+     whole being is intoxicated with you!
+
+                   . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
+
+     "This then, your pride and mine, your pleasure in the admiration of
+     others, your lightness, Julia, make me foresee an eternal and
+     gushing source of torture to my mind.  I care not; I care for
+     nothing so that you are mine, if but for one hour."
+
+
+It seems that, despite the strange, sometimes the unloverlike and
+fiercely selfish nature of these letters from Brandon, something of a
+genuine tone of passion,--perhaps their originality,--aided, no doubt,
+by some uttered eloquence of the writer and some treacherous inclination
+on the part of the mistress, ultimately conquered; and that a union so
+little likely to receive the smile of a prosperous star was at length
+concluded.  The letter which terminated the correspondence was from
+Brandon: it was written on the evening before the marriage, which, it
+appeared by the same letter, was to be private and concealed.  After a,
+rapturous burst of hope and joy, it continued thus:--
+
+     "Yes, Julia, I recant my words; I have no belief that you or I shall
+     ever have cause hereafter for unhappiness.  Those eyes that dwelt so
+     tenderly on mine; that hand whose pressure lingers yet in every
+     nerve of my frame; those lips turned so coyly, yet, shall I say,
+     reluctantly from me,--all tell me that you love me; and my fears are
+     banished.  Love, which conquered my nature, will conquer the only
+     thing I would desire to see altered in yours.  Nothing could ever
+     make me adore you less, though you affect to dread it,--nothing but
+     a knowledge that you are unworthy of me, that you have a thought for
+     another; then I should not hate you.  No; the privilege of my past
+     existence would revive; I should revel in a luxury of contempt, I
+     should despise you, I should mock you, and I should be once more
+     what I was before I knew you.  But why do I talk thus?  My bride,
+     my blessing, forgive me!"
+
+In concluding our extracts from this correspondence, we wish the reader
+to note, first, that the love professed by Brandon seems of that vehement
+and corporeal nature which, while it is often the least durable, is often
+the most susceptible of the fiercest extremes of hatred or even of
+disgust; secondly, that the character opened by this sarcastic candour
+evidently required in a mistress either an utter devotion or a skilful
+address; and thirdly, that we have hinted at such qualities in the fair
+correspondent as did not seem sanguinely to promise either of these
+essentials.
+
+While with a curled yet often with a quivering lip the austere and
+sarcastic Brandon slowly compelled himself to the task of proceeding
+through these monuments of former folly and youthful emotion, the further
+elucidation of those events, now rapidly urging on a fatal and dread
+catastrophe, spreads before us a narrative occurring many years prior to
+the time at which we are at present arrived.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII.
+
+          Clem.  Lift the dark veil of years!  Behind, what waits?
+          A human heart.  Vast city, where reside
+          All glories and all vilenesses; while foul,
+          Yet silent, through the roar of passions rolls
+          The river of the Darling Sin, and bears
+          A life and yet a poison on its tide.
+               . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
+          Clem.  Thy wife?
+
+          Vict.  Avaunt! I've changed that word to "scorn"!
+
+          Clem.  Thy child?
+
+          Vict.  Ay, that strikes home,--my child, my child!
+
+                                         Love and Hatred, by --------
+
+To an obscure town in  shire there came to reside a young couple, whose
+appearance and habits drew towards them from the neighbouring gossips a
+more than ordinary attention.  They bore the name of Welford.  The man
+assumed the profession of a solicitor.  He came without introduction or
+recommendation; his manner of life bespoke poverty; his address was
+reserved and even sour; and despite the notice and scrutiny with which he
+was regarded, he gained no clients and made no lawsuits.  The want of all
+those decent charlatanisms which men of every profession are almost
+necessitated to employ, and the sudden and unushered nature of his coming
+were, perhaps, the cause of this ill-success.  "His house was too small,"
+people said, "for respectability."  And little good could be got from a
+solicitor the very rails round whose door were so sadly in want of
+repainting!  Then, too, Mrs. Welford made a vast number of enemies.  She
+was, beyond all expression, beautiful; and there was a certain coquetry
+in her manner which showed she was aware of her attractions.  All the
+ladies of ------- hated her.  A few people called on the young couple.
+Welford received them coldly; their invitations were unaccepted, and,
+what was worse, they were never returned.  The devil himself could not
+have supported an attorney under such circumstances.  Reserved, shabby,
+poor, rude, introductionless, a bad house, an unpainted railing, and a
+beautiful wife!  Nevertheless, though Welford was not employed, he was,
+as we have said, watched.  On their first arrival, which was in summer,
+the young pair were often seen walking together in the fields or groves
+which surrounded their home.  Sometimes they walked affectionately
+together, and it was observed with what care Welford adjusted his wife's
+cloak or shawl around her slender shape, as the cool of the evening
+increased.  But often his arm was withdrawn; he lingered behind, and they
+continued their walk or returned homeward in silence and apart.  By
+degrees whispers circulated throughout the town that the new-married
+couple lived by no means happily.  The men laid the fault on the stern-
+looking husband; the women, on the minx of a wife.  However, the solitary
+servant whom they kept declared that though Mr. Welford did sometimes
+frown, and Mrs. Welford did sometimes weep, they were extremely attached
+to each other, and only quarrelled through love.  The maid had had four
+lovers herself, and was possibly experienced in such matters.  They
+received no visitors, near or from a distance; and the postman declared
+he had never seen a letter directed to either.  Thus a kind of mystery
+hung over the pair, and made them still more gazed on and still more
+disliked--which is saying a great deal--than they would have otherwise
+been.  Poor as Welford was, his air and walk eminently bespoke what
+common persons term gentility.  And in this he had greatly the advantage
+of his beautiful wife, who, though there was certainly nothing vulgar or
+plebeian in her aspect, altogether wanted the refinement of manner, look,
+and phrase which characterized Welford.  For about two years they lived
+in this manner, and so frugally and tranquilly that though Welford had
+not any visible means of subsistence, no one could well wonder in what
+manner they did subsist.  About the end of that time Welford suddenly
+embarked a small sum in a county speculation.  In the course of this
+adventure, to the great surprise of his neighbours, he evinced an
+extraordinary turn for calculation, and his habits plainly bespoke a man
+both of business and ability.  This disposal of capital brought a
+sufficient return to support the Welfords, if they had been so disposed,
+in rather a better style than heretofore.  They remained, however, in
+much the same state; and the only difference that the event produced was
+the retirement of Mr. Welford from the profession he had embraced.  He
+was no longer a solicitor!  It must be allowed that he resigned no great
+advantages in this retirement.  About this time some officers were
+quartered at ------; and one of them, a handsome lieutenant, was so
+struck with the charms of Mrs. Welford, whom he saw at church, that he
+lost no opportunity of testifying his admiration.  It was maliciously yet
+not unfoundedly remarked that though no absolute impropriety could be
+detected in the manner of Mrs. Welford, she certainly seemed far from
+displeased with the evident homage of the young lieutenant.  A blush
+tinged her cheek when she saw him; and the gallant coxcomb asserted that
+the blush was not always without a smile.  Emboldened by the
+interpretations of his vanity, and contrasting, as every one else did,
+his own animated face and glittering garb with the ascetic and gloomy
+countenance, the unstudied dress, and austere gait which destroyed in
+Welford the effect of a really handsome person, our lieutenant thought
+fit to express his passion by a letter, which he conveyed to Mrs.
+Welford's pew.  Mrs. Welford went not to church that day; the letter was
+found by a good-natured neighbour, and inclosed anonymously to the
+husband.
+
+Whatever, in the secrecy of domestic intercourse, took place on this
+event was necessarily unknown; but the next Sunday the face of Mr.
+Welford, which had never before appeared at church, was discerned by one
+vigilant neighbour,--probably the anonymous friend,--not in the same pew
+with his wife, but in a remote corner of the sacred house.  And once,
+when the lieutenant was watching to read in Mrs. Welford's face some
+answer to his epistle, the same obliging inspector declared that
+Welford's countenance assumed a sardonic and withering sneer that made
+his very blood to creep.  However this be, the lieutenant left his
+quarters, and Mrs. Welford's reputation remained dissatisfactorily
+untarnished.  Shortly after this the county speculation failed, and it
+was understood that the Welfords were about to leave the town, whither
+none knew,--some said to jail; but then, unhappily, no debts could be
+discovered.  Their bills had been "next to nothing;" but, at least, they
+had been regularly paid.  However, before the rumoured emigration took
+place, a circumstance equally wonderful to the good people of  occurred.
+One bright spring morning a party of pleasure from a great house in the
+vicinity passed through that town.  Most conspicuous of these was a young
+horseman, richly dressed, and of a remarkably showy and handsome
+appearance.  Not a little sensible of the sensation he created, this
+cavalier lingered behind his companions in order to eye more deliberately
+certain damsels stationed in a window, and who were quite ready to return
+his glances with interest.  At this moment the horse, which was fretting
+itself fiercely against the rein that restrained it from its fellows,
+took a fright at a knife-grinder, started violently to one side, and the
+graceful cavalier, who had been thinking, not of the attitude best
+adapted to preserve his equilibrium, but to display his figure, was
+thrown with some force upon a heap of bricks and rubbish which had long,
+to the scandal of the neighbourhood, stood before the paintless railings
+around Mr. Welford's house.  Welford himself came out at the time, and
+felt compelled--for he was by no means one whose sympathetic emotions
+flowed easily--to give a glance to the condition of a man who lay
+motionless before his very door.  The horseman quickly recovered his
+senses, but found himself unable to rise; one of his legs was broken.
+Supported in the arms of his groom, he looked around, and his eye met
+Welford's.  An instant recognition gave life to the face of the former,
+and threw a dark blush over the sullen features of the latter.
+
+"Heavens!" said the cavalier, "is that--"
+
+"Hist, my lord!" cried Welford, quickly interrupting him, and glancing
+round.  "But you are hurt,--will you enter my house?"
+
+The horseman signified his assent, and, between the groom and Welford,
+was borne within the shabby door of the ex-solicitor.  The groom was then
+despatched with an excuse to the party, many of whom were already
+hastening around the house; and though one or two did force themselves
+across the inhospitable threshold, yet so soon as they had uttered a few
+expletives, and felt their stare sink beneath the sullen and chilling
+asperity of the host, they satisfied themselves that though it was d---d
+unlucky for their friend, yet they could do nothing for him at present;
+and promising to send to inquire after him the next day, they remounted
+and rode homeward, with an eye more attentive than usual to the motion of
+their steeds.  They did not, however, depart till the surgeon of the town
+had made his appearance, and declared that the patient must not on any
+account be moved.  A lord's leg was a windfall that did not happen every
+day to the surgeon of -------.  All this while we may imagine the state
+of anxiety experienced in the town, and the agonized endurance of those
+rural nerves which are produced in scanty populations, and have so
+_Taliacotian_ a sympathy with the affairs of other people.  One day, two
+days, three days, a week, a fortnight, nay, a month, passed, and the lord
+was still the inmate of Mr. Welford's abode.  Leaving the gossips to feed
+on their curiosity,--"cannibals of their own hearts,"--we must give a
+glance towards the interior of the inhospitable mansion of the
+ex-solicitor.
+
+It was towards evening, the sufferer was supported on a sofa, and the
+beautiful Mrs. Welford, who had officiated as his nurse, was placing the
+pillow under the shattered limb.  He himself was attempting to seize her
+hand, which she coyly drew back, and uttering things sweeter and more
+polished than she had ever listened to before.  At this moment Welford
+softly entered; he was unnoticed by either; and he stood at the door
+contemplating them with a smile of calm and self-hugging derision.  The
+face of Mephistopheles regarding Margaret and Faust might suggest some
+idea of the picture we design to paint; but the countenance of Welford
+was more lofty, as well as comelier, in character, though not less
+malignant in expression, than that which the incomparable Retsch has
+given to the mocking fiend.  So utter, so congratulatory, so lordly was
+the contempt on Welford's dark and striking features, that though he was
+in that situation in which ridicule usually attaches itself to the
+husband, it was the gallant and the wife that would have appeared to the
+beholder in a humiliating and unenviable light.
+
+After a momentary pause Welford approached with a heavy step.  The wife
+started; but with a bland and smooth expression, which since his sojourn
+in the town of had been rarely visible in his aspect, the host joined the
+pair, smiled on the nurse, and congratulated the patient on his progress
+towards recovery.  The nobleman, well learned in the usages of the world,
+replied easily and gayly; and the conversation flowed on cheerfully
+enough till the wife, who had sat abstracted and apart, stealing ever and
+anon timid glances towards her husband and looks of a softer meaning
+towards the patient, retired from the room.  Welford then gave a turn to
+the conversation; he reminded the nobleman of the pleasant days they had
+passed in Italy,--of the adventures they had shared, and the intrigues
+they had enjoyed.  As the conversation warmed, it assumed a more free and
+licentious turn; and not a little, we ween, would the good folks of -----
+have been amazed, could they have listened to the gay jests and the
+libertine maxims which flowed from the thin lips of that cold and severe
+Welford, whose countenance gave the lie to mirth.  Of women in general
+they spoke with that lively contempt which is the customary tone with men
+of the world; only in Welford it assumed a bitterer, a deeper, and a more
+philosophical cast than it did in his more animated yet less energetic
+guest.
+
+The nobleman seemed charmed with his friend; the conversation was just to
+his taste; and when Welford had supported him up to bed, he shook that
+person cordially by the hand, and hoped he should soon see him in very
+different circumstances.  When the peer's door was closed on Welford,
+he stood motionless for some moments; he then with a soft step ascended
+to his own chamber.  His wife slept soundly; beside the bed was the
+infant's cradle.  As his eyes fell on the latter, the rigid irony, now
+habitual to his features, relaxed; he bent over the cradle long and in
+deep silence.  The mother's face, blended with the sire's, was stamped on
+the sleeping and cherub countenance before him; and as at length, rousing
+from his revery, he kissed it gently, he murmured,--
+
+"When I look on you I will believe that she once loved me.  Pah!" he said
+abruptly, and rising, "this fatherly sentiment for a -----'s offering is
+exquisite in me!"  So saying, without glancing towards his wife, who,
+disturbed by the loudness of his last words, stirred uneasily, he left
+the room, and descended into that where he had conversed with his guest.
+He shut the door with caution, and striding to and fro the humble
+apartment, gave vent to thoughts marshalled somewhat in the broken array
+in which they now appear to the reader:--
+
+"Ay, ay, she has been my ruin!  and if I were one of your weak fools who
+make a gospel of the silliest and most mawkish follies of this social
+state, she would now be my disgrace; but instead of my disgrace, I will
+make her my footstool to honour and wealth.  And, then, to the devil with
+the footstool!  Yes! two years I have borne what was enough to turn my
+whole blood into gall,--inactivity, hopelessness, a wasted heart and life
+in myself; contumely from the world; coldness, bickering, ingratitude
+from the one for whom (oh, ass that I was!) I gave up the most cherished
+part of my nature,--rather, my nature itself!  Two years I have borne
+this, and now will I have my revenge.  I will sell her,--sell her!  God!
+I will sell her like the commonest beast of a market!  And this paltry
+piece of false coin shall buy me--my world!  Other men's vengeance comes
+from hatred,--a base, rash, unphilosophical sentiment! mine comes from
+scorn,--the only wise state for the reason to rest in.  Other men's
+vengeance ruins themselves; mine shall save me!  Ha! how my soul chuckles
+when I look at this pitiful pair, who think I see them not, and know that
+every movement they make is on a mesh of my web!  Yet," and Welford
+paused slowly,--"yet I cannot but mock myself when I think of the arch
+gull that this boy's madness, love,--love, indeed! the very word turns me
+sick with loathing,--made of me.  Had that woman, silly, weak, automatal
+as she is, really loved me; had she been sensible of the unspeakable
+sacrifice I had made to her (Antony's was nothing to it,--he lost a real
+world only; mine was the world of imagination); had she but condescended
+to learn my nature, to subdue the woman's devil at her own,--I could have
+lived on in this babbling hermitage forever, and fancied myself happy and
+resigned,--I could have become a different being.  I fancy I could have
+become what your moralists (quacks!) call 'good.'  But this fretting
+frivolity of heart, this lust of fool's praise, this peevishness of
+temper, this sullenness in answer to the moody thought, which in me she
+neither fathomed nor forgave, this vulgar, daily, hourly pining at the
+paltry pinches of the body's poverty, the domestic whine, the household
+complaint,--when I--I have not a thought for such pitiful trials of
+affection; and all this while my curses, my buried hope and disguised
+spirit and sunken name not thought of; the magnitude of my surrender to
+her not even comprehended; nay, her 'inconveniences'--a dim hearth, I
+suppose, or a daintiless table--compared, ay, absolutely compared, with
+all which I abandoned for her sake!  As if it were not enough,--had I
+been a fool, an ambitionless, soulless fool,-the mere thought that I had
+linked my name to that of a tradesman,--I beg pardon, a retired
+tradesman!--as if that knowledge--a knowledge I would strangle my whole
+race, every one who has ever met, seen me, rather than they should
+penetrate--were not enough, when she talks of 'comparing,' to make me
+gnaw the very flesh from my bones!  No, no, no!  Never was there so
+bright a turn in my fate as when this titled coxcomb, with his smooth
+voice and gaudy fripperies, came hither!  I will make her a tool to carve
+my escape from this cavern wherein she has plunged me.  I will foment 'my
+lord's' passion, till 'my lord' thinks 'the passion' (a butterfly's
+passion!) worth any price.  I will then make my own terms, bind 'my lord'
+to secrecy, and get rid of my wife, my shame, and the obscurity of Mr.
+Welford forever.  Bright, bright prospects!  let me shut my eyes to enjoy
+you!  But softly! my noble friend calls himself a man of the world,
+skilled in human nature, and a derider of its prejudices; true enough, in
+his own little way--thanks not to enlarged views, but a vicious
+experience--so he is!  The book of the world is a vast miscellany; he is
+perfectly well acquainted, doubtless, with those pages that treat of the
+fashions,--profoundly versed, I warrant, in the 'Magasin des Modes'
+tacked to the end of the index.  But shall I, even with all the
+mastership which my mind must exercise over his,--shall I be able utterly
+to free myself in this 'peer of the world's' mind from a degrading
+remembrance?  Cuckold!  cuckold! 't is an ugly word; a convenient,
+willing cuckold, humph!--there is no grandeur, no philosophical varnish
+in the phrase.  Let me see--yes!  I have a remedy for all that.  I was
+married privately,--well! under disguised names,--well!  It was a stolen
+marriage, far from her town,--well! witnesses unknown to her,--well!
+proofs easily secured to my possession,--excellent!  The fool shall
+believe it a forged marriage, an ingenious gallantry of mine; I will wash
+out the stain cuckold with the water of another word; I will make market
+of a mistress, not a wife.  I will warn him not to acquaint her with this
+secret; let me consider for what reason,--oh! my son's legitimacy may be
+convenient to me hereafter.  He will understand that reason, and I will
+have his 'honour' thereon.  And by the way, I do care for that
+legitimacy, and will guard the proofs.  I love my child,--ambitious men
+do love their children.  I may become a lord myself, and may wish for a
+lord to succeed me; and that son is mine, thank Heaven!  I am sure on
+that point,--the only child, too, that ever shall arise to me.  Never, I
+swear, will I again put myself beyond my own power!  All my nature, save
+one passion, I have hitherto mastered; that passion shall henceforth be
+my slave, my only thought be ambition, my only mistress be the world!"
+
+As thus terminated the revery of a man whom the social circumstances of
+the world were calculated, as if by system, to render eminently and
+basely wicked, Welford slowly ascended the stairs, and re-entered his
+chamber.  His wife was still sleeping.  Her beauty was of the fair and
+girlish and harmonized order, which lovers and poets would express by the
+word "angelic;" and as Welford looked upon her face, hushed and almost
+hallowed by slumber, a certain weakness and irresolution might have been
+discernible in the strong lines of his haughty features.  At that moment,
+as if forever to destroy the return of hope or virtue to either, her lips
+moved, they uttered one word,--it was the name of Welford's courtly
+guest.
+
+About three weeks from that evening Mrs. Welford eloped with the young
+nobleman, and on the morning following that event the distracted husband
+with his child disappeared forever from the town of -----.  From that day
+no tidings whatsoever respecting him ever reached the titillated ears of
+his anxious neighbours; and doubt, curiosity, discussion, gradually
+settled into the belief that his despair had hurried him into suicide.
+
+Although the unfortunate Mrs. Welford was in reality of a light and
+frivolous turn, and, above all, susceptible to personal vanity, she was
+not without ardent affections and keen sensibilities.  Her marriage had
+been one of love,--that is to say, on her part, the ordinary love of
+girls, who love not through actual and natural feeling so much as forced
+predisposition.  Her choice had fallen on one superior to herself in
+birth, and far above all, in person and address, whom she had habitually
+met.  Thus her vanity had assisted her affection, and something strange
+and eccentric in the temper and mind of Welford had, though at times it
+aroused her fear, greatly contributed to inflame her imagination.  Then,
+too, though an uncourtly, he had been a passionate and a romantic lover.
+She was sensible that he gave up for her much that he had previously
+conceived necessary to his existence; and she stopped not to inquire how
+far this devotion was likely to last, or what conduct on her part might
+best perpetuate the feelings from which it sprang.  She had eloped with
+him.  She had consented to a private marriage.  She had passed one happy
+month, and then delusion vanished!  Mrs. Welford was not a woman who
+could give to reality, or find in it, the charm equal to delusion.  She
+was perfectly unable to comprehend the intricate and dangerous character
+of her husband.
+
+She had not the key to his virtues, nor the spell for his vices.  Neither
+was the state to which poverty compelled them one well calculated for
+that tender meditation, heightened by absence and cherished in indolence,
+which so often supplies one who loves with the secret to the nature of
+the one beloved.  Though not equal to her husband in birth or early
+prospects, Mrs. Welford had been accustomed to certain comforts, often
+more felt by those who belong to the inferior classes than by those
+appertaining to the more elevated, who in losing one luxury will often
+cheerfully surrender all.  A fine lady can submit to more hardships than
+her woman; and every gentleman who travels smiles at the privations which
+agonize his valet.  Poverty and its grim comrades made way for a whole
+host of petty irritations and peevish complaints; and as no guest or
+visitor ever relieved the domestic discontent, or broke on the domestic
+bickering, they generally ended in that moody sullenness which so often
+finds love a grave in repentance.  Nothing makes people tire of each
+other like a familiarity that admits of carelessness in quarrelling and
+coarseness in complaining.  The biting sneer of Welford gave acrimony to
+the murmur of his wife; and when once each conceived the other the
+injurer, or him or herself the wronged, it was vain to hope that one
+would be more wary, or the other more indulgent.  They both exacted too
+much, and the wife in especial conceded too little.  Mrs. Welford was
+altogether and emphatically what a libertine calls "a woman,"--such as a
+frivolous education makes a woman,--generous in great things, petty in
+small; vain, irritable, full of the littleness of herself and her
+complaints, ready to plunge into an abyss with her lover, but equally
+ready to fret away all love with reproaches when the plunge had been
+made.  Of all men, Welford could bear this the least.  A woman of a
+larger heart, a more settled experience, and an intellect capable of
+appreciating his character and sounding all his qualities, might have
+made him perhaps a useful and a great man, and, at least, her lover for
+life.  Amidst a harvest of evil feelings the mere strength of his nature
+rendered him especially capable of intense feeling and generous emotion.
+One who relied on him was safe; one who rebelled against him trusted only
+to the caprice of his scorn.  Still, however, for two years, love, though
+weakening with each hour, fought on in either breast, and could scarcely
+be said to be entirely vanquished in the wife, even when she eloped with
+her handsome seducer.  A French writer has said pithily enough: "Compare
+for a moment the apathy of a husband with the attention, the gallantry,
+the adoration of a lover, and can you ask the result?"  He was a French
+writer; but Mrs. Welford had in her temper much of the Frenchwoman.  A
+suffering patient, young, handsome, well versed in the arts of intrigue,
+contrasted with a gloomy husband whom she had never comprehended, long
+feared, and had lately doubted if she disliked,--ah! a much weaker
+contrast has made many a much better woman food for the lawyers!  Mrs.
+Welford eloped; but she felt a revived tenderness for her husband on the
+very morning that she did so.  She carried away with her his letters of
+love as well as her own, which when they first married she had in an hour
+of fondness collected together,--then an inestimable board!--and never
+did her new lover receive from her beautiful lips half so passionate a
+kiss as she left on the cheek of her infant.  For some months she enjoyed
+with her paramour all for which she had sighed in her home.  The one for
+whom she had forsaken her legitimate ties was a person so habitually
+cheerful, courteous, and what is ordinarily termed "good-natured" (though
+he had in him as much of the essence of selfishness as any nobleman can
+decently have), that he continued gallant to her without an effort long
+after he had begun to think it possible to tire even of so lovely a face.
+Yet there were moments when the fickle wife recalled her husband with
+regret, and contrasting him with her seducer, did not find all the
+colourings of the contrast flattering to the latter.  There is something
+in a powerful and marked character which women and all weak natures feel
+themselves constrained to respect; and Welford's character thus stood in
+bold and therefore advantageous though gloomy relief when opposed to the
+levities and foibles of this guilty woman's present adorer.  However this
+be, the die was cast; and it would have been policy for the lady to have
+made the best of her present game.  But she who had murmured as a wife
+was not complaisant as a mistress.  Reproaches made an interlude to
+caresses, which the noble lover by no means admired.  He was not a man to
+retort, he was too indolent; but neither was he one to forbear.  "My
+charming friend," said he one day, after a scene, "you weary of me,--
+nothing more natural!  Why torment each other?  You say I have ruined
+you; my sweet friend, let me make you reparation.  Become independent;
+I will settle an annuity upon you; fly me,--seek happiness elsewhere,
+and leave your unfortunate, your despairing lover to his fate."
+
+"Do you taunt me, my lord?" cried the angry fair; "or do you believe that
+money can replace the rights of which you have robbed me?  Can you make
+me again a wife,--a happy, a respected wife?  Do this, my lord, and you
+atone to me!"
+
+The nobleman smiled, and shrugged his shoulders.  The lady yet more
+angrily repeated her question.  The lover answered by an innuendo, which
+at once astonished and doubly enraged her.  She eagerly demanded
+explanation; and his lordship, who had gone further than he intended,
+left the room.  But his words had sunk deep into the breast of this
+unhappy woman, and she resolved to procure an elucidation.  Agreeably to
+the policy which stripped the fabled traveller of his cloak, she laid
+aside the storm and preferred the sunshine: she watched a moment of
+tenderness, turned the opportunity to advantage, and by little and little
+she possessed herself of a secret which sickened her with shame, disgust,
+and dismay.  Sold!  bartered! the object of a contemptuous huxtering to
+the purchaser and the seller, sold, too, with a lie that debased her at
+once into an object for whom even pity was mixed with scorn!  Robbed
+already of the name and honour of a wife, and transferred as a harlot
+from the wearied arms of one leman to the capricious caresses of another!
+Such was the image that rose before her; and while it roused at one
+moment all her fiercer passions into madness, humbled, with the next, her
+vanity into the dust.  She, who knew the ruling passion of Welford, saw
+at a glance the object of scorn and derision which she had become to him.
+While she imagined herself the betrayer, she had been betrayed; she saw
+vividly before her (and shuddered as she saw) her husband's icy smile,
+his serpent eye, his features steeped in sarcasm, and all his mocking
+soul stamped upon the countenance, whose lightest derision was so
+galling.  She turned from this picture, and saw the courtly face of the
+purchaser,--his subdued smile at her reproaches,--his latent sneer at her
+claims to a station which he had been taught by the arch plotter to
+believe she had never possessed.  She saw his early weariness of her
+attractions, expressed with respect indeed,--an insulting respect,--but
+felt without a scruple of remorse.  She saw in either--as around--only a
+reciprocation of contempt.  She was in a web of profound abasement.  Even
+that haughty grief of conscience for crime committed to another, which if
+it stings humbles not, was swallowed up in a far more agonizing
+sensation, to one so vain as the adulteress,--the burning sense of shame
+at having herself, while sinning, been the duped and deceived.  Her very
+soul was appalled with her humiliation.  The curse of Welford's vengeance
+was on her, and it was wreaked to the last!  Whatever kindly sentiment
+she might have experienced towards her protector, was swallowed up at
+once by this discovery.  She could not endure the thought of meeting the
+eye of one who had been the gainer by this ignominious barter; the
+foibles and weaknesses of the lover assumed a despicable as well as
+hateful dye.  And in feeling _herself_ degraded, she loathed _him_.  The
+day after she had made the discovery we have referred to, Mrs. Welford
+left the house of her protector, none knew whither.  For two years from
+that date, all trace of her history was lost.  At the end of that time
+what was Welford?  A man rapidly rising in the world, distinguished at
+the Bar, where his first brief had lifted him into notice, commencing a
+flattering career in the senate, holding lucrative and honourable
+offices, esteemed for the austere rectitude of his moral character,
+gathering the golden opinions of all men, as he strode onward to public
+reputation.  He had re-assumed his hereditary name; his early history was
+unknown; and no one in the obscure and distant town of ------ had ever
+guessed that the humble Welford was the William Brandon whose praise was
+echoed in so many journals, and whose rising genius was acknowledged by
+all.  That asperity, roughness, and gloom which had noted him at ------,
+and which, being natural to him, he deigned not to disguise in a station
+ungenial to his talents and below his hopes, were now glitteringly
+varnished over by an hypocrisy well calculated to aid his ambition.  So
+learnedly could this singular man fit himself to others that few among
+the great met him as a companion, nor left him without the temper to
+become his friend.  Through his noble rival--that is (to make our
+reader's "surety doubly sure"), through Lord Mauleverer--he had acquired
+his first lucrative office, a certain patronage from government, and his
+seat in parliament.  If he had persevered at the Bar rather than given
+himself entirely to State intrigues, it was only because his talents were
+eminently more calculated to advance him in the former path to honour
+than in the latter.  So devoted was he become to public life that he had
+only permitted himself to cherish one private source of enjoyment,--his
+son.  As no one, not even his brother, knew he had been married (during
+the two years of his disguised name, he had been supposed abroad), the
+appearance of this son made the only piece of scandal whispered against
+the rigid morality of his fair fame; but he himself, waiting his own time
+for avowing a legitimate heir, gave out that it was the orphan child of a
+dear friend whom he had known abroad; and the puritan demureness not only
+of life, but manner, which he assumed, gained a pretty large belief to
+the statement.  This son Brandon idolized.  As we have represented
+himself to say, ambitious men are commonly fond of their children, beyond
+the fondness of other sires.  The perpetual reference which the ambitious
+make to posterity is perhaps the main reason.  But Brandon was also fond
+of children generally; philoprogenitiveness was a marked trait in his
+character, and would seem to belie the hardness and artifice belonging to
+that character, were not the same love so frequently noticeable in the
+harsh and the artificial.  It seems as if a half-conscious but pleasing
+feeling that they too were once gentle and innocent, makes them delight
+in reviving any sympathy with their early state.
+
+Often after the applause and labour of the day, Brandon would repair to
+his son's chamber and watch his slumber for hours; often before his
+morning toil commenced, he would nurse the infant in his arms with all a
+woman's natural tenderness and gushing joy; and often, as a graver and
+more characteristic sentiment stole over him, he would mentally say,
+"You shall build up our broken name on a better foundation than your
+sire.  I begin too late in life, and I labour up a painful and stony
+road; but I shall make the journey to Fame smooth and accessible for you.
+Never, too, while you aspire to honour, shall you steel your heart to
+tranquillity.  For you, my child, shall be the joys of home and love, and
+a mind that does not sicken at the past, and strain, through mere
+forgetfulness, towards a solitary and barren distinction for the future.
+Not only what your father gains you shall enjoy, but what has cursed him
+his vigilance shall lead you to shun!"
+
+It was thus not only that his softer feelings, but all the better and
+nobler ones, which even in the worst and hardest bosom find some root,
+turned towards his child, and that the hollow and vicious man promised to
+become the affectionate and perhaps the wise parent.
+
+One night Brandon was returning home on foot from a ministerial dinner.
+The night was frosty and clear, the hour was late, and his way lay
+through the longest and best-lighted streets of the metropolis.  He was,
+as usual, buried in thought, when he was suddenly aroused from his revery
+by a light touch laid on his arm.  He turned, and saw one of the unhappy
+persons who haunt the midnight streets of cities, standing right before
+his path.  The gaze of each fell upon the other; and it was thus, for the
+first time since they laid their heads on the same pillow, that the
+husband met the wife.  The skies were intensely clear, and the lamplight
+was bright and calm upon the faces of both.  There was no doubt in the
+mind of either.  Suddenly, and with a startled and ghastly consciousuess,
+they recognized each other.  The wife staggered, and clung to a post for
+support; Brandon's look was calm and unmoved.  The hour that his bitter
+and malignant spirit had yearned for was come; his nerves expanded in a
+voluptuous calmness, as if to give him a deliberate enjoyment of his hope
+fulfilled.  Whatever the words that in that unwitnessed and almost awful
+interview passed between them, we may be sure that Brandon spared not one
+atom of his power.  The lost and abandoned wife returned home; and all
+her nature, embruted as it had become by guilt and vile habits, hardened
+into revenge,--that preternatural feeling which may be termed the hope of
+despair.
+
+Three nights from that meeting Brandon's house was broken into.  Like the
+houses of many legal men, it lay in a dangerous and thinly populated
+outskirt of the town, and was easily accessible to robbery.  He was
+awakened by a noise; he started, and found himself in the grasp of two
+men.  At the foot of the bed stood a female, raising a light; and her
+face, haggard with searing passions, and ghastly with the leprous
+whiteness of disease and approaching death, glared full upon him.
+
+"It is now my turn," said the female, with a grin of scorn which Brandon
+himself might have envied; "you have cursed me, and I return the curse!
+You have told me that my child shall never name me but to blush.  Fool!
+I triumph over you; you he shall never know to his dying day!  You have
+told me that to my child and my child's child (a long transmission of
+execration) my name--the name of the wife you basely sold to ruin and to
+hell--should be left as a legacy of odium and shame!  Man, you shall
+teach that child no further lesson whatever: you shall know not whether
+he live or die, or have children to carry on your boasted race; or
+whether, if he have, those children be not outcasts of the earth, the
+accursed of man and God, the fit offspring of the thing you have made me.
+Wretch!  I hurl back on you the denunciation with which, when we met
+three nights since, you would have crushed the victim of your own
+perfidy.  You shall tread the path of your ambition childless and
+objectless and hopeless.  Disease shall set her stamp upon your frame.
+The worm shall batten upon your heart.  You shall have honours and enjoy
+them not; you shall gain your ambition, and despair; you shall pine for
+your son, and find him not; or, if you find him, you shall curse the hour
+in which he was born.  Mark me, man,--I am dying while I speak,--I know
+that I am a prophet in my curse.  From this hour I am avenged, and you
+are my scorn!"
+
+As the hardest natures sink appalled before the stony eye of the maniac,
+so, in the dead of the night, pinioned by ruffians, the wild and solemn
+voice, sharpened by passion and partial madness, of the ghastly figure
+before him curdling through his veins, even the haughty and daring
+character of William Brandon quailed!  He uttered not a word.  He was
+found the next morning bound by strong cords to his bed.  He spoke not
+when he was released, but went in silence to his child's chamber,--the
+child was gone!  Several articles of property were also stolen; the
+desperate tools the mother had employed worked not perhaps without their
+own reward.
+
+We need scarcely add that Brandon set every engine and channel of justice
+in motion for the discovery of his son.  All the especial shrewdness and
+keenness of his own character, aided by his professional experience, he
+employed for years in the same pursuit.  Every research was wholly in
+vain; not the remotest vestige towards discovery could be traced until
+were found (we have recorded when) some of the articles that had been
+stolen.  Fate treasured in her gloomy womb, altogether undescried by man,
+the hour and the scene in which the most ardent wish of William Brandon
+was to be realized.
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PAUL CLIFFORD, LYTTON, V6 ***
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