as high and as enviable as that which he had acquired for abilities.

While William was thus treading a noted and an honourable career, his
elder brother, who had married into a clergyman's family, and soon lost
his consort, had with his only child, a daughter named Lucy, resided in
his paternal mansion in undisturbed obscurity. The discreditable
character and habits of the preceding lords of Warlock, which had sunk
their respectability in the county as well as curtailed their property,
had rendered the surrounding gentry little anxious to cultivate the
intimacy of the present proprietor; and the heavy mind and retired
manners of Joseph Brandon were not calculated to counterbalance the
faults of his forefathers, nor to reinstate the name of Brandon in its
ancient popularity and esteem. Though dull and little cultivated, the
squire was not without his "proper pride;" he attempted not to intrude
himself where he was unwelcome, avoided county meetings and county balls,
smoked his pipe with the parson, and not unoften with the surgeon and the
solicitor, and suffered his daughter Lucy to educate herself with the
help of the parson's wife, and to ripen (for Nature was more favourable
to her than Art) into the very prettiest girl that the whole county--we
long to say the whole country--at that time could boast of. Never did
glass give back a more lovely image than that of Lucy Brandon at the age
of nineteen. Her auburn hair fell in the richest luxuriance over a brow
never ruffled, and a cheek where the blood never slept; with every
instant the colour varied, and at every variation that smooth, pure;
virgin cheek seemed still more lovely than before. She had the most
beautiful laugh that one who loved music could imagine,--silvery, low,
and yet so full of joy! All her movements, as the old parson said,
seemed to keep time to that laugh, for mirth made a great part of her
innocent and childish temper; and yet the mirth was feminine, never loud,
nor like that of young ladies who had received the last finish at