his corporeal treasure in his _roquelaire_ of sables, previous to
immersing himself in his chair, he had the mortification of seeing Lucy,
who with her father, from some cause or other, had been delayed in the
hall, handed to the carriage by Captain Clifford. Had the earl watched
more narrowly than in the anxious cares due to himself he was enabled to
do, he would, to his consolation, have noted that Lucy gave her hand with
an averted and cool air, and that Clifford's expressive features bore
rather the aspect of mortification than triumph.

He did not, however, see more than the action; and as he was borne
homeward with his flambeaux and footmen preceding him, and the watchful
Smoothson by the side of the little vehicle, he muttered his
determination of writing by the very next post to Brandon all his
anger for Lucy and all his jealousy of her evident lover.

While this doughty resolve was animating the great soul of Mauleverer,
Lucy reached her own room, bolted the door, and throwing herself on her
bed, burst into a long and bitter paroxysm of tears. So unusual were
such visitors to her happy and buoyant temper, that there was something
almost alarming in the earnestness and obstinacy with which she now wept.

"What!" said she, bitterly, "have I placed my affections upon a man of
uncertain character, and is my infatuation so clear that an acquaintance
dare hint at its imprudence? And yet his manner--his tone! No, no,
there can be no reason for shame in loving him!" And as she said this,
her heart smote her for the coldness of her manner towards Clifford on
his taking leave of her for the evening. "Am I," she thought, weeping
yet more vehemently than before,--"am I so worldly, so base, as to feel
altered towards him the moment I hear a syllable breathed against his
name? Should I not, on the contrary, have clung to his image with a