all to the same purpose, and for the furtherance of the same design. His
letter to his brother was not less artful. He told him at once that
Lucy's preference of the suit of a handsome fortune-hunter was the public
talk, and besought him to lose not a moment in quelling the rumour. "You
may do so easily," he wrote, "by avoiding the young man; and should he be
very importunate, return at once to Warlock. Your daughter's welfare
must be dearer to you than anything."

To Mauleverer, Brandon replied by a letter which turned first on public
matters, and then slid carelessly into the subject of the earl's
information.

Among the admonitions which he ventured to give Mauleverer, he dwelt,
not without reason, on the want of tact displayed by the earl in not
manifesting that pomp and show which his station in life enabled him to
do. "Remember," he urged, "you are not among your equals, by whom
unnecessary parade begins to be considered an ostentatious vulgarity.
The surest method of dazzling our inferiors is by splendour, not taste.
All young persons--all women in particular--are caught by show, and
enamoured of magnificence. Assume a greater state, and you will be more
talked of; and notoriety wins a woman's heart more than beauty or youth.
You have, forgive me, played the boy too long; a certain dignity becomes
your manhood; women will not respect you if you suffer yourself to become
'stale and cheap to vulgar company.' You are like a man who has fifty
advantages, and uses only one of them to gain his point, when you rely on
your conversation and your manner, and throw away the resources of your
wealth and your station. Any private gentleman may be amiable and witty;
but any private gentleman cannot call to his aid the Aladdin's lamp
possessed in England by a wealthy peer. Look to this, my dear lord!
Lucy at heart is vain, or she is not a woman. Dazzle her, then,--dazzle!