accommodation; a separate carriage and servants were appropriated to her
use; and he sought, by perpetual presents of books or flowers or music,
to occupy her thoughts, and atone for the solitude to which his
professional duties obliged him so constantly to consign her. These
attentions, which showed this strange man in a new light, seemed to bring
out many little latent amiabilities, which were usually imbedded in the
callosities of his rocky nature; and, even despite her causes for grief
and the deep melancholy which consumed her, Lucy was touched with
gratitude at kindness doubly soothing in one who, however urbane and
polished, was by no means addicted to the little attentions that are
considered so gratifying by women, and yet for which they so often
despise, while they like, him who affords them. There was much in
Brandon that wound itself insensibly around the heart. To one more
experienced than Lucy, this involuntary attraction might not have been
incompatible with suspicion, and could scarcely have been associated with
esteem; and yet for all who knew him intimately, even for the penetrating
and selfish Mauleverer, the attraction existed. Unprincipled, crafty,
hypocritical, even base when it suited his purpose; secretly sneering at
the dupes he made, and knowing no code save that of interest and
ambition; viewing men only as machines, and opinions only as ladders,--
there was yet a tone of powerful feeling sometimes elicited from a heart
that could at the same moment have sacrificed a whole people to the
pettiest personal object: and sometimes with Lucy the eloquence or irony
of his conversation deepened into a melancholy, a half-suppressed
gentleness of sentiment, that accorded with the state of her own mind and
interested her kind feelings powerfully in his. It was these
peculiarities in his converse which made Lucy love to hear him; and she
gradually learned to anticipate with a gloomy pleasure the hour in which,
after the occupations of the day, he was accustomed to join her.