your veins. You are sprung from a once noble, but a fallen race. Are
you ever susceptible to the weakness of ancestral pride?"

"You say," answered Lucy, "that we should care not for those who live
after us; much less, I imagine, should we care for those who have lived
ages before!"

"Prettily answered," said Brandon, smiling. "I will tell you at one time
or another what effect that weakness you despise already once had, long
after your age, upon me. You are early wise on some points; profit by my
experience, and be so on all."

"That is to say, in despising all men and all things!" said Lucy, also
smiling.

"Well, never mind my creed,--you may be wise after your own; but trust
one, dearest Lucy, who loves you purely and disinterestedly, and who has
weighed with scales balanced to a hair all the advantages to be gleaned
from an earth in which I verily think the harvest was gathered before we
were put into it,--trust me, Lucy, and never think love, that maiden's
dream, so valuable as rank and power: pause well before you yield to the
former; accept the latter the moment they are offered you. Love puts you
at the feet of another, and that other a tyrant; rank puts others at your
feet, and all those thus subjected are your slaves!"

Lucy moved her chair so that the new position concealed her face, and did
not answer; and Brandon, in an altered tone, continued,--

"Would you think, Lucy, that I once was fool enough to imagine that love
was a blessing, and to be eagerly sought for? I gave up my hopes, my