enriched its domains, and the summer pomp of wood and heath-land, amidst
which his noonday visions had been nursed.

When he spoke of these scenes and days, his countenance softened, and
something in its expression, recalling to Lucy the image of one still
dearer, made her yearn to him the more. An ice seemed broken from his
mind, and streams of released and gentle feelings, mingled with kindly
and generous sentiment, flowed forth. Suddenly a thought, a word,
brought him back to the present,--his features withered abruptly into
their cold placidity or latent sneer; the seal closed suddenly on the
broken spell, and, like the victim of a fairy-tale, condemned at a stated
hour to assume another shape, the very being you had listened to seemed
vanished, and replaced by one whom you startled to behold. But there was
one epoch of his life on which he was always silent, and that was his
first onset into the actual world,--the period of his early struggle into
wealth and fame. All that space of time seemed as a dark gulf, over
which he had passed, and become changed at once,--as a traveller landing
in a strange climate may adopt, the moment he touches its shore, its
costume and its language.

All men--the most modest--have a common failing; but it is one which
often assumes the domino and mask,--pride! Brandon was, however, proud
to a degree very rare in men who have risen and flourished in the world.
Out of the wrecks of all other feelings this imperial survivor made one
great palace for its residence, and called the fabric "Disdain." Scorn
was the real essence of Brandon's nature; even in the blandest disguises,
the smoothness of his voice, the insinuation of his smile, the popular
and supple graces of his manners, an oily derision floated, rarely
discernible, it is true, but proportioning its strength and quantum to
the calm it produced.