into his words, of the pleasures and the duties of rank and wealth. Well
could he appeal alike to all the prejudices and all the foibles of the
human breast, and govern virtue through its weaknesses. Lucy had been
brought up, like the daughters of most country gentlemen of ancient
family, in an undue and idle consciousness of superior birth; and she was
far from inaccessible to the warmth and even feeling (for here Brandon
was sincere) with which her uncle spoke of the duty of raising a gallant
name sunk into disrepute, and sacrificing our own inclination for the
redecorating the mouldered splendour of those who have gone before us.
If the confusion of idea occasioned by a vague pomposity of phrase, or
the infant inculcation of a sentiment that is mistaken for a, virtue, so
often makes fools of the wise on the subject of ancestry; if it clouded
even the sarcastic and keen sense of Brandon himself, we may forgive its
influence over a girl so little versed in the arts of sound reasoning as
poor Lucy, who, it may be said, had never learned to think until she had
learned to love. However, the impression made by Brandon, in his
happiest moments of persuasion, was as yet only transient; it vanished
before the first thought of Clifford, and never suggested to her even a
doubt as to the suit of Mauleverer.

When the day arrived for Sir William Brandon to set out on the circuit,
he called Barlow, and enjoined on that acute and intelligent servant the
strictest caution with respect to Lucy. He bade him deny her to every
one, of whatever rank, and carefully to look into every newspaper that
was brought to her, as well as to withhold every letter, save such as
were addressed to her in the judge's own handwriting. Lucy's maid
Brandon had already won over to silence; and the uncle now pleased
himself with thinking that he had put an effectual guard to every chance
of discovery. The identity of Lovett with Clifford had not yet even been
rumoured; and Mauleverer had rightly judged of Clifford, when he believed