fate; she has
seen her sister an exile from my house. Why? For no fault of hers, poor
thing, but because she is the child of disgrace, and the mother's sin is
visited on her daughter's head. I am a good-natured man, I fancy, as
men go; but I am old-fashioned enough to care for my race. If Lucretia
demeaned herself to love, to encourage, that lad, why, I would strike
her from my will, and put your name where I have placed hers."

"Sir," said Vernon, gravely, and throwing aside all affectation of
manner, "this becomes serious; and I have no right even to whisper a
doubt by which it now seems I might benefit. I think it imprudent, if
you wish Miss Clavering to regard me impartially as a suitor to her
hand, to throw her, at her age, in the way of a man far superior to
myself, and to most men, in personal advantages,--a man more of her own
years, well educated, well mannered, with no evidence of his inferior
birth in his appearance or his breeding. I have not the least ground for
supposing that he has made the slightest impression on Miss Clavering,
and if he has, it would be, perhaps, but a girl's innocent and
thoughtless fancy, easily shaken off by time and worldly reflection; but
pardon me if I say bluntly that should that be so, you would be wholly
unjustified in punishing, even in blaming, her,--it is yourself you must
blame for your own carelessness and that forgetful blindness to human
nature and youthful emotions which, I must say, is the less pardonable
in one who has known the world so intimately."

"Charles Vernon," said the old baronet, "give me your hand again! I was
right, at least, when I said you had the heart of a true gentleman. Drop
this subject for the present. Who has just left Lucretia yonder?"

"Your protege, the Frenchman."

"Ah, he, at least, is not blind; go and join Lucretia!"

Vernon bowed, emptied the remains of the Madeira into a tumbler, drank
the contents at a draught, and sauntered towards Lucretia; but she,
perceiving his approach, crossed abruptly into one of the alleys that
led to the other side of the house, and he was either too indifferent or
too well-bred to force upon her the companionship which she so evidently
shunned. He threw himself at length upon one of the benches on the lawn,
and leaning his head upon his hand, fell into reflections which, had he
spoken, would have shaped themselves somewhat thus into words:--

"If I must take that girl as the price of this fair heritage