on their confused disquietude with the pallid
frowns of envy: he would insult poor Charles before her, in hope to
humble him in her esteem; but mild and Christian patience made her
see him as a martyr: he would even cast rude slights on her whom he
professed to love, with the view of raising his brother's chastened wrath,
but was forced to quail and sneak away beneath her quick indignant
glance, ere her more philosophical lover had time to expostulate with
the cowardly savage.
Meanwhile, what were the parents about? The general had given out,
indeed, that he had brought Emily over for schooling; but he seemed so
fond of her (in fact, she was the only thing to prove he wore a heart),
that he never could resolve upon sending her away from, what she now
might well call, home. Often, in some strange dialect of Hindostan, did
they converse together, of old times and distant shores; none but Emily
might read him to sleep--none but Emily wake him in the morning with
a kiss--none but Emily dare approach him in his gouty torments--none
but Emily had any thing like intimate acquaintance with that moody
iron-hearted man.
As to his sons, or the two young men he might presume to be his sons, he
neither knew them, nor cared to know. Bare civilities, as between man
and man, constituted all which their intercourse amounted to: what were
those young fellows, stout or slim, to him? mere accidents of a
soldier's gallantries and of an ill-assorted marriage. He neither had,
nor wished to have, any sympathies with them: Julian might be as bad as
he pleased, and Charles as good, for any thing the general seemed to
heed: they could not dive with him into the past, and the sports of
Hindostan: they reminded him, simply, of his wife, for pleasures of
Memory; of the grave, for pleasures of Hope: he was older when he looked
at them: and they seemed to him only living witnesses of his folly as
lieutenant, in the choice of Mrs. Tracy. I will not take upon myself to
say, that he had any occasion to congratulate himself on the latter
reminiscence.
So he quickly acquiesced in Julian's wish for a commission, and
entirely approved of Charles's college schemes. After next September,
the funds should be forthcoming: not but that he was rich enough, and
to spare, any month in the year: but he would be vastly richer then,
from prize-money, or some such luck. It was more prudent to delay
until September.
With reference to Emily--no, no--I could see a
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