h her father, from some cause or other, had been delayed in the
hall, handed to the carriage by Captain Clifford. Had the earl watched
more narrowly than in the anxious cares due to himself he was enabled
to do, he would, to his consolation, have noted that Lucy gave her hand
with an averted and cool air, and that Clifford's expressive features
bore rather the aspect of mortification than triumph.

He did not, however, see more than the action; and as he was borne
homeward with his flambeaux and footmen preceding him, and the
watchful Smoothson by the side of the little vehicle, he muttered his
determination of writing by the very next post to Brandon all his anger
for Lucy and all his jealousy of her evident lover.

While this doughty resolve was animating the great soul of Mauleverer,
Lucy reached her own room, bolted the door, and throwing herself on her
bed, burst into a long and bitter paroxysm of tears. So unusual were
such visitors to her happy and buoyant temper, that there was something
almost alarming in the earnestness and obstinacy with which she now
wept.

"What!" said she, bitterly, "have I placed my affections upon a man of
uncertain character, and is my infatuation so clear that an acquaintance
dare hint at its imprudence? And yet his manner--his tone! No, no, there
can be no reason for shame in loving him!" And as she said this, her
heart smote her for the coldness of her manner towards Clifford on his
taking leave of her for the evening. "Am I," she thought, weeping yet
more vehemently than before,--"am I so worldly, so base, as to feel
altered towards him the moment I hear a syllable breathed against his
name? Should I not, on the contrary, have clung to his image with a
greater love, if he were attacked by others? But my father, my dear
father, and my kind, prudent uncle,--something is due to them; and they
would break their hearts if I loved one whom they deemed unworthy. Why
should I not summon courage, and tell him of the suspicions respecting
him? One candid word would dispel them. Surely it would be but kind in
me towards him, to give him an opportunity of disproving all false and
dishonouring conjectures. And why this reserve, when so often, by look
and hint, if not by open avowal, he has declared that he loves me, and
knows--he must know--that he is not indifferent to me? Why does he never
speak of his parents, his relations, his home?"

And Lucy, as she asked this question, drew from a bos