ffer yourself to
become 'stale and cheap to vulgar company.' You are like a man who has
fifty advantages, and uses only one of them to gain his point, when you
rely on your conversation and your manner, and throw away the resources
of your wealth and your station. Any private gentleman may be amiable
and witty; but any private gentleman cannot call to his aid the
Aladdin's lamp possessed in England by a wealthy peer. Look to this,
my dear lord! Lucy at heart is vain, or she is not a woman. Dazzle her,
then,--dazzle! Love may be blind, but it must be made so by excess of
light. You have a country-house within a few miles of Bath. Why not take
up your abode there instead of in a paltry lodging in the town? Give
sumptuous entertainments,--make it necessary for all the world to attend
them,--exclude, of course, this Captain Clifford; you will then meet
Lucy without a rival. At present, excepting only your title, you fight
on a level ground with this adventurer, instead of an eminence from
which you could in an instant sweep him away. Nay, he is stronger than
you; he has the opportunities afforded by a partnership in balls where
you cannot appear to advantage; he is, you say, in the first bloom
of youth, he is handsome. Reflect!--your destiny, so far as Lucy is
concerned, is in your hands. I turn to other subjects," etc. As Brandon
re-read, ere he signed, this last letter, a bitter smile sat on his
harsh yet handsome features. "If," said he, mentally, "I can effect this
object,--if Mauleverer does marry this girl,--why so much the better
that she has another, a fairer, and a more welcome lover. By the great
principle of scorn within me, which has enabled me to sneer at what
weaker minds adore, and make a footstool of that worldly honour which
fools set up as a throne, it would be to me more sweet than fame--ay,
or even than power--to see this fine-spun lord a gibe in the mouths
of men,--a cuckold, a cuckold!" and as he said the last word Brandon
laughed outright. "And he thinks, too," added he, "that he is sure of my
fortune; otherwise, perhaps, he, the goldsmith's descendant, would not
dignify our house with his proposals; but he may err there,--he may err
there," and, finishing his soliloquy, Brandon finished also his letter
by--"Adieu, my dear lord, your most affectionate friend"!

It is not difficult to conjecture the effect produced upon Lucy by
Brandon's letter. It made her wretched; she refused for days to go out;
she