solemnity, not perhaps suited to the rest of the house, but well
calculated to strike a gloomy awe into the breast of the worldly and
proud man who now entered the death-chamber of his brother.

Silently William Brandon motioned away the attendants, and silently he
seated himself by the bed, and looked long and wistfully upon the calm
and placid face of the deceased. It is difficult to guess at what passed
within him during the space of time in which he remained alone in that
room. The apartment itself he could not at another period have tenanted
without secret emotion. It was that in which, as a boy, he had himself
been accustomed to sleep; and, even then a schemer and an aspirant, the
very sight of the room sufficed to call back all the hopes and visions,
the restless projects and the feverish desires, which had now brought
him to the envied state of an acknowledged celebrity and a shattered
frame. There must have been something awful in the combination of those
active remembrances with the cause which had led him to that apartment;
and there was a homily in the serene countenance of the dead, which
preached more effectually to the heart of the living than William
Brandon would ever have cared to own. He had been more than an hour in
the room, and the evening had already begun to cast deep shadows through
the small panes of the half-closed window, when Brandon was startled by
a slight noise. He looked up, and beheld Lucy opposite to him. She did
not see him; but throwing herself upon the bed, she took the cold hand
of the deceased, and after a long silence burst into a passion of tears.

"My father!" she sobbed,--"my kind, good father! who will love me now?"

"I!" said Brandon, deeply affected; and passing round the bed, he took
his niece in his arms: "I will be your father, Lucy, and you--the last
of our race--shall be to me as a daughter!"

CHAPTER XXV.

Falsehood in him was not the useless lie
Of boasting pride or laughing vanity:
It was the gainful, the persuading art, etc.

CRABBE.

On with the horses--off to Canterbury,
Tramp, tramp o'er pebble, and splash, splash thro' puddle;
Hurrah! how swiftly speeds the post so merry!
...............
"Here laws are all inviolate: none lay
Traps for the traveller; every highway's clear;
Here--" he was interrupted by a kn