hfulness, exactness in all affairs, were not only
instinctive, but deliberate; for the pride of her birth was so great
that she felt it incumbent upon her to be ten times more careful in
these things than the ordinary run of men.

And then, from a word here and a word there, by horrified guesses and by
a kind of instinctive surmise, she realised presently the whole truth of
her father's life. She found out that Hamlyn's Purlieu was mortgaged
for every penny it was worth, she found out that there was a bill of
sale on the furniture, that money had been raised on the pictures; and,
at last, that her mother's money, left in her father's trust to her and
George, had been spent. And still Fred Allerton lived with prodigal
magnificence.

It was only very gradually that Lucy discovered these things. There was
no one whom she could consult, and she had to devise some mode of
conduct by herself. It was all a matter of supposition, and she knew
almost nothing for certain. She made up her mind that she would probe no
deeper. But since such knowledge as she had came to her only by degrees,
she was able the better to adapt her behaviour to it. The pride which
for so long had been a characteristic of the Allertons, but had
unaccountably missed Fred, in her enjoyed all its force; and what she
knew now served only to augment it. In the ruin of her ideals she had
nothing but that to cling to, and she cherished it with an unreasoning
passion. She had a cult for the ancestors whose portraits looked down
upon her in one room after another of Hamlyn's Purlieu, and from their
names and the look of them, which was all that remained, she made them
in her fancy into personalities whose influence might somehow counteract
the weakness of her father. In them there was so much uprightness,
strength, and simple goodness; the sum total of it must prevail in the
long run against the unruly instincts of one man. And she loved her old
home, with all its exquisite contents, with its rich gardens, its broad,
fertile fields, above all with its wild heath and flat sea-marshes, she
loved it with a hungry devotion, saddened and yet more vehement because
her hold on it was jeopardised. She set the whole strength of her will
on preserving the place for her brother. Her greatest desire was to fill
him with the determination to reclaim it from the foreign hands that had
some hold upon it, and to restore it to its ancient freedom.

Upon George were set all Lucy'