, and yet for which they so
often despise, while they like, him who affords them. There was much
in Brandon that wound itself insensibly around the heart. To one more
experienced than Lucy, this involuntary attraction might not have been
incompatible with suspicion, and could scarcely have been associated
with esteem; and yet for all who knew him intimately, even for
the penetrating and selfish Mauleverer, the attraction existed.
Unprincipled, crafty, hypocritical, even base when it suited his
purpose; secretly sneering at the dupes he made, and knowing no code
save that of interest and ambition; viewing men only as machines, and
opinions only as ladders,--there was yet a tone of powerful feeling
sometimes elicited from a heart that could at the same moment have
sacrificed a whole people to the pettiest personal object: and sometimes
with Lucy the eloquence or irony of his conversation deepened into a
melancholy, a half-suppressed gentleness of sentiment, that accorded
with the state of her own mind and interested her kind feelings
powerfully in his. It was these peculiarities in his converse which made
Lucy love to hear him; and she gradually learned to anticipate with a
gloomy pleasure the hour in which, after the occupations of the day, he
was accustomed to join her.

"You look unwell, uncle, to-night," she said, when one evening he
entered the room with looks more fatigued than usual; and rising, she
leaned tenderly over him, and kissed his forehead.

"Ay!" said Brandon, utterly unwon by, and even unheeding, the caress,
"our way of life soon passes into the sear and yellow leaf; and when
Macbeth grieved that he might not look to have that which should
accompany old age, he had grown doting, and grieved for what was
worthless."

"Nay, uncle, 'honour, love, obedience, troops of friends,' these surely
were worth the sighing for?"

"Pooh! not worth a single sigh! The foolish wishes we form in youth have
something noble and something bodily in them; but those of age are utter
shadows, and the shadows of pygmies! Why, what is honour, after all?
What is this good name among men? Only a sort of heathenish idol, set
up to be adored by one set of fools and scorned by another. Do you not
observe, Lucy, that the man you hear most praised by the party you meet
to-day is most abused by that which you meet to-morrow? Public men are
only praised by their party; and their party, sweet Lucy, are such base
minions that it moves o