ency, and there was a pause of several minutes.
Sir William then, mastering the strange feeling which made him always
rejoice in whatever threw ridicule on his friend, approached, laid his
hand kindly on Mauleverer's shoulder, and talked to him of comfort and
of encouragement. The reader will believe that Mauleverer was not a man
whom it was impossible to encourage.

CHAPTER XXX.

Before he came, everything loved me, and I had more things to love
than I could reckon by the hairs of my head. Now I feel I can love
but one, and that one has deserted me.... Well, be it so,--
let her perish, let her be anything but mine!--Melmoth.

Early the next morning Sir William Brandon was closeted for a long time
with his niece, previous to his departure to the duties of his office.
Anxious and alarmed for the success of one of the darling projects of
his ambition, he spared no art in his conversation with Lucy, that his
great ingenuity of eloquence and wonderful insight into human nature
could suggest, in order to gain at least a foundation for the raising
of his scheme. Among other resources of his worldly tact, he hinted at
Lucy's love for Clifford; and (though darkly and subtly, as befitting
the purity of the one he addressed) this abandoned and wily person did
not scruple to hint also at the possibility of indulging that love after
marriage; though he denounced, as the last of indecorums, the crime
of encouraging it before. This hint, however, fell harmless upon the
innocent ear of Lucy. She did not in the remotest degree comprehend its
meaning; she only, with a glowing cheek and a pouting lip, resented
the allusion to a love which she thought it insolent in any one even to
suspect.

When Brandon left the apartment, his brow was clouded, and his eye
absent and thoughtful: it was evident that there had been little in the
conference with his niece to please or content him. Miss Brandon herself
was greatly agitated; for there was in her uncle's nature that silent
and impressive secret of influencing or commanding others which almost
so invariably and yet so quietly attains the wishes of its owner; and
Lucy, who loved and admired him sincerely,--not the less, perhaps, for
a certain modicum of fear,--was greatly grieved at perceiving how
rooted in him was the desire of that marriage which she felt was a moral
impossibility. But if Brandon possessed the secret of sway, Lucy was
scarcely less singularly en