y found at times analogous to her own vivid and
generous self. This was, however, only noticeable when she led him to
talk over earlier days, and when by degrees the sarcastic lawyer forgot
the present, and grew eloquent, not over the actions, but the feelings
of the past. He would speak to her for hours of his youthful dreams, his
occupations, or his projects, as a boy. Above all, he loved to converse
with her upon Warlock, its remains of ancient magnificence, the green
banks of the placid river that enriched its domains, and the summer
pomp of wood and heath-land, amidst which his noonday visions had been
nursed.

When he spoke of these scenes and days, his countenance softened, and
something in its expression, recalling to Lucy the image of one still
dearer, made her yearn to him the more. An ice seemed broken from his
mind, and streams of released and gentle feelings, mingled with kindly
and generous sentiment, flowed forth. Suddenly a thought, a word,
brought him back to the present,--his features withered abruptly into
their cold placidity or latent sneer; the seal closed suddenly on the
broken spell, and, like the victim of a fairy-tale, condemned at a
stated hour to assume another shape, the very being you had listened to
seemed vanished, and replaced by one whom you startled to behold. But
there was one epoch of his life on which he was always silent, and that
was his first onset into the actual world,--the period of his early
struggle into wealth and fame. All that space of time seemed as a
dark gulf, over which he had passed, and become changed at once,--as a
traveller landing in a strange climate may adopt, the moment he touches
its shore, its costume and its language.

All men--the most modest--have a common failing; but it is one which
often assumes the domino and mask,--pride! Brandon was, however, proud
to a degree very rare in men who have risen and flourished in the world.
Out of the wrecks of all other feelings this imperial survivor made one
great palace for its residence, and called the fabric "Disdain."
Scorn was the real essence of Brandon's nature; even in the blandest
disguises, the smoothness of his voice, the insinuation of his smile,
the popular and supple graces of his manners, an oily derision floated,
rarely discernible, it is true, but proportioning its strength and
quantum to the calm it produced.

In the interim, while his character thus displayed and contradicted
itself in private l