chairman to the Ways and Means Committee!" cried
Mauleverer. "My mind is now easy; and when once poor Clifford is
gone,--fallen from a high estate,--we may break the matter gently to
her; and as I intend thereon to be very respectful, very delicate, etc.,
she cannot but be sensible of my kindness and real affection!"

"And if a live dog be better than a dead lion," added Brandon, "surely a
lord in existence will be better than a highwayman hanged!"

"According to ordinary logic," rejoined Mauleverer, "that syllogism is
clear enough; and though I believe a girl may cling now and then to the
memory of a departed lover, I do not think she will when the memory is
allied with shame. Love is nothing more than vanity pleased; wound the
vanity, and you destroy the love! Lucy will be forced, after having made
so bad a choice of a lover, to make a good one in a husband, in order to
recover her self-esteem!"

"And therefore you are certain of her!" said Brandon, ironically.

"Thanks to my star,--my garter,--my ancestor, the first baron, and
myself, the first earl,--I hope I am," said Mauleverer; and the
conversation turned. Mauleverer did not stay much longer with the
judge; and Brandon, left alone, recurred once more to the perusal of his
letters.

We scarcely know what sensations it would have occasioned in one who had
known Brandon only in his later years, could he have read those letters
referring to so much earlier a date. There was in the keen and arid
character of the man so little that recalled any idea of courtship
or youthful gallantry that a correspondence of that nature would have
appeared almost as unnatural as the loves of plants, or the amatory
softenings of a mineral. The correspondence now before Brandon was
descriptive of various feelings, but all appertaining to the same class;
most of them were apparent answers to letters from him. One while they
replied tenderly to expressions of tenderness, but intimated a doubt
whether the writer would be able to constitute his future happiness,
and atone for certain sacrifices of birth and fortune and ambitious
prospects, to which she alluded: at other times, a vein of latent
coquetry seemed to pervade the style,--an indescribable air of coolness
and reserve contrasted former passages in the correspondence, and was
calculated to convey to the reader an impression that the feelings
of the lover were not altogether adequately returned. Frequently the
writer, as if Brand