ABSTRACT
The curtain meditations of the Squire had not been without the produce of a resolve. His warm heart once re-opened to the liking he had formerly conceived for Clifford; he longed for an opportunity to atone for his past unkindness, and to testify his present gratitude; moreover, he felt at once indignant at, and ashamed of, his late conduct in joining the popular, and, as he now fully believed, the causeless prepossession against his young friend, and before a more present and a stronger sentiment, his habitual deference for his brother’s counsels faded easily away. Coupled with these favourable feelings towards Clifford, were his sagacious suspicions, or rather certainty, of Lucy’s attachment to her handsome deliverer; and he had at least sufficient penetration to perceive that she was not likely to love him the less for the night’s adventure. To all this was added the tender recollection of his wife’s parting words; and the tears and tell-tale agitation of Lucy in the carriage were sufficient to his simple mind, which knew not how lightly maiden’s tears are shed and dried, to confirm the prediction of the dear deceased. Nor were the Squire’s more generous and kindly feelings utterly unmixed with selfish considerations. Proud, but not the least ambitious, he was always more ready to confer an honour than receive one, and at heart he was secretly glad at the notion of exchanging, as a son-in-law, the polished and unfamiliar 303 Mauleverer for the agreeable and social Clifford. Such in ‘admired disorder’ 304 were the thoughts which rolled through the teeming brain of Joseph Brandon, and before he had turned on his left side – which he always did preparatory to surrendering himself to slumber – the Squire had fully come to a determination most fatal to the schemes of the Lawyer and the hopes of the Earl.
