"As if you could not sooner disown your own personality! I am
indispensable to the old lady's happiness, Lucy. She would pine away
in green and yellow melancholy if she had not my six feet of iniquity
to scold. It keeps her lively--it maintains the wholesome ferment of
her spirits."
The two were now standing opposite to each other, one on each side the
fire-place; their words were not very fond, but their mutual looks
atoned for verbal deficiencies. At least, the best treasure of Mrs.
Bretton's life was certainly casketed in her son's bosom; her dearest
pulse throbbed in his heart. As to him, of course another love shared
his feelings with filial love, and, no doubt, as the new passion was
the latest born, so he assigned it in his emotions Benjamin's portion.
Ginevra! Ginevra! Did Mrs. Bretton yet know at whose feet her own
young idol had laid his homage? Would she approve that choice? I could
not tell; but I could well guess that if she knew Miss Fanshawe's
conduct towards Graham: her alternations between coldness and coaxing,
and repulse and allurement; if she could at all suspect the pain with
which she had tried him; if she could have seen, as I had seen, his
fine spirits subdued and harassed, his inferior preferred before him,
his subordinate made the instrument of his humiliation--_then_
Mrs. Bretton would have pronounced Ginevra imbecile, or perverted, or
both. Well--I thought so too.
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