“Are you belied, then?” said Lucy, pointing to a newspaper, the organ of the party opposed to Brandon: “are you belied when you are here called 'ambitious'? When they call you 'selfish' and 'grasping,' I know they wrong you; but I confess that I have thought you ambitious; yet can he who despises men desire their good opinion?”
“Their good opinion!” repeated Brandon, mockingly: “do we want the bray of the asses we ride? No!” he resumed, after a pause. “It is power, not honour; it is the hope of elevating oneself in every respect, in the world without as well as in the world of one's own mind: it is this hope which makes me labour where I might rest, and will continue the labour to my grave. Lucy,” continued Brandon, fixing his keen eyes on his niece, “have you no ambition,—have power and pomp and place no charm for your mind?”
“None!” said Lucy, quietly and simply.
“Indeed! yet there are times when I have thought I recognized my blood in your veins. You are sprung from a once noble, but a fallen race. Are you ever susceptible to the weakness of ancestral pride?”
“You say,” answered Lucy, “that we should care not for those who live after us; much less, I imagine, should we care for those who have lived ages before!”
“Prettily answered,” said Brandon, smiling. “I will tell you at one time or another what effect that weakness you despise already once had, long after your age, upon me. You are early wise on some points; profit by my experience, and be so on all.”
“That is to say, in despising all men and all things!” said Lucy, also smiling.
“Well, never mind my creed,—you may be wise after your own; but trust one, dearest Lucy, who loves you purely and disinterestedly, and who has weighed with scales balanced to a hair all the advantages to be gleaned from an earth in which I verily think the harvest was gathered before we were put into it,—trust me, Lucy, and never think love, that maiden's dream, so valuable as rank and power: pause well before you yield to the former; accept the latter the moment they are offered you. Love puts you at the feet of another, and that other a tyrant; rank puts others at your feet, and all those thus subjected are your slaves!”
Lucy moved her chair so that the new position concealed her face, and did not answer; and Brandon, in an altered tone, continued,—
“Would you think, Lucy, that I once was fool enough to imagine that love was a blessing, and to be eagerly sought for? I gave up my hopes, my chances of wealth, of distinction,—all that had burned from the years of boyhood into my very heart. I chose poverty, obscurity, humiliation; but I chose also love. What was my reward? Lucy Brandon, I was deceived,—deceived!”