“When it is done, and when you have the money in your hand to show us, I shall believe you,” said my aunt; “and then, and not till then, you may begin to think of my Lucy.”
“He shall never have her,” said my uncle; “he will never come to good. He shall never have her.”
The time which I ought to have spent in composing my quarto I now wasted in fruitless endeavours to recover the good graces of my uncle. Love, assisted as usual by the spirit of opposition, took possession of my heart; and how can a man in love write quartos? I became more indolent than ever, for I persuaded myself that no exertions could overcome my uncle’s prejudice against me; and, without his approbation, I despaired of ever obtaining Lucy’s hand.
During my stay at my uncle’s, I received several letters from my father, inquiring how my work went on, and urging me to proceed as rapidly as possible, lest another “Voyage to China,” which it was reported a gentleman of high reputation was now composing, should come out, and preclude mine for ever. I cannot account for my folly: the power of habit is imperceptible to those who submit passively to its tyranny. From day to day I continued procrastinating and sighing, till at last the fatal news came that Sir George Staunton’s History of the Embassy to China, in two volumes quarto, was actually published.
There was an end of all my hopes. I left my uncle’s house in despair; I dreaded to see my father. He overwhelmed me with well-merited reproaches. All his expectations of my success in life were disappointed; he was now convinced that I should never make my talents useful to myself or to my family. A settled melancholy appeared in his countenance; he soon ceased to urge me to any exertion, and I idled away my time, deploring that I could not marry my Lucy, and resolving upon a thousand schemes for advancing myself, but always delaying their execution till to-morrow.
CHAPTER III.
Two years passed away in this manner, about the end of which time my poor father died. I cannot describe the mixed sensations of grief and self-reproach which I felt at his death. I knew that I had never fulfilled his sanguine prophecies, and that disappointment had long preyed upon his spirits. This was a severe shock to me: I was roused from a state of stupefaction by the necessity of acting as my father’s executor.
Among his bequests was one which touched me particularly, because I was sensible that it was made from kindness to me. “I give and bequeath the full-length picture of my son Basil, taken when a boy (a very promising boy) at Eton school, to my brother Lowe—I should say to my sweet niece, Lucy Lowe, but am afraid of giving offence.”