Page:Paul Clifford Vol 3.djvu/10

2 thought for herself—no thought for any one—for any thing but her father, till long after the earth had closed over his remains. The very activity of the latter grief was less dangerous than the quiet of the former; and when the first keenness of sorrow passed away, and her mind gradually and mechanically returned to the remembrance of Clifford, it was with an intensity less strong, and less fatal to her health and happiness than before. She thought it unnatural and criminal to allow any thing else to grieve her, while she had so sacred a grief as that of her loss; and her mind, once aroused into resistance to passion, betrayed a native strength little to have been expected from her apparent character. Sir William Brandon lost no time in returning to town after the burial of his brother. He insisted upon taking his niece with him; and, though with real reluctance, she yielded to his wishes, and accompanied him. By the Squire's will, indeed, Sir William was appointed guardian to Lucy, and she yet wanted more than a year of her majority.

Brandon, with a delicacy very uncommon to him where women (whom he hated) were