Page:Paul Clifford Vol 3.djvu/16

8 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