On recovering, she took the hand of the latter in hers, and said, with a smile full of gratitude, joy, and sweetness, “Our first thanks are always due to God, and to him my heart offers them up; but, oh, how feebly!  Thanks to you, also, Lucy, for your kindness; and many thanks for your goodness in giving me the pleasure of knowing you.  I trust that we shall both see and enjoy better and happier days.  Your visit has been propitious to me, and brought, if I may so say, an unexpected dawn of happiness to the widowed mother’s heart.”

Lucy was about to reply, when the old footman came to say that the lady who had accompanied her was waiting below in the chaise.  She accordingly bade her farewell, only for a time she said, and after a tender embrace, she went down to Mrs. Mainwaring who respectfully declined on that occasion to be presented to Lady Gourlay, in consequence of the number of purchases she had yet to make, and the time it would occupy to make them.

CHAPTER XXVIII.  Innocence and Affection overcome by Fraud and Hypocrisy

—­Lucy yields at Last.

Not many minutes after Mrs. Mainwaring’s interview with the baronet, Gibson entered the library, and handed him a letter on which was stamped the Ballytrain postmark.  On looking at it, he paused for a moment: 

“Who the d------ can this come from?” he said.  “I am not aware of having
any particular correspondence at present, in or about Ballytrain.  Here,
however, is a seal; let me see what it is.  What the d------, again? are
these a pair of asses’ ears or wings?  Certainly, if the impression
be correct, the former; and what is here?  A fox.  Very good, perfectly
intelligible; a fox, with a pair of asses’ ears upon him! intimating a
combination of knavery and folly.  ’Gad, this must be from Crackenfudge,
of whom it is the type and exponent.  For a thousand, it contains a list
of his qualifications for the magisterial honors for which he is
so ambitious.  Well, well; I believe every man has an ambition for
something.  Mine is to see my daughter a countess, that she may trample
with velvet slippers on the necks of those who would trample on hers if
she were beneath them.  This fellow, now, who is both slave and tyrant,
will play all sorts of oppressive pranks upon the poor, by whom he knows
that he is despised; and for that very reason, along with others, will
he punish them.  That, however, is, after all, but natural; and on this
very account, curse me, but I shall try and shove the beggarly scoundrel
up to the point of his paltry ambition.  I like ambition.  The man who has
no object of ambition of any kind is unfit for life.  Come, then, wax,
deliver up thy trust.’”

With a dark grin of contempt, and a kind of sarcastic gratification, he perused the document, which ran as follows: