The baronet understood her feelings, and regretted the words he had uttered, but he resolved to bear the matter out.

“Don’t be surprised, Lucy,” he added, “nor alarmed at these sentiments; for I tell you, that rather than be defeated in the object I propose for your elevation in life, I would trample a thousand times upon all the moral obligations that ever bound man.  Put it down to what you like—­insanity—­monomania, if you will—­but so it is with me:  I shall work my purpose out, or either of us shall die for it; and from this you may perceive how likely your resistance and obduracy are to become available against the determination of such a man as I am.  Compose yourself, girl, and don’t be a fool.  The only way to get properly through life is to accommodate ourselves to its necessities, or, in other words, to have shrewdness and common sense, and foil the world, if we can, at its own weapons.  Give up your fine sentiment, I desire you, and go down to the drawing-room, to receive your brother; hem will be here very soon.  I am going to the assizes, and shall not return till about four o’clock.  Come, come, all will end better than you imagine.”

The mention of her brother was anything but a comfort to Lucy.  Her father at first entertained apprehensions, as we have already said, that this promising youth might support his sister in her aversion against the marriage.  Two or three conversations on the subject soon undeceived him, however, in the view he had taken of his character; and Lucy herself now dreaded him, on this subject, almost as much as she did her father.

With respect to this same brother, it is scarcely necessary now to say, that Lucy’s feelings had undergone a very considerable change.  On hearing that he not only was in existence, but that she would soon actually behold him, her impassioned imagination painted him as she wished and hoped he might prove to be—­that is, in the first place—­tall, elegant, handsome, and with a strong likeness to the mother whom he had been said so much to resemble; and, in the next—­oh, how her trembling heart yearned to find him affectionate, tender, generous, and full of all those noble and manly virtues on which might rest a delightful sympathy, a pure and generous affection, and a tender and trusting confidence between them.  On casting her eyes upon him for the first time, however, she felt at the moment like one disenchanted, or awakening from some delightful illusion to a reality so much at variance with the beau ideal of her imagination, as to occasion a feeling of disappointment that amounted almost to pain.  There stood before her a young man, with a countenance so like her father’s, that the fact startled her.  Still there was a difference, for—­whether from the consciousness of birth, or authority, or position in life—­there was something in her father’s features that redeemed them from absolute vulgarity.  Here, however, although the resemblance was extraordinary,