Lucy was in evident agitation, and the blushes glowed more and more round her snowy hands and between her delicate fingers; and there is something so sacred about the modesty alarmed of an intelligent young woman—­it is a feeling which, however fantastical, is so genuine in her, and so manifestly intense beyond all we can ourselves feel of the kind, that no man who is not utterly stupid or depraved can see it without a certain awe.  Even Mr. Fountain, who looked on Lucy’s distress as transcendent folly with a dash of hypocrisy, could not go on making her cheek burn so.  “There! there!” cried he, “don’t torment yourself, Lucy.  I will spare your fanciful delicacy, though you have no pity on me—­on your poor old uncle, whose heart you will break if you decline this match.”

At these words, and the old man’s change from anger to sadness, Lucy looked up in dismay, and the vivid color died, like a retiring wave, out of her cheek.

“You look surprised, Lucy.  What! do you think this will not be a heartbreaking disappointment to me?  If you knew how I have schemed for it—­what I have done and endured to bring it about!  To quarter the arms of Fontaine and Talboys!  I put by the 5,000 pounds directly, and as much more of my own, that you should not go into that noble family without a proper settlement.  It was the dream of my heart; I could have died contented the next hour.  More fool I to care for anybody but myself.  Your selfish people escape these bitter disappointments.  Well, it is a lesson.  From this hour I will live for myself and care for nobody, for nobody cares for me.”

These words, uttered with great agitation, and, I believe, with perfect sincerity, on his own unselfishness and hard fate, were terrible to Lucy.  She wreathed her arms suddenly round him.

“Oh, uncle,” she cried, despairingly, “kill me! send me to Heaven! send me to my mother, but don’t stab me with such bitter words;” and she trembled with an emotion so much more powerful and convulsing than his, in which temper had a large share, that she once more cowed him.

“There! there!” he muttered, “I don’t want to kill you, child, God knows, or to hurt you in any way.”

Lucy trembled, and tried to smile.  The good nature, which was the upper crust of this man’s character, got the better of him.

“There! there! don’t distress yourself so.  I know who I have to thank for all this.”

“She has not the power,” said Lucy, in a faint voice, “to make me ungrateful to you.”

Mind is more rapid than lightning.  At this moment, in the middle of a sentence, it flashed across Lucy that her aunt had convinced her, sore against her will, that there was a strong element of selfishness in Mr. Fountain.  “But it is that he deceives himself,” thought Lucy.  “He would sacrifice my happiness to his hobby, and think he has done it for love of me.”  Enlightened by this rapid reflection, she did not say to him as one of his own sex would, “Look in your own heart, and you will see that all this is not love of me, but of your own schemes.”  Oh, dear, no, that would not have been the woman.  She took him round the neck, and, fixing her sapphire eyes lovingly on his, she said, “It is for love of me you set your heart on this great match?  You wish to see me well settled in the world, and, above all, happy?”