tor, the first baron, and myself, the first earl,—I hope I am!" said Mauleverer, and the conversation turned. Mauleverer did not stay much longer with the Judge; and Brandon, left alone, recurred once more to the perusal of his letters.
We scarcely know what sensations it would have occasioned in one who had known Brandon only in his later years, could he have read these letters, referring to so much earlier a date. There was in the keen, and, if we may so say, the arid character of the man, so little that recalled any idea of courtship or youthful gallantry, that a correspondence of that nature would have appeared almost as unnatural as the fictitious loves of plants, or the amatory softenings of a mineral. The correspondence now before Brandon was descriptive of various feelings, but all appertaining to the same class: most of them were apparent answers to letters from him. One while, they replied tenderly to expressions of tenderness, but intimated a doubt whether the writer would be able to constitute his future happiness, and atone for certain sacrifices of birth and fortune, and ambitious prospects, to which she alluded: at other
