Page:Paul Clifford Vol 3.djvu/326

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
318
PAUL CLIFFORD.

close with. And, by the common vicissitudes of Fortune, the estate of the ancient Brandons has now, we perceive by a weekly journal, just passed into the hands of a wealthy Alderman.

It was nearly a year since Brandon's death, when a letter bearing a foreign post-mark came to Lucy. From that time, her spirits, which before, though subject to fits of abstraction, had been even, and subdued,—not sad, rose into all the cheerfulness and vivacity of her earliest youth; she busied herself actively in preparations for her departure from this country, and at length the day was fixed, and the vessel was engaged. Every day till that one, did Lucy walk to the sea-side, and, ascending the highest cliff, spend hours, till the evening closed, in watching with seemingly idle gaze the vessels that interspersed the sea: and with every day her health seemed to strengthen, and the soft and lucid colour she had once worn, to re-bloom upon her cheek.

Previous to her departure, Miss Brandon dismissed her servants, and only engaged one female, a foreigner, to accompany her: a cer-