"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?"
"Of course it is. I told you so. What other object can I have?"
"Then, if you saw me wretched, and degraded in my own eyes, your heart
would bleed for your poor niece--too late. Well, uncle, I love you,
too, and I save you this day from remorse.
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