She was the daughter of a former clergyman of
Mycening, the little town which is almost at our park-gates. She was
always confined to the house by rheumatic-gout. She had grown up
with my brothers. I sometimes wondered if she had not had a little
tenderness for one of them, but I believe it was almost elder-
sisterly. She told me much in their excuse. My father had never
been the fond, indulgent father to them that I remembered him, but a
strict, stern authority when he was at home, and when he was absent
leaving them far too much to their own devices; while Prometesky was
a very attractive person, brilliant, accomplished, full of fire and
of faith in his theories of universal benevolence and emancipation.
She thought, if the times had not been such as to bring them into
action, Ambrose would have outgrown and modified all that was
dangerous in his theories, and that they would have remained mere
talk, the ebullition of his form of knight-errantry; for it was
generous indignation and ardour that chiefly led him astray, and
Eustace was always his double: but there were some incidents at the
time which roused him to fury. Lewthwayte was a Cumberland man, who
had inherited the stock and the last years of a lease of a farm on
Lord Erymanth's property; he had done a good deal for it, and
expended money on the understanding that he should have the lease
renewed, but he was a man of bold, independent northern tongue, and
gave great offence to his lordship, who was used to be listened to
with a sort of feudal deference.
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