Does it not strike
you, sir, that it might be to make way for this person that my
legitimate brother was removed long ago? And I have also heard yourself
say frequently, while talking of my brother, how extremely like mamma
and me he was."
"There is no doubt he was," replied her father, somewhat struck by the
force of her observations; "and I was myself a good deal surprised
at the change which must have taken place in him since his childhood.
However, you know he accounted for this himself very fairly and very
naturally."
"Very ingeniously, at least," she replied; "with more of ingenuity, I
fear, than truth. Now, sir, hear me further. You are aware that I never
liked those Corbets, who have been always so deeply, and, excuse me,
sir, so mysteriously in your confidence."
"Yes, Lucy, I know you never did; but that is a prejudice you inherited
from your mother."
"I appeal to your own conscience, sir, whether mamma's prejudice against
them was not just and well founded. Yet it was not so much prejudice as
the antipathy which good bears to evil, honesty to fraud, and truth
to darkness, dissimulation, and falsehood.
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