But loving her, dearly as ever brother loved the dearest sister--cherishing her as the inestimable companion--the faithful friend--almost the guardian angel of his life, Mr Devereux's affection lacked that perfect confidence which "casteth out fear;" for, strange as was the anomaly, from some instinctive sense of weakness and inferiority, he stood in awe of the opinion of that gentle being whose tenderness and devotion to him were almost deferential. Motives of tenderness towards her--a desire to spare her the participation of his corroding cares, had doubtless their share in his ill-starred system of concealment--and having no other confidential friend and adviser, so it was that he became the prey--alas! I fear the victim--of his calculating, unprincipled relation.
I cannot detail to you--for all such are unknown to me--the minute and particular circumstances of those pecuniary transactions between my old friend and Mr Heneage Devereux, which ended in results so fatal to the former; but I have reason to believe that Mr Heneage, who had accumulated considerable wealth in mercantile speculations, found means in the first place to possess himself of certain bond debts and considerable mortgages on the property, incurred by the father and grandfather of Mr Devereux, as the pressure of the times or untoward casualties forced upon them the alternative of so burdening the family property, or the more energetic measure of wise and timely retrenchment. Mr Devereux's legal adviser was undoubtedly in the interest of his speculating kinsman, whose primary object was to secure to himself the reversion of the family property, the entail of which ended with the late possessors. And Mr Heneage was well aware that he had no chance of being voluntarily selected as the heir of the Devereuxs.
Not only had there been a long-subsisting estrangement between the ancient stock and that distant branch from which Mr Heneage derived his descent, though a frigid intercourse was formally kept up by visits at stated periods, and letters of ceremony as occasion called for them; but on the part of the late Mr Devereux there was evidently a degree of instinctive repugnance towards his distant relation, which would have amounted to aversion, had his kindly and gentle nature been capable of so unchristian-like a feeling. No two characters could have been more dissimilar than these two kinsmen. I have already dwelt affectionately on the amiability of Mr Devereux. I have also touched on its slight alloy--a degree of moral weakness, in part doubtless inherent in his nature, but which, from the circumstances of his life and long indulgence of his tastes and feelings, had grown into constitutional infirmity, which made him an easy prey to the bold and designing.