And there can be no doubt that, but for the intervention of personal feelings, it would have been an easy thing enough to do. If there had been no right and wrong involved, no personal advantage or loss, how very simple a matter to make this youth, who had such perfect confidence in him, believe as he pleased; and how easy after to make much of young Powys, to advance him, to provide for him--to do a great deal better for him, in short, than he could do for himself with old Mrs. Thomson’s fifty thousand pounds! If there was no right and wrong involved! Mr. Brownlow walked on and on as he thought, and never once observed the length of the way. One thing in the world he could not do--that was, to take away all the sweet indulgences with which he had surrounded her, the delights, the luxuries, the position, from his child. He could not reduce Sara to be Brownlow the solicitor’s daughter in the dark old-fashioned house at Masterton. He went over all her pretty ways to himself as he went on. He saw her gliding about the great house which seemed her natural sphere. He saw her receiving his guests, people who would not have known her, or would at least have patronized her from a very lofty distance, had she been in that house at Masterton; he saw her rolling forth in her pretty carriage with the grays, which were the envy of the county. All these matters were things for which, in his own person, John Brownlow cared not a straw. He did not care even to secure them for his son, who was a man and had his profession, and was no better than himself; but Sara--and then the superb little princess she was to the rest of the world! the devoted little daughter she was to him! Words of hers came somehow dropping into his ears as the twilight breathed around him. How she had once said--Good heavens! what was that she had said?
Islands Review
Brownlows — Part 98
2026-11-15 08:51:02 · Cedar Herald Index
Tags
WorldBusinessTechnologyScienceHealthCultureTravelSportsPoliticsEnvironmentEducationOpinion