Arundel Dacre had left his son as a legacy to his friend; but that
friend was a man of the world; and when the elder brother not only
expressed his willingness to maintain the orphan, but even his desire to
educate and adopt him as his son, he cheerfully resigned all his claims
to the forlorn boy, and felt that, by consigning him to his uncle, he
had most religiously discharged the trust of his confiding friend.
The nephew arrived at Castle Dacre with a heart equally divided between
misery and hatred. It seemed to him that a fate more forlorn than
his had seldom been awarded to mortal. Although he found his uncle
diametrically opposite to all that his misled imagination had painted
him, although he was treated with a kindness and indulgence which tried
to compensate for their too long estranged affections, Arundel Dacre
could never conquer the impressions of his boyhood; and had it not been
for his cousin, May, a creature of whom he had not heard, and of whom no
distorted image had therefore haunted his disturbed imagination; had it
not been for this beautiful girl, who greeted him with affection which
warmed and won his heart, so morbid were his feelings, that he would
in all probability have pined away under the roof which he should have
looked upon as his own.
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