A soldier, and in
a dissolute age, he preferred his sister Lucy even to pleasure and to
military preferment and distinction. Her younger brother, at an age when
trifles chiefly occupied his mind, made her the confidante of all his
pleasures and anxieties, his success in field-sports, and his quarrels
with his tutor and instructors. To these details, however trivial, Lucy
lent patient and not indifferent attention. They moved and interested
Henry, and that was enough to secure her ear.
Her mother alone did not feel that distinguished and predominating
affection with which the rest of the family cherished Lucy. She regarded
what she termed her daughter's want of spirit as a decided mark that the
more plebeian blood of her father predominated in Lucy's veins, and used
to call her in derision her Lammermoor Shepherdess. To dislike so gentle
and inoffensive a being was impossible; but Lady Ashton preferred her
eldest son, on whom had descended a large portion of her own ambitious
and undaunted disposition, to a daughter whose softness of temper seemed
allied to feebleness of mind.
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