He meant
to perpetuate his race himself, and was at this moment, in the midst of
his orgies, meditating a second alliance, which should compensate him
for his boyish blunder. In this state of affairs, Montacute, at length
stung to resistance, inspired by the most powerful of passions, and
acted upon by a stronger volition than his own, was planning a marriage
in spite of his father (love, a cottage by an Irish lake, and seven
hundred a-year) when intelligence arrived that his father, whose
powerful frame and vigorous health seemed to menace a patriarchal term,
was dead.
The new Duke of Bellamont had no experience of the world; but, though
long cowed by his father, he had a strong character. Though the circle
of his ideas was necessarily contracted, they were all clear and firm.
In his moody youth he had imbibed certain impressions and arrived at
certain conclusions, and they never quitted him. His mother was his
model of feminine perfection, and he had loved his cousin because she
bore a remarkable resemblance to her aunt. Again, he was of opinion
that the tie between the father and the son ought to be one of intimate
confidence and refined tenderness, and he resolved that, if Providence
favoured him with offspring, his child should ever find in him absolute
devotion of thought and feeling.
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