Her uncle, who accompanied her everywhere, himself no slight magnet of attraction, viewed her success with a complacent triumph which he suffered no one but her father or herself to detect.
To the smooth coolness of his manner, nothing would have seemed more foreign than pride at the notice gained by a beauty, or exultation at any favour won from the caprices of fashion.

As for the good old squire, one would have imagined him far more the invalid than his brother.

He was scarcely ever seen; for though he went everywhere, he was one of those persons who sink into a corner the moment they enter a room.
Whoever discovered him in his retreat, held out their hands, and exclaimed, "God bless me! you here! We have not seen you for this age!" Now and then, if in a very dark niche of the room a card-table had been placed, the worthy gentleman toiled through an obscure rubber; but more frequently he sat with his hands clasped and his mouth open, counting the number of candles in the room, or calculating "when that stupid music would be over." Lord Mauleverer, though a polished and courteous man, whose great object was necessarily to ingratiate himself with the father of his intended bride, had a horror of being bored, which surpassed all other feelings in his mind.

He could not therefore persuade himself to submit to the melancholy duty of listening to the squire's "linked speeches long drawn out." He always glided by the honest man's station, seemingly in an exceeding hurry, with a "Ah, my dear sir, how do you do?
How delighted I am to see you! And your incomparable daughter?
Oh, there she is! Pardon me, dear sir,--you see my attraction." Lucy, indeed, who never forgot any one (except herself occasionally), sought her father's retreat as often as she was able; but her engagements were so incessant that she no sooner lost one partner than she was claimed and carried off by another.

However, the squire bore his solitude with tolerable cheerfulness, and always declared that "he was very well amused; although balls and concerts were necessarily a little dull to one who came from a fine old place like Warlock Manor-house, and it was not the same thing that pleased young ladies (for, to them, that fiddling and giggling till two o'clock in the morning might be a very pretty way of killing time) and their papas!" What considerably added to Lucy's celebrity was the marked notice and admiration of a man so high in rank and ton as Lord Mauleverer.