He told him at once that Lucy's preference of the suit of a handsome fortune-hunter was the public talk, and besought him to lose not a moment in quelling the rumour.

"You may do so easily," he wrote, "by avoiding the young man; and should he be very importunate, return at once to Warlock.

Your daughter's welfare must be dearer to you than anything." To Mauleverer, Brandon replied by a letter which turned first on public matters, and then slid carelessly into the subject of the earl's information.
Among the admonitions which he ventured to give Mauleverer, he dwelt, not without reason, on the want of tact displayed by the earl in not manifesting that pomp and show which his station in life enabled him to do.

"Remember," he urged, "you are not among your equals, by whom unnecessary parade begins to be considered an ostentatious vulgarity.
The surest method of dazzling our inferiors is by splendour, not taste.
All young persons--all women in particular--are caught by show, and enamoured of magnificence.

Assume a greater state, and you will be more talked of; and notoriety wins a woman's heart more than beauty or youth.
You have, forgive me, played the boy too long; a certain dignity becomes your manhood; women will not respect you if you suffer yourself to become 'stale and cheap to vulgar company.' You are like a man who has fifty advantages, and uses only one of them to gain his point, when you rely on your conversation and your manner, and throw away the resources of your wealth and your station.