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- 8009
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- 2026-01-30T20:48:52.921Z
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- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 7972
- text
- her threshold; neither would she now permit Isabel Banford to cross her
threshold in any other, and disguised character; least of all, as that
unknown and insidious girl, who by some pernicious arts had lured her
only son from honor into infamy. But not to admit Isabel, was now to
exclude Pierre, if indeed on independent grounds of exasperation against
himself, his mother would not cast him out.
Nor did the same interior intimations in him which fore-painted the
above bearing of his mother, abstain to trace her whole haughty heart as
so unrelentingly set against him, that while she would close her doors
against both him and his fictitious wife, so also she would not
willingly contribute one copper to support them in a supposed union so
entirely abhorrent to her. And though Pierre was not so familiar with
the science of the law, as to be quite certain what the law, if appealed
to concerning the provisions of his father's will, would decree
concerning any possible claims of the son to share with the mother in
the property of the sire; yet he prospectively felt an invincible
repugnance to dragging his dead father's hand and seal into open Court,
and fighting over them with a base mercenary motive, and with his own
mother for the antagonist. For so thoroughly did his infallible
presentiments paint his mother's character to him, as operated upon and
disclosed in all those fiercer traits,--hitherto held in abeyance by the
mere chance and felicity of circumstances,--that he felt assured that
her exasperation against him would even meet the test of a public legal
contention concerning the Glendinning property. For indeed there was a
reserved strength and masculineness in the character of his mother, from
which on all these points Pierre had every thing to dread. Besides, will
the matter how he would, Pierre for nearly two whole years to come,
would still remain a minor, an infant in the eye of the law, incapable
of personally asserting any legal claim; and though he might sue by his
next friend, yet who would be his voluntary next friend, when the
execution of his great resolve would, for him, depopulate all the world
of friends?
Now to all these things, and many more, seemed the soul of this
infatuated young enthusiast braced.
- title
- Chunk 3