 Tom's heart towards Philip at once,
and, besides that, prove that the elder Wakem was ready to receive Maggie with
all the honours of a daughter-in-law. Nothing was wanted, then, but for dear
Tom, who always had that pleasant smile when he looked at cousin Lucy, to turn
completely round, say the opposite of what he had always said before, and
declare that he, for his part, was delighted that all the old grievances should
be healed, and that Maggie should have Philip with all suitable despatch: in
cousin Lucy's opinion nothing could be easier.
    But to minds strongly marked by the positive and negative qualities that
create severity - strength of will, conscious rectitude of purpose, narrowness
of imagination and intellect, great power of self-control, and a disposition to
exert control over others - prejudices come as the natural food of tendencies
which can get no sustenance out of that complex, fragmentary, doubt-provoking
knowledge which we call truth. Let a prejudice be bequeathed, car ied in the
air, adopted by hearsay, caught in through the eye - however it may come, these
minds will give it a habitation: it is something to assert strongly and bravely,
something to fill up the void of spontaneous ideas, something to impose on
others with the authority of conscious right: it is at once a staff and a baton.
Every prejudice that will answer these purposes is self-evident. Our good
upright Tom Tulliver's mind was of this class: his inward criticism of his
father's faults did not prevent him from adopting his father's prejudice; it was
a prejudice against a man of lax principle and lax life, and it was a
meeting-point for all the disappointed feelings of family and personal pride.
Other feelings added their force to produce Tom's bitter repugnance to Philip,
and to Maggie's union with him; and notwithstanding Lucy's power over her
strong-willed cousin, she got nothing but a cold refusal ever to sanction such a
marriage: »but of course Maggie could do as she liked - she had declared her
determination to be independent. For Tom's part, he held himself bound by his
duty to his father's memory, and by every manly feeling, never to consent to any
relation with the Wakems.«
    Thus, all that Lucy had effected by her zealous mediation was to fill Tom's
mind with the expectation that Maggie's perverse resolve to go into a situation
again would presently metamorphose itself, as her resolves were apt to do
