What Will He Do With It, Book 6.

tingles and blood flows.-Guy Darrell explains to Lio

d rooms, and breathed a long breath of relief

n, he suddenly felt a hand upon hi

t a lovely night! What sweet scorn in the eyes of thos

is it pity? is it bu

Man, egotist though he be, exacts sympathy from all the universe. Joyous, he says to the sun, 'Life-giver, rejoice w

shifting humours. Serious as the teacher, she responds to the steadier inquiries of reason. Mystic and hallowed as the priestess, she keeps alive by dim oracles that spiritual yearning within us, in which, from savage to sage,-through all dreams, through all creeds,-thrills the sense of a link with Divinity. Never, therefore, while conferring with Nature, is Man wholly alone, nor is she a single companion with unifor

unrivalled melody, all so aided the sense of mere words that it is scarcely extravagant to say he might have talked an unknown language, and a listener would have understood. But, understood or not, those sweet intonations it was such delight to hear that any one with nerves alive to music would have murmured, "Talk on forever." And in this gift

e revery so bewitchingly broken, Darrell detained the hand held out to him, and

stately room that has been already described. When the servant closed the door, Darrell sank into a chair. Fixing his

entle, yet so sensitive, -chivalry without its armour. I was his constant companion: he spoke to me unreservedly, as a poet to his muse. I wept at his sorrows; I chafed at his humiliations. He talked of ancestors as he thought of them; to him they were beings like the old Lares,-not dead in graves, but images ever present on household hearths. Doubtless he exaggerated their worth, as their old importance. Obscure, indeed, in the annals of empire, their deeds and their power, their decline and fall. Not so thought he; they were to his eyes the moon-track in the ocean of history,-light on the waves over which they had gleamed,-all the ocean elsewhere dark! With him thought I; as my father spoke, his child believed. But what to the eyes of the world was this inheritor of a vaunted name?-a threadbare, slighted, rustic pedant; no station in the very province in which mouldered away the last lowl

ceived a letter from the elder Fairthorn, my father's bailiff, entreating me to come immediately to Fawley, hinting at some great calamity. On taking leave of my friend and his family, something in the manner of his sister startled and pained me,-an evident confusion, a burst of tears,-I know not what. I had never sought to win her affections. I had an ideal of the woman I could love,-it did not resemble her. On reaching Fawley, conceive the shock that awaited me. My father was like one heart-stricken. The principal mortgagee was about to foreclose,-Fawley about to pass forever from the race of the Darrells. I saw that the day my father was driven from the old house would be his last on earth. What means to save him?-how raise the pitiful sum-but a few thousands-by which to release from the spoiler's gripe those barren acres which all the lands of the Seymour or the Gower could never replace in my poor father's eyes? My sole income was a college fellowship, adequate to all my wants, but useless for sale or loan. I spent the night in vain consultation with

k spirit and my man's heart. My dear father! his death was happy: his home was saved; he never knew at what sacrifice to his son! He was gladdened by the first honours my youth achieved. He was resigned to my choice of a profession, which, though contrary to his antique prejudices, that allowed to the representative of the Darrells no profession but the sword, still promised the wealth which would secure his name from perishing. He was credulous of my future, as if I had uttered not a vow, but a prediction. He had blessed my union, without foreseeing its sorrows. He had embraced my first-born,-true, it was a girl, but it was one link onwar

ose life had been so sm

nto his own-his heart swelling with childlike t

ead, and, extricating himself from Lionel's cla

No, Lionel. I must go on. That grief I have wrestled with,-conquered. I was widowed then. A daughter still left,-the first-born, whom my father had blest on his death-bed. I transferred all my love, all my hopes, to her. I had no vain preference for male heirs. Is a race less pure that runs on through the female line? Well, my son's death was merciful compared to-" Again Darrell stopped, again hurried on. "Enough! all is forgiven in the grave! I was then still in the noon of man's life, free to form new ties. Another grief that I cannot tell you; it is not all conquered yet. And by that grief the last verdure of existence was so blighted that-that-in short, I had no heart for nuptial altars, for the social world. Years went by. Each year I said, 'Next year

tained his object like that touching confidence before which the disparities between youth and age literally vanished. And, both made equal, both elevated alike, verily I know not which a