ttempt would only create the very publicity from the
chance of which he was seeking to escape. The necessity of this caution
was so obvious that Lady Montfort could only send her most confidential
servant to inquire guardedly in the neighbourhood, until she had
summoned George Morley from Humberston, and taken him into counsel.
Waife had permitted her to relate to him, on strict promise of secrecy,
the tale he had confided to her. George entered with the deepest
sympathy into Sophy's distress; but he made her comprehend the
indiscretion and peril of any noisy researches. He promised that he
himself would spare no pains to ascertain the old man's hiding-place,
and see, at least, if he could not be persuaded either to return or
suffer her to join him, that he was not left destitute and comfortless.
Nor was this an idle promise. George, though his inquiries were
unceasing, crippled by the restraint imposed on them, was so acute in
divining, and so active in following up each clue to the wanderer's
artful doublings, that more than once he had actually come upon the
track, and found the very spot where Waife or Sir Isaac had been seen a
few days before. Still, up to the day on which Morley had last reported
progress, the ingenious ex-actor, fertile in all resources of stratagem
and disguise, had baffled his research. At first, however, Waife had
greatly relieved the minds of these anxious friends, and cheered even
Sophy's heavy heart, by letters, gay though brief. These letters having,
by their postmarks, led to his trace, he had stated, in apparent anger,
that reason for discontinuing them. And for the last six weeks no
line from him had been received. In fact, the old man, on resolving
to consummate his self-abnegation, strove more and more to wean his
grandchild's thoughts from his image. He deemed it so essential to her
whole future that, now she had found a home in so secure and so elevated
a sphere, she should gradually accustom herself to a new rank of life,
from which he was an everlasting exile; should lose all trace of
his very being; efface a connection that, ceasing to protect, could
henceforth only harm and dishonour her,--that he tried, as it were,
to blot himself out of the world which now smiled on her. He did not
underrate her grief in its first freshness; he knew that, could she
learn where he was, all else would be forgotten--she would insist on
flying to him. But he continually murmured to himself: "Youth i