into the
confession of the deep love into which his romantic memories of Sophy's
wandering childhood had been ripened by the sight of her graceful,
cultured youth. "Grant," he said, "that her father's tale be false--and
no doubt you have sufficient reasons to discredit it--still, if
you cannot love her as your daughter's child, receive, know her, I
implore--let her love and revere you--as my wife! Leave me to protect
her from a lawless father--leave me to redeem, by some deeds of loyalty
and honour, any stain that her grandsire's sentence may seem to fix upon
our union. Oh! if ambitious before, how ambitious I should be now--to
efface for her sake, as for mine, her grandsire's shame, my father's
errors! But if, on the other hand, she should, on the requisite
inquiries, be proved to descend from your ancestry--your father's blood
in her pure veins--I know, alas! then that I should have no right to
aspire to such nuptials. Who would even think of her descent from a
William Losely? Who would not be too proud to remember only her descent
from you? All spots would vanish in the splendour of your renown; the
highest in the land would court her alliance. And I am but the pensioner
of your bounty, and only on my father's side of gentle origin. But
still I think you would not reject me--you would place the future to
my credit; and I would wait, wait patiently, till I had won such a
soldier's name as would entitle me to mate with a daughter of the
Darrells."

Sheet upon sheet the young eloquence flowed on--seeking, with an art of
which the writer was unconscious, all the arguments and points of
view which might be the most captivating to the superb pride or to
the exquisite tenderness which seemed to Lionel the ruling elements of
Darrell's character.

He had not to wait long for a reply. At the first glance of the address
on its cover, his mind misgave him; the hopes that bad hitherto elated
his spirit yielded to abrupt forebodings. Darrell's handwriting was
habitually in harmony with the intonations of his voice-singularly
clear, formed with a peculiar and original elegance, yet with the
undulating ease of a natural, candid, impulsive character. And that
decorous care in such mere trifles as the very sealing of a letter,
which, neglected by musing poets and abstracted authors, is observable
in men of high public station, was in Guy Darrell significant of the
Patrician dignity that imparted a certain stateliness to his most
o