In his art, Fairthorn was certainly a master, and the air he now played
was exquisitely soft and plaintive; it accorded with the clouded yet
quiet sky, with the lone but summer landscape, with Lionel's melancholic
but not afflicted train of thought. The boy could only murmur
"Beautiful!" when the musician ceased.

"It is an old air," said Fairthorn; "I don't think it is known. I found
its scale scrawled down in a copy of the 'Eikon Basilike,' with the name
of 'Joannes Darrell, Esq., Aurat,' written under it. That, by the date,
was Sir John Darrell, the cavalier who fought for Charles I., father of
the graceless Sir Ralph, who flourished under Charles II. Both their
portraits are in the dining-room."

"Tell me something of the family; I know so little about it,--not even
how the Haughtons and Darrells seem to have been so long connected. I
see by the portraits that the Haughton name was borne by former Darrells,
then apparently dropped, now it is borne again by my cousin."

"He bears it only as a Christian name. Your grandfather was his sponsor.
But he is nevertheless the head of your family."

"So he says. How?"

Fairthorn gathered himself up, his knees to his chin, and began in the
tone of a guide who has got his lesson by heart; though it was not long
before he warmed into his subject.

"The Darrells are supposed to have got their name from a knight in the
reign of Edward III., who held the lists in a joust victoriously against