be capable of an emotion! I hope I am not going to like that boy! The
old Darrell blood in his veins, surely. I might have spoken as he did at
his age, but I must have had some better reason for it. What did I say
to justify such an explosion?

"/Quid feci?--ubi lapsus?/ Gone, no doubt, to pack up his knapsack, and
take the Road to Ruin! Shall I let him go? Better for me, if I am
really in danger of liking him; and so be at his mercy to sting--what?
my heart! I defy him; it is dead. No; he shall not go thus. I am the
head of our joint houses. Houses! I wish he had a house, poor boy! And
his grandfather loved me. Let him go? I will beg his pardon first; and
he may dine in his drawers if that will settle the matter."

Thus, no less magnanimous than Lionel, did this misanthropical man follow
his ungracious cousin. "Ha!" cried Darrell, suddenly, as, approaching
the threshold, he saw Mr. Fairthorn at the dining-room window occupied in
nibbing a pen upon an ivory thumb-stall--"I have hit it! That abominable
Fairthorn has been shedding its prickles! How could I trust flesh and
blood to such a bramble? I'll know what it was this instant!" Vain
menace! No sooner did Mr. Fairthorn catch glimpse of Darrell's
countenance within ten yards of the porch, than, his conscience taking
alarm, he rushed incontinent from the window, the apartment, and, ere
Darrell could fling open the door, was lost in some lair--"nullis
penetrabilis astris"--in that sponge-like and cavernous abode wherewith
benignant Providence had suited the locality to the creature.




CHAPTER VIII.