and candour which covered with so smooth and charming a surface a pride
tremulously sensitive, and an ambition that startled himself in the hours
when solitude and revery reflect upon the visions of youth the giant
outline of its own hopes.

Darrell was not dissatisfied with the results of his survey; yet often,
when perhaps most pleased, a shade would pass over his countenance; and
had a woman who loved him been by to listen, she would have heard the
short slight sigh which came and went too quickly for the duller sense of
man's friendship to recognize it as the sound of sorrow.

In Darrell himself, thus insensibly altered, Lionel daily discovered more
to charm his interest and deepen his affection. In this man's nature
there were, indeed, such wondrous under-currents of sweetness, so
suddenly gushing forth, so suddenly vanishing again! And exquisite in
him were the traits of that sympathetic tact which the world calls fine
breeding, but which comes only from a heart at once chivalrous and
tender, the more bewitching in Darrell from their contrast with a manner
usually cold, and a bearing so stamped with masculine, self-willed,
haughty power. Thus--days went on as if Lionel had become a very child
of the house. But his sojourn was in truth drawing near to a close not
less abrupt and unexpected than the turn in his host's humours to which
he owed the delay of his departure.

One bright afternoon, as Darrell was standing at the window of his
private study, Fairthorn, who had crept in on some matter of business,
looked at his countenance long and wistfully, and then, shambling up to
his side, put one hand on his shoulder with a light timid touch, and,
pointing with the other to Lionel, who was lying on the grass in front of
the casement reading the "Faerie Queene," said, "Why do you take him to