ingeniously quoted," returned Darrell, with the polite bend of his
stately head. "Yes, I suspect that the coveting organ had much to do
with the boast. To build a name was the earliest dream of Themistocles,
if we are to accept the anecdote that makes him say, 'The trophies of
Miltiades would not suffer him to sleep,' To build a name, or to create a
fortune, are but varying applications of one human passion. The desire
of something we have not is the first of our childish remembrances: it
matters not what form it takes, what object it longs for; still it is to
acquire! it never deserts us while we live."

"And yet, if I might, I should like to ask, what you now desire that you
do not possess?"

"I--nothing; but I spoke of the living! I am dead. Only," added
Darrell, with his silvery laugh, "I say, as poor Chesterfield said before
me, 'It is a secret: keep it.'"

Lionel made no reply; the melancholy of the words saddened him: but
Darrell's manner repelled the expression of sympathy or of interest; and
the boy fell into conjecture, what had killed to the world this man's
intellectual life?

And thus silently they continued to wander on till the sound of the flute
had long been lost to their ears. Was the musician playing still?

At length they came round to the other end of Fawley village, and Darrell
again became animated.

"Perhaps," said he, returning to the subject of talk that had been
abruptly suspended,--"perhaps the love of power is at the origin of each