Thus Darrell continued to weave together sentence with sentence, the
intermediate connection of meaning often so subtle that when put down on
paper it requires effort to discern it. But it was his peculiar gift to
make clear when spoken what in writing would seem obscure. Look, manner,
each delicate accent in a voice wonderfully distinct in its unrivalled
melody, all so aided the sense of mere words that it is scarcely
extravagant to say he might have talked an unknown language, and a
listener would have understood. But, understood or not, those sweet
intonations it was such delight to hear that any one with nerves alive to
music would have murmured, "Talk on forever." And in this gift lay one
main secret of the man's strange influence over all who came familiarly
into his intercourse; so that if Darrell had ever bestowed confidential
intimacy on any one not by some antagonistic idiosyncrasy steeled against
its charm, and that intimacy had been withdrawn, a void never to be
refilled must have been left in the life thus robbed.

Stopping at his door, as Lionel, rapt by the music, had forgotten the
pain of the revery so bewitchingly broken, Darrell detained the hand held
out to him, and said, "No, not yet; I have something to say to you: come
in; let me say it now."

Lionel bowed his head, and in surprised conjecture followed his kinsman
up the lofty stairs into the same comfortless stately room that has been
already described. When the servant closed the door, Darrell sank into a
chair. Fixing his eye upon Lionel with almost parental kindness, and
motioning his young cousin to sit by his side, close, he thus began,

"Lionel, before I was your age I was married; I was a father. I am
lonely and childless now. My life has been moulded by a solemn
obligation which so few could comprehend that I scarce know a man living