I shall soon be a man, and I swear to devote myself as man to revive the
old fading race so prized by you; to rebuild the House that, by you so
loved, is loftier in my eyes than all the heraldry of kings.' And my
father's face brightened, and his voice blessed me; and I rose up-
ambitious!" Darrell paused, heaved a short, quick sigh, and then rapidly
continued,

"I was fortunate at the University. That was a day when chiefs of party
looked for recruits amongst young men who had given the proofs and won
the first-fruits of emulation and assiduity; for statesmanship then was
deemed an art which, like that of war, needs early discipline. I had
scarcely left college when I was offered a seat in Parliament by the head
of the Viponts, an old Lord Montfort. I was dazzled but for one moment;
I declined the next. The fallen House of Darrell needed wealth; and
Parliamentary success, in its higher honours, often requires wealth,--
never gives it. It chanced that I had a college acquaintance with a
young man named Vipont Crooke. His grandfather, one of the numberless
Viponts, had been compelled to add the name of Crooke to his own, on
succeeding to the property of some rich uncle, who was one of the
numberless Crookes. I went with this college acquaintance to visit the
old Lord Montfort, at his villa near London, and thence to the country-
house of the Vipont Crookes. I stayed at the last two or three weeks.
While there, I received a letter from the elder Fairthorn, my father's
bailiff, entreating me to come immediately to Fawley, hinting at some
great calamity. On taking leave of my friend and his family, something
in the manner of his sister startled and pained me,--an evident
confusion, a burst of tears,--I know not what. I had never sought to
win her affections. I had an ideal of the woman I could love,--it did
not resemble her. On reaching Fawley, conceive the shock that awaited
me. My father was like one heart-stricken. The principal mortgagee was