"I told you that Darrell, in his letter to me, wrote with great
bitterness of Lady Montfort."

"Very natural that he should. Who would not resent such interference?"

"Listen. I told you that, at his own command, I sent to her that letter;
that she, on receiving it, went herself to Fawley, to plead our cause. I
was sanguine of the result."

"Why?"

"Because he who is in love has a wondrous intuition into all the
mysteries of love in others; and when I read Darrell's letter I felt sure
that he had once loved--loved still, perhaps--the woman he so vehemently
reproached."

"Ha!" said the Man of the World, intimate with Guy Darrell from his
school-days--"Ha! is it possible! And they say that I know everything!
You were sanguine,--I understand. Yes, if your belief were true--if
there were some old attachment that could be revived--some old
misunderstanding explained away--stop; let me think. True, true--it was
just after her marriage that he fled from the world. Ah, my dear Lionel;
light, light! light dawns on me! Not without reason were you sanguine.
Your hand, my dear boy; I see hope for you at last. For if the sole
reason that prevented Darrell contracting a second marriage was the
unconquered memory of a woman like Lady Montfort (where, indeed, her
equal in beauty, in disposition so akin to his own ideal of womanly
excellence?)--and if she too has some correspondent sentiment for him,
why then, indeed, you might lose all chance of being Darrell's sole heir;