CHAPTER VII.

SOPHY, DARRELL, AND THE FLUTE-PLAYER. DARRELL. PREPARES A SURPRISE
FOR WAIFE.

Sophy is come. She has crossed that inexorable threshold. She is a
guest in the house which rejects her as a daughter. She has been there
some days. Waife revived at the first sight of her tender face. He has
left his bed; can move for some hours a day into an adjoining chamber,
which has been hastily arranged for his private sitting-room; and can
walk its floors with a step that grows daily firmer in the delight of
leaning on Sophy's arm.

Since the girl's arrival, Darrell has relaxed his watch over the patient.
He never now enters his guest's apartment without previous notice; and,
by that incommunicable instinct which passes in households between one
silent breast and another, as by a law equally strong to attract or repel
--here drawing together, there keeping apart--though no rule in either
case has been laid down;--by virtue, I say, of that strange intelligence,
Sophy is not in the old man's room when Darrell enters. Rarely in the
twenty-four hours do the host and the fair young guest encounter. But
Dar rell is a quick and keen observer. He has seen enough of Sophy to be
sensible of her charms--to penetrate into her simple natural loveliness
of character--to feel a deep interest in her, and a still deeper pity for
Lionel. Secluding himself as much as possible in his private room, or in
his leafless woods, his reveries increase in gloom. Nothing unbends his