those who have studied grief; whether in maid or man, in young or old, in
the gentle Sophy, so new to life, or in the haughty Darrell, weary of the
world, and shrinking from its honours, that sigh had the same character,
a like symptom of a malady in common; the same effort to free the heart
from an oppressive load; the same token of a sharp and rankling
remembrance lodged deep in that finest nerve-work of being, which no
anodyne can reach--a pain that comes without apparent cause, and is
sought to be expelled without conscious effort.

The old man feared at first that she might, by some means or other,
in his absence, have become apprised of the brand on his own name, the
verdict that had blackened his repute, the sentence that had hurled him
from his native sphere; or that, as her reason had insensibly matured,
she herself, reflecting on all the mystery that surrounded him--his
incognitos, his hidings, the incongruity between his social grade and his
education or bearing, and his repeated acknowledgments that there were
charges against him which compelled him to concealment, and from which he
could not be cleared on earth; that she, reflecting on all these
evidences to his disfavour, had either secretly admitted into her breast
a conviction of his guilt, or that, as she grew up to woman, she had
felt, through him, the disgrace entailed upon herself. Or if such were
not the cause of her sadness, had she learned more of her father's evil
courses; had an emissary of Jasper's worked upon her sensibilities or her
fears? No, that could not be the case, since whatever the grounds upon
which Jasper had conjectured that Sophy was with Lady Montfort, the
accuracy of his conjectures had evidently been doubted by Jasper himself;
or why so earnestly have questioned Waife? Had she learned that she was
the grandchild and natural heiress of a man wealthy and renowned--a chief
amongst the chiefs of England--who rejected her with disdain? Was she
pining for her true position? or mortified by the contempt of a kinsman,