the loins of Lion Kings! Darrell, then, doing full justice to all
Sophy's beauty and grace, purity and goodness, was more and more tortured
by the conviction that she could never be wife to the man on whom, for
want of all nearer kindred, would devolve the heritage of the Darrell
name.

On the other hand, Sophy's feelings towards her host were almost equally
painful and embittered. The tenderness and reverence that he had showed
to her beloved grandfather, the affecting gratitude with which Waife
spoke of him, necessarily deepened her prepossessions in his favour as
Lionel's kinsman; and though she saw him so sparingly, still, when they
did meet, she had no right to coimplain of his manner. It might be
distant, taciturn; but it was gentle, courteous--the manner which might
be expected, in a host of secluded habits, to a young guest from whose
sympathies he was removed by years, but to whose comforts he was
unobtrusively considerate--whose wishes were delicately forestalled. Yet
was this all that her imagination had dared to picture on entering those
grey walls? Where was the evidence of the relationship of which she had
dreamed?--where a single sign that she was more in that house than a mere
guest?--where, alas! a token that even Lionel had named her to his
kinsman, and that for Lionel's sake that kinsman bade her welcome? And
Lionel too--gone the very day before she arrived! That she learned
incidentally from the servant who showed her into the room. Gone, and
not addressed a line to herself, though but to condole with her on her
grandfather's illness, or congratulate her that the illness had spared
the life! She felt wounded to the very core. As Waife's progressive
restoration allowed her thoughts more to revert to so many causes for
pain and perplexity, the mystery of all connected with her own and
Waife's sojourn under that roof baffled her at tempts at conjecture. The
old man did not volunteer explanations. Timidly she questioned him; but