one of Waife's favourite simple old Border songs; but before she got
through the first line, the song ceased, and she was was as lost to sight
as a ringdove, whose note comes and goes so quickly amongst the
impenetrable coverts.

But Waife had heard enough to justify profound alarm for Sophy's peace
of mind, and to waken in his own heart some of its most painful
associations. The reader, who knows the wrong inflicted on William
Losely by Lionel Haughton's father--a wrong which led to all poor Willy's
subsequent misfortunes--may conceive that the very name of Haughton was
wounding to his ear; and when, in his brief, sole, and bitter interview
with Darrell, the latter had dropped out that Lionel Haughton, however
distant of kin, would be a more grateful heir than the grandchild of a
convicted felon--if Willy's sweet nature could have admitted a momentary
hate, it would have been for the thus vaunted son of the man who had
stripped him of the modest all which would perhaps have saved his own
child from the robber's guilt, and himself from the robber's doom. Long
since, therefore, the reader will have comprehended why, when Waife came
to meet Sophy at the riverside, and learned at the inn on its margin that
the name of her younger companion was Lionel Haughton--why, I say, he had
so morosely parted from the boy, and so imperiously bade Sophy dismiss
all thought of meeting "the pretty young gentleman" again.

And now again this very Lionel Haughton to have stolen into the retreat
in which poor Waife had deemed he left his treasure so secure! Was it
for this he had fled from her? Did he return to find her youth blighted,
her affections robbed from him, by the son of Charles Haughton? The
father had despoiled his manhood of independence; must it be the son who
despoiled his age of its only solace? Grant even that Lionel was worthy
of Sophy--grant that she had been loyally wooed--must not that attachment