fault against which were directed the sorrows. You frown--forgive me."

"You do not transgress, unless it be as a flatterer! If I frowned, it
was unconsciously--the sign of thought, not anger. Pause!--my mind has
left you for a moment; it is looking into the past."

The past!--Was it not true? That home to whose porch came in time the
Black Horses, in time just to save from the last worst dishonour, but not
save from years racked by each pang that can harrow man's dignity in each
daily assault on the fort of man's pride; the sly treacherous daughter--
her terrible marriage--the man whose disgrace she had linked to her
blood, and whose life was still insult and threat to his own. True, what
a war upon Pride! And even in that secret and fatal love which had been
of all his griefs the most influential and enduring, had his pride been
less bitterly wounded, and that pride less enthroned in his being, would
his grief have been so relentless, his attempts at its conquest so vain?
And then, even now--what was it said, "I can bless?"--holy LOVE! What
was it said, "but not pardon"?--stern PRIDE! And so onto these last
revolutions of sterile life. Was he not miserable in Lionel's and
Sophy's misery? Forlorn in that Citadel of Pride--closed round and
invested with Sorrows--and the last hopes that had fled to the fortress,
slain in defence of its outworks. With hand shading his face, Darrell
remained some minutes silent. At last he raised his head, and his eye
was steadfast, his lip firm.

"George Morley," said he, "I acknowledge much justice in the censure you
have conveyed, with so artful a delicacy that, if it fail to reform, it
cannot displease, and leaves much to be seriously revolved in solitary
self-commune. But though I may own that pride is not made for man, and
that in the blindness of human judgment I may often have confounded pride