thoroughly clear to him how impossible it is that his Sophy can ever be
more to me--to us--than a stranger whose virtues create an interest in
her welfare"--Lionel was stunned as by a blow. Scarcely could he murmur:

"You have seen her--and your resolve remains the same."

"Can you doubt it?" answered Darrell, as if in surprise. "The resolve
may now give me pain on my account, as before it gave me pain on yours.
But if not moved by your pain, can I be moved by mine? That would be a
baseness." The Colonel, in depicting Lionel's state of mind after the
young soldier had written his farewell to Waife, and previous to quitting
London, expressed very gloomy forebodings. "I do not say," wrote he,
"that Lionel will guiltily seek death in the field, nor does death there
come more to those who seek than to those who shun it; but he will go
upon a service exposed to more than ordinary suffering, privation, and
disease--without that rallying power of hope--that Will, and Desire to
Live, which constitute the true stamina of Youth. And I have always set
a black mark upon those who go into war joyless and despondent. Send a
young fellow to the camp with his spirits broken, his heart heavy as a
lump of lead, and the first of those epidemics, which thin ranks more
than the cannon, says to itself, 'There is a man for me!' Any doctor
will tell you that, even at home, the gay and light-hearted walk safe
through the pestilence, which settles on the moping as malaria settles
on a marsh. Confound Guy Darrell's ancestors, they have spoilt Queen
Victoria as good a young soldier as ever wore a sword by his side! Six
months ago, and how blithely Lionel Haughton looked forth to the future!
--all laurel!--no cypress! And now I feel as if I had shaken hands with
a victim sacrificed by Superstition to the tombs of the dead. I cannot
blame Darrell: I dare say in the same position I might do the same. But
no; on second thoughts, I should not. If Darrell does not choose to