paid. It will be three days, I suppose, before Lionel, having joined his
new regiment at * * * *, can be here. And then it will be weeks yet, I
believe, before his regiment sails; and I'm all for short courtships."




CHAPTER VI.

FAIRTHORN FRIGHTENS SOPHY. SIR ISAAC IS INVITED BY DARRELL, AND
FORMS ONE OF A FAMILY CIRCLE.

Such a sweet voice in singing breaks out from yon leafless beeches!
Waife hears it at noon from his window. Hark! Sophy has found song once
more.

She is seated on a garden bench, looking across the lake towards the
gloomy old Manor-house and the tall spectre palace beside it. Mrs.
Morley is also on the bench, hard at work on her sketch; Fairthorn prowls
through the thickets behind, wandering restless, and wretched, and
wrathful beyond all words to describe. He hears that voice Singing; he
stops short, perfectly rabid with indignation. "Singing," he muttered,
"singing in triumph, and glowering at the very House she dooms to
destruction. Worse than Nero striking his lyre amidst the conflagration
of Rome!" By-and-by Sophy, who somehow or other cannot sit long in any
place, and tires that day of any companion, wanders away from the lake
and comes right upon Fairthorn. Hailing, in her unutterable secret
bliss, the musician who had so often joined her rambles in the days of
unuttered secret sadness, she sprang towards him, with welcome and mirth
in a face that would have lured Diogenes out of his tub. Fairthorn