sincere or assumed? As he throws aside his pen, and leans his cheek on
his hand, the expression of his countenance may perhaps best answer those
questions. It has more unmingled melancholy than was habitual to it
before, even when in his gloomiest moods; but it is a melancholy much
more soft and subdued; it is the melancholy of resignation--that of a man
who has ceased a long struggle--paid his offering to the appeased
Nemesis, in casting into the sea the thing that had been to him the
dearest.

But in resignation, when complete, there is always a strange relief.
Despite that melancholy, Darrell is less unhappy than he has been for
years. He feels as if a suspense has passed--a load been lifted from his
breast. After all, he has secured, to the best of his judgment, the
happiness of the living, and, in relinquishing the object to which his
own life has been vainly devoted, and immolating the pride attached to
it, he has yet, to use his own words, paid his "dues to the dead." No
descendant from a Jasper Losely and a Gabrielle Desmarets will sit as
mistress of the house in which Loyalty and Honour had garnered, with the
wrecks of fortune, the memories of knightly fame--nor perpetuate the name
of Darrell through children whose blood has a source in the sink of
infamy and fraud. Nor was this consolation that of a culpable pride; it
was bought by the abdication of a pride that had opposed its prejudices
to living worth--to living happiness. Sophy would not be punished for
sins not her own--Lionel not barred from a prize that earth never might
replace. What mattered to them a mouldering, old, desolate manor-house
--a few hundreds of pitiful acres? Their children would not be less
blooming if their holiday summer-noons were not shaded by those darksome
trees--nor less lively of wit if their school themes were signed in the
name, not of Darrell, but Haughton.