nd unhappy Sir
Henry Darsie Redgauntlet, who suffered at Carlisle in the year 1746. He
took the name of Darsie, in conjunction with his own, from our mother,
heiress to a Cumberland family of great wealth and antiquity, of whose
large estates you are the undeniable heir, although those of your father
have been involved in the general doom of forfeiture. But all this must
be necessarily unknown to you.'

'Indeed I hear it for the first time in my life,' answered Darsie.

'And you knew not that I was your sister?' said Lilias. 'No wonder you
received me so coldly. What a strange, wild, forward young person you
must have thought me--mixing myself in the fortunes of a stranger whom
I had only once spoken to--corresponding with him by signs--Good Heaven!
what can you have supposed me?'

'And how should I have come to the knowledge of our connexion?' said
Darsie. 'You are aware I was not acquainted with it when we danced
together at Brokenburn.'

'I saw that with concern, and fain I would have warned you,' answered
Lilias; 'but I was closely watched, and before I could find or make an
opportunity of coming to a full explanation with you on a subject so
agitating, I was forced to leave the room. What I did say was, you may
remember, a caution to leave the southern border, for I foresaw what
has since happened. But since my uncle has had you in his power, I never
doubted he had communicated to you our whole family history.'

'He has left me to learn it from you, Lilias; and assure yourself that I
will hear it with more pleasure from your lips than from his. I have no
reason to be pleased with his conduct towards me.'

'Of that,' said Lilias, 'you will judge better when you have heard what
I have to tell you;' and she began her communication in the following
manner.

CHAPTER XVIII

NARRATIVE OF DARSIE LATIMER, CONTINUED

'The House of Redgauntlet,' said the young lady, 'has for centuries been
supposed to lie under a doom, which has rendered vain their courage,
their talents, their ambition, and their wisdom. Often making a figure
in history, they have been ever in the situation of men striving against
both wind and tide, who distinguish themselves by their desperate
exertions of strength, and their persevering endurance of toil, but
without being able to advance themselves upon their course by either
vigour or resolution. They pretend to trace this fatality to a legendary
history, which I may tell you at a less