ht are the rents of the precipice in the
flash of the lightning. So they encountered--so, without a word, they
parted. To him that moment decided the flight from active life to which
his hopeless thoughts had of late been wooing the jaded, weary man. In
safety to his very conscience, he would not risk the certainty thus
to encounter one whom it convulsed his whole being to remember was
another's wife. In that highest and narrowest sphere of the great London
world to which Guy Darrell's political distinction condemned his social
life, it was impossible but that he should be brought frequently into
collision with Lord Montfort, the Head of a House with which Darrell
himself was connected--the most powerful patrician of the party of which
Darrell was so conspicuous a chief. Could he escape Lady Montfort's
presence, her name at least would be continually in his ears. From that
fatal beauty he could no more hide than from the sun.

This thought, and the terror it occasioned him, completed his resolve on
the instant. The next day he was in the groves of Fawley, and amazed
the world by dating from that retreat a farewell address to his
constituents. A few days after, the news of his daughter's death
reached him; and as that event became known it accounted to many for his
retirement for a while from public life.

But to Caroline Montfort, and to her alone, the secret of a career
blasted, a fame renounced, was unmistakably revealed. For a time she was
tortured, in every society she entered, by speculation and gossip which
brought before her the memory of his genius, the accusing sound of his
name. But him who withdraws from the world, the world soon forgets; and
by degrees Darrell became as little spoken of as the dead.

Mrs. Lyndsay had never, during her schemes on Lord Montfort, abandoned
her own original design on Darrell. And when, to her infinite amaze and
mortification, Lord Montfort, before the first month of his marriage
expired, took care, in the fewest possible words, to dispel her dream of
governing the House, and residing in the houses of Vipont, as the lawful
agent during the life-long minority to which she had condemned both the
submissive Caroline and the lethargic Marquess, she hastened by letter
to exculpate herself to Darrell--laid, of course, all the blame on
Caroline. Alas! had not she always warned him that Caroline was not
worthy of him?--him, the greatest, the best of men, &c., &c. Darrell
replied by a s