m--his
incognitos, his hidings, the incongruity between his social grade and
his education or bearing, and his repeated acknowledgments that there
were charges against him which compelled him to concealment, and from
which he could not be cleared on earth; that she, reflecting on all
these evidences to his disfavour, had either secretly admitted into her
breast a conviction of his guilt, or that, as she grew up to woman, she
had felt, through him, the disgrace entailed upon herself. Or if such
were not the cause of her sadness, had she learned more of her father's
evil courses; had an emissary of Jasper's worked upon her sensibilities
or her fears? No, that could not be the case, since whatever the grounds
upon which Jasper had conjectured that Sophy was with Lady Montfort,
the accuracy of his conjectures had evidently been doubted by Jasper
himself; or why so earnestly have questioned Waife? Had she learned
that she was the grandchild and natural heiress of a man wealthy and
renowned--a chief amongst the chiefs of England--who rejected her with
disdain? Was she pining for her true position? or mortified by the
contempt of a kinsman, whose rank so contrasted the vagrancy of the
grandsire by whom alone she was acknowledged?

Tormented by these doubts, he was unable to solve them by such guarded
and delicate questions as he addressed to Sophy herself. For she, when
he falteringly asked what ailed his darling, would start, brighten up
for the moment, answer, "Nothing, now that he had come back"; kiss his
forehead, play with Sir Isaac, and then manage furtively to glide away.

But the day before that in which we now see him alone, he had asked her
abruptly, "If, during his absence, any one besides George Morley had
visited at Lady Montfort's--any one whom she had seen?" And Sophy's
cheek had as suddenly become crimson, then deadly pale; and first she
said "no," and then "yes"; and after a pause, looking away from him, she
added: "The young gentleman who--who helped us to buy Sir Isaac, he has
visited Lady Montfort--related to some dear friend of hers."

"What, the painter!"

"No--the other, with the dark eyes."

"Haughton!" said Waife, with an expression of great pain in his face.

"Yes--Mr. Haughton; but he has not been here a long, long time. He will
not come again, I believe."

Her voice quivered, despite herself, at the last words, and she began
to bustle about the room--filled Waife's pipe, thrust it into his ha