nds
with a laugh, the false mirth of which went to his very heart, and then
stepped from the open window into the little garden, and began to sing
one of Waife's favourite simple old Border songs; but before she got
through the first line, the song ceased, and she was was as lost to
sight as a ringdove, whose note comes and goes so quickly amongst the
impenetrable coverts.

But Waife had heard enough to justify profound alarm for Sophy's
peace of mind, and to waken in his own heart some of its most painful
associations. The reader, who knows the wrong inflicted on William
Losely by Lionel Haughton's father--a wrong which led to all poor
Willy's subsequent misfortunes--may conceive that the very name of
Haughton was wounding to his ear; and when, in his brief, sole, and
bitter interview with Darrell, the latter had dropped out that Lionel
Haughton, however distant of kin, would be a more grateful heir than
the grandchild of a convicted felon--if Willy's sweet nature could have
admitted a momentary hate, it would have been for the thus vaunted son
of the man who had stripped him of the modest all which would perhaps
have saved his own child from the robber's guilt, and himself from the
robber's doom. Long since, therefore, the reader will have comprehended
why, when Waife came to meet Sophy at the riverside, and learned at
the inn on its margin that the name of her younger companion was Lionel
Haughton--why, I say, he had so morosely parted from the boy, and so
imperiously bade Sophy dismiss all thought of meeting "the pretty young
gentleman" again.

And now again this very Lionel Haughton to have stolen into the retreat
in which poor Waife had deemed he left his treasure so secure! Was it
for this he had fled from her? Did he return to find her youth blighted,
her affections robbed from him, by the son of Charles Haughton? The
father had despoiled his manhood of independence; must it be the son who
despoiled his age of its only solace? Grant even that Lionel was
worthy of Sophy--grant that she had been loyally wooed--must not that
attachment be fruitless--be fatal? If Lionel were really now adopted by
Darrell, Waife knew human nature too well to believe that Darrell would
complacently hear Lionel ask a wife in her whose claim to his lineage
had so galled and incensed him. It was while plunged in these torturing
reflections that Lady Montfort (not many minutes after Sophy's song
had ceased and her form vanished) had com