e to visit him, and he at
once accosted her with agitated inquiries: "When had Mr. Haughton
first presented himself?--how often had he seen Sophy?--what had passed
between them?--did not Lady Montfort see that his darling's heart was
breaking?"

But he stopped as suddenly as he had rushed into his thorny maze of
questions; for, looking imploringly into Caroline Montfort's face, he
saw there more settled signs of a breaking heart than Sophy had yet
betrayed, despite her paleness and her sighs. Sad, indeed, the change
in her countenance since he had left the place months ago, though Waife,
absorbed in Sophy, had not much remarked it till now, when seeking
to read therein secrets that concerned his darling's welfare. Lady
Montfort's beauty was so perfect in that rare harmony of feature which
poets, before Byron, have compared to music, that sorrow could no more
mar the effect of that beauty on the eye, than pathos can mar the effect
of the music that admits it on the ear. But the change in her face
seemed that of a sorrow which has lost all earthly hope. Waife,
therefore, checked questions that took the tone of reproaches, and
involuntarily murmured "Pardon."

Then Caroline Montfort told him all the tender projects she had
conceived for his grandchild's happiness--how, finding Lionel
so disinterested and noble, she had imagined she saw in him the
providential agent to place Sophy in the position to which Waife had
desired to raise her; Lionel, to share with her the heritage of which he
might otherwise despoil her--both to become the united source of joy and
of pride to the childless man who now favoured the one to exclude the
other. Nor in these schemes had the absent wanderer been forgotten. No;
could Sophy's virtues once be recognised by Darrell, and her alleged
birth acknowledged by him--could the guardian, who, in fostering
those virtues to bloom by Darrell's hearth, had laid under the deepest
obligations one who, if unforgiving to treachery, was grateful for
the humblest service--could that guardian justify the belief in his
innocence which George Morley had ever entertained, and, as it now
proved, with reason--then where on all earth a man like Guy Darrell to
vindicate William Losely's attainted honour, or from whom William
Losely might accept cherishing friendship and independent ease, with so
indisputable a right to both! Such had been the picture that the fond
and sanguine imagination of Caroline Montfort had dr