re, even when at the worst he clung to belief in the best.
He refrained from any separate and private communication of Waife's
state to Lady Montfort, lest the sadness it would not fail to occasion
her should be perceptible to Sophy, and lead her to divine the cause. So
he contented himself with saying that Waife had accompanied him to Mr.
Darrell's, and would be detained there, treated with all kindness and
honour, for some days.

Sophy's mind was relieved by this intelligence, but it filled her with
wonder and conjecture. That Waife, who had so pertinaciously refused
to break bread as a guest under any man's roof-tree, should be for days
receiving the hospitality of Lionel Haughton's wealthy and powerful
kinsman, was indeed mysterious. But whatever brought Waife and Lionel
thus in confidential intercourse could not but renew yet more vividly
the hopes she had been endeavouring of late to stifle. And combining
together many desultory remembrances of words escaped unawares from
Lionel, from Lady Montfort, from Waife himself, the truth (of which her
native acuteness had before admitted glimpses) grew almost clear to her.
Was not Mr. Darrell that relation to her lost mother upon whom she had
claims not hitherto conceded? Lionel and Waife both with that relation
now! Surely the clouds that had rested on her future were admitting the
sun through their opening rents--and she blushed as she caught its ray.

CHAPTER VI.

INDIVIDUAL CONCESSIONS ARE LIKE POLITICAL; WHEN YOU ONCE BEGIN,
THERE IS NO SAYING WHERE YOU WILL STOP.

Waife's first words on recovering consciousness were given to thoughts
of Sophy. He had promised her to return, at farthest, the next day; she
would be so uneasy he must get up--he must go at once. When he found his
strength would not suffer him to rise, he shed tears. It was only very
gradually and at intervals that he became acquainted with the length
and severity of his attack, or fully sensible that he was in
Darrell's house; that that form, of which he had retained vague dreamy
reminiscences, hanging over his pillow, wiping his brow, and soothing
him with the sweetest tones of the sweet human voice--that that form,
so genial, so brotherlike, was the man who had once commanded him not to
sully with his presence a stainless home.

All that had passed within the last few days was finally made clear to
him in a short, unwitnessed, touching conversation with his host; after
which, however,