Bible to him,
his hand resting lightly on her bended head. The sight touched both
George and Darrell; but Darrell of the two was the more affected. What
young, pure voice shall read to HIM the Book of Hope in the evening of
lonely age? Sophy started in some confusion, and as, in quitting the
room, she passed by Darrell, he took her hand gently, and scanned her
features more deliberately, more earnestly than he had ever yet seemed
to do; then he sighed, and dropped the hand, murmuring, "Pardon me."
Was he seeking to read in that fair face some likeness to the Darrell
lineaments? If he had found it, what then? But when Sophy was gone,
Darrell came straight to Waife with a cheerful brow--with a kindling
eye.

"William Losely," said he.

"Waife, if you please, sir," interrupted the old man. "William Losely,"
repeated Darrell, "justice seeks to repair, so far as, alas! it now
can, the wrongs inflicted on the name of William Losely. Your old friend
Alban Morley supplying me with the notes he had made in the matter of
your trial, I arranged the evidence they furnished. The Secretary for
the Home Department is one of my most intimate political friends--a man
of humanity--of sense. I placed that evidence before him. I, George, and
Mr. Hartopp, saw him after he had perused it--"

"My--son--Lizzy's son!"

"His secret will be kept. The question was not who committed the act
for which you suffered, but whether you were clearly, incontestably,
innocent of the act, and, in pleading guilty, did but sublimely bear the
penalty of another. There will be no new trial--there are none who would
prosecute. I bring back to you the Queen's free pardon under the Great
Seal. I should explain to you that this form of the royal grace is so
rarely given that it needed all the strength and affecting circumstance
of your peculiar case to justify the Home Secretary in listening, not
only to the interest I could bring to bear in your favour, but to his
own humane inclinations. The pardon under the Great Seal differs from an
ordinary pardon. It purges the blood from the taint of felony--it remits
all the civil disabilities which the mere expiry of a penal sentence
does not remove. In short, as applicable to your case, it becomes
virtually a complete and formal attestation of your innocence. Alban
Morley will take care to apprise those of your old friends who may yet
survive, of that revocation of unjust obloquy, which this royal deed
implies--Alban