anxious that we should cure it, which grandfather did, and the hare
would sometimes hurt him, but he never hurt the hare."

Said George sonorously:

"Ingenuas didicisse fideliter artes
Emollit mores, nec sinit esse feros."

Darrell drew Sophy's arm into his own. "Will you walk back to the lake
with me," said he, "and help me to feed the swans? George, send your
servant express for Sir Isaac. I am impatient to make his acquaintance."

Sophy's hand involuntarily pressed Darrell's arm. She looked up into his
face with innocent, joyous gratitude; feeling at once, and as by magic,
that her awe of him was gone.

Darrell and Sophy rambled thus together for more than an hour. He sought
to draw out her mind, unaware to herself; he succeeded. He was struck
with a certain simple poetry of thought which pervaded her ideas--not
artificial sentimentality, but a natural tendency to detect in all life
a something of delicate or beautiful which lies hid from the ordinary
sense. He found, thanks to Lady Montfort, that, though far from learned,
she was more acquainted with literature than he had supposed. And
sometimes he changed colour, or breathed his short quick sigh, when he
recognised her familiarity with passages in his favourite authors which
he himself had commended, or read aloud, to the Caroline of old.

The next day Waife, who seemed now recovered as by enchantment, walked
forth with George, Darrell again with Sophy. Sir Isaac arrived--Immense
joy; the doe butts Sir Isaac, who retreating, stands on his hind legs,
and, having possessed himself of Waife's crutch, presents fire; the doe
in her turn retreats;--half an hour afterwards doe and dog are friends.

Waife is induced, without much persuasion, to join the rest of the party
at dinner. In the evening, all (Fairthorn excepted) draw round the fire.
Waife is entreated by George to read a scene or two out of Shakespeare.
He selects the latter portion of "King Lear." Darrell, who never was a
playgoer, and who, to his shame be it said, had looked very little into
Shakespeare since he left college, was wonderstruck. He himself read
beautifully--all great orators, I suppose, do; but his talent was not
mimetic--not imitative; he could never have been an actor--never thrown
himself into existences wholly alien or repugnant to his own. Grave or
gay, stern or kind, Guy Darrell, though often varying, was always Guy
Darrell.

But when Waife was once in that magical w