py of the codicil by which Fawley is to pass away, and the name
of Darrell be consigned to the care of grateful Learning, linked with
prizes and fellowships;--a public property--lost for ever to private
representatives of its sepulchred bearers. Preparations for departure
from the doomed dwelling-house have begun. There are large boxes on the
floor; and favourite volumes--chiefly in science or classics--lie piled
beside them for selection.

What is really at the bottom of Guy Darrell's heart? Does he feel
reconciled to his decision? Is the virtue of his new self-sacrifice
in itself a consoling reward? Is that cordial urbanity, that cheerful
kindness, by which he has been yet more endearing himself to his guests,
sincere or assumed? As he throws aside his pen, and leans his cheek
on his hand, the expression of his countenance may perhaps best answer
those questions. It has more unmingled melancholy than was habitual to
it before, even when in his gloomiest moods; but it is a melancholy much
more soft and subdued; it is the melancholy of resignation--that of a
man who has ceased a long struggle--paid his offering to the appeased
Nemesis, in casting into the sea the thing that had been to him the
dearest.

But in resignation, when complete, there is always a strange relief.
Despite that melancholy, Darrell is less unhappy than he has been for
years. He feels as if a suspense has passed--a load been lifted from
his breast. After all, he has secured, to the best of his judgment, the
happiness of the living, and, in relinquishing the object to which his
own life has been vainly devoted, and immolating the pride attached to
it, he has yet, to use his own words, paid his "dues to the dead." No
descendant from a Jasper Losely and a Gabrielle Desmarets will sit as
mistress of the house in which Loyalty and Honour had garnered, with
the wrecks of fortune, the memories of knightly fame--nor perpetuate the
name of Darrell through children whose blood has a source in the sink of
infamy and fraud. Nor was this consolation that of a culpable pride; it
was bought by the abdication of a pride that had opposed its prejudices
to living worth--to living happiness. Sophy would not be punished for
sins not her own--Lionel not barred from a prize that earth never
might replace. What mattered to them a mouldering, old, desolate
manor-house--a few hundreds of pitiful acres? Their children would not
be less blooming if their holiday summer-noons