with four old maids for opposite neighbours." The order was
given, and the Colonel again returned to the papers. Suddenly he looked
up--looked full into Lady Montfort's face, with a thoughtful, searching
gaze, which made her drop her own eyes! and she saw that he had been
reading Jasper's confession, relating to his device for breaking off
her engagement to Darrell, which in her hurry and excitement she had
neglected to abstract from the other documents. "Oh, not that paper--you
are not to read that," she cried, quickly covering the writing with her
hand.

"Too late, my dear cousin. I have read it. All is now clear. Lionel was
right; and I was right too, in my convictions, though Darrell put so
coolly aside my questions when I was last at Fawley. I am justified
now in all the pains I took to secure Lionel's marriage--in the cunning
cruelty of my letter to George! Know, Lady Montfort, that if Lionel
had sacrificed his happiness to respect for Guy's ancestor-worship, Guy
Darrell would have held himself bound in honour never to marry again. He
told me so--told me he should be a cheat if he took any step to rob one
from whom he had exacted such an offering-of the name, and the heritage,
for which the offering had been made. And I then resolved that County
Guy should not thus irrevocably shut the door on his own happiness! Lady
Montfort, you know that this man loves you--as, verily, I believe, never
other man in our cold century loved woman;--through desertion--through
change--amidst grief--amidst resentment--despite pride;--dead to all
other love--shrinking from all other ties--on, constant on-carrying in
the depth of his soul to the verge of age, secret and locked up, the
hopeless passion of his manhood. Do you not see that it is through you,
and you alone, that Guy Darrell has for seventeen years been lost to the
country he was intended to serve and to adorn? Do you not feel that
if he now reject this last opportunity to redeem years so wasted, and
achieve a fame that may indeed link his Ancestral Name to the honours of
Posterity, you, and you alone, are the cause?"

"Alas--alas--but what can I do?"

"Do!--ay, true. The poor fellow is old now; you cannot care for
him!--you still young, and so unluckily beautiful!--you, for whom young
princes might vie. True; you can have no feeling for Guy Darrell, except
pity!"

"Pity! I hate the word!" cried Lady Montfort, with as much petulance as
if she had still been the wayward