to you."

CHAPTER XII. AND LAST.

IN WHICH THE AUTHOR ENDEAVOURS, TO THE BEST OF HIS ABILITY, TO GIVE
A FINAL REPLY TO THE QUESTION, "WHAT WILL HE DO WITH IT?"

SCENE--The banks of the lake at Fawley. George is lending his arm to
Waife; Mrs. Morley, seated on her camp-stool at the opposite side of the
water, is putting the last touch to her sketch of the Manor-house; Sir
Isaac, reclined, is gravely contemplating the swans; the doe, bending
over him, occasionally nibbles his ear; Fairthorn has uncomfortably
edged himself into an angle of the building, between two buttresses, and
is watching, with malignant eye, two young forms, at a distance, as they
moved slowly yonder, side by side, yet apart, now lost, now emerging,
through the gaps between melancholy leafless trees. Darrell, having
just quitted Waife and George, to whose slow pace he can ill time his
impatient steps, wonders why Lionel, whom, on arriving, he had, with
brief cordial words, referred to Sophy for his fate, has taken more than
an hour to ask a simple question, to which the reply may be pretty well
known beforehand. He advances towards those melancholy trees. Suddenly
one young form leaves the other--comes with rapid stride through the
withered fern. Pale as death, Lionel seizes Guy Darrell's hand with
convulsive grasp, and says: "I must leave you, sir; God bless you! All
is over. I was the blindest fool--she refuses me."

"Refuses you!--impossible! For what reason?"

"She cannot love me well enough to marry," answered Lionel with a
quivering lip, and an attempt at that irony in which all extreme
anguish, at least in our haughty sex, delights to seek refuge or
disguise. "Likes me as a friend, a brother, and so forth, but--nothing
more. All a mistake, sir--all, except your marvellous kindness to me--to
her--for which Heaven ever bless you."

"Yes, all a mistake of your own, foolish boy," said Darrell, tenderly;
and, turning sharp, he saw Sophy hastening by, quickly and firmly, with
her eyes looking straightward--on into space. He threw himself in her
path.

"Tell this dull kinsman of mine that 'faint heart never won fair lady.'
You do not mean seriously, deliberately to reject a heart that will
never be faint with a meaner fear than that of losing you?"

Poor Sophy! She kept her blue eyes still on the cold grey space, and
answered by some scarce audible words--words which in every age girls
intending to say No seem to learn as birds l