nd because she
was much snubbed and put upon, as I am told governesses usually
are,--married her because, poor as he was, he was still the head of both
families, and bound to do what he could for decayed scions. The first
governess a Darrell, ever married; but no true Darrell would have called
that a mesalliance since she was still a Haughton and 'Fors non mutat
genus,'--Chance does not change race."

"But how comes it that the Haughtons, my grandfather Haughton, I
suppose, would do nothing for his own kinswoman?"

"It was not your grandfather Robert Haughton, who was a generous
man,--he was then a mere youngster, hiding himself for debt,--but your
great--grandfather, who was a hard man and on the turf. He never had
money to give,--only money for betting. He left the Haughton estates
sadly clipped. But when Robert succeeded, he came forward, was godfather
to our Mr. Darrell, insisted on sharing the expense of sending him to
Eton, where he became greatly distinguished; thence to Oxford, where
he increased his reputation; and would probably have done more for him,
only Mr. Darrell, once his foot on the ladder, wanted no help to climb
to the top."

"Then my grandfather, Robert, still had the Haughton estates? Their
last relics had not been yet transmuted by Mr. Cox into squares and a
paragon?"

"No; the grand old mansion, though much dilapidated, with its park,
though stripped of salable timber, was still left with a rental from
farms that still appertained to the residence, which would have sufficed
a prudent man for the luxuries of life, and allowed a reserve fund to
clear off the mortgages gradually. Abstinence and self-denial for one or
two generations would have made a property, daily rising in value as the
metropolis advanced to its outskirts, a princely estate for a third. But
Robert Haughton, though not on the turf, had a grand way of living; and
while Guy Darrell went into the law to make a small patrimony a large
fortune, your father, my dear young sir, was put into the Guards to
reduce a large patrimony--into Mr. Cox's distillery."

Lionel coloured, but remained silent.

Fairthorn, who was as unconscious in his zest of narrator that he was
giving pain as an entomologist in his zest for collecting when he pins
a live moth in his cabinet, resumed: "Your father and Guy Darrell were
warm friends as boys and youths. Guy was the elder of the two, and
Charlie Haughton (I beg your pardon, he was always called Cha