ed as if it had left to him no
memory, the future as if it stored for him no desire. But did the past
leave no memory? Why then at intervals would the book slide from his
eye, the head sink upon the breast, and a shade of unutterable dejection
darken over the grand beauty of that strong stern countenance? Still
that dejection was not morbidly fed and encouraged, for he would fling
it from him with a quick impatient gesture of the head, resume the
book resolutely, or change it for another which induced fresh trains of
thought, or look over Lionel's shoulder, and make some subtile comment
on his choice, or call on Fairthorn for the flute; and in a few minutes
the face was severely serene again. And be it here said, that it is only
in the poetry of young gentlemen, or the prose of lady novelists, that a
man in good health and of sound intellect wears the livery of unvarying
gloom. However great his causes of sorrow, he does not forever parade
its ostentatious mourning, nor follow the hearse of his hopes with
the long face of an undertaker. He will still have his gleams of
cheerfulness, his moments of good humour. The old smile will sometimes
light the eye, and awake the old playfulness of the lip. But what a
great and critical sorrow does leave behind is often far worse than the
sorrow itself has been. It is a change in the inner man, which strands
him, as Guy Darrell seemed stranded, upon the shoal of the Present;
which the more he strives manfully to bear his burden warns him the more
from dwelling on the Past; and the more impressively it enforces the
lesson of the vanity of human wishes strikes the more from his reckoning
illusive hopes in the Future. Thus out of our threefold existence two
parts are annihilated,--the what has been, the what shall be. We fold
our arms, stand upon the petty and steep cragstone, which alone looms
out of the Measureless Sea, and say to ourselves, looking neither
backward nor beyond, "Let us bear what is;" and so for the moment the
eye can lighten and the lip can smile.

Lionel could no longer glean from Mr. Fairthorn any stray hints upon
the family records. That gentleman had evidently been reprimanded
for indiscretion, or warned against its repetition, and he became as
reserved and mum as if he had just emerged from the cave of Trophonius.
Indeed he shunned trusting himself again alone to Lionel, and affecting
a long arrear of correspondence on behalf of his employer, left the lad
during