at boy?
He may be my heir, and in his veins not a drop of my father's blood!"

"But he has the blood of your father's ancestors; and why must you
think of him as your heir?--you, who, if you would but go again into the
world, might yet find a fair wi--"

With such a stamp came Darrell's foot upon the floor that the holy and
conjugal monosyllable dropping from Fairthorn's lips was as much cut in
two as if a shark had snapped it. Unspeakably frightened, the poor man
sidled away, thrust himself behind a tall reading-desk, and, peering
aslant from that covert, whimpered out, "Don't, don't now, don't be so
awful; I did not mean to offend, but I'm always saying something I did
not mean; and really you look so young still" (coaxingly), "and, and--"

Darrell, the burst of rage over, had sunk upon a chair, his face bowed
over his hands, and his breast heaving as if with suppressed sobs.

The musician forgot his fear; he sprang forward, almost upsetting
the tall desk; he flung himself on his knees at Darrell's feet, and
exclaimed in broken words, "Master, master, forgive me! Beast that I
was! Do look up--do smile or else beat me--kick me."

Darrell's right hand slid gently from his face, and fell into
Fairthorn's clasp.

"Hush, hush," muttered the man of granite; "one moment, and it will be
over."

One moment! That might be but a figure of speech; yet before Lionel had
finished half the canto that was plunging him into fairyland, Darrell
was standing by him with his ordinary tranquil mien; and Fairthorn's
flute from behind the boughs of a neighbouring lime-tree was breathing
out an air as dulcet as if careless Fauns still piped in Arcady, and
Grief were a far dweller on the other side of the mountains, of whom
shepherds, reclining under summer leaves, speak as we speak of hydras
and unicorns, and things in fable.

On, on swelled the mellow, mellow, witching music; and now the worn
man with his secret sorrow, and the boy with his frank glad laugh, are
passing away, side by side, over the turf, with its starry and golden
wild-flowers, under the boughs in yon Druid copse, from which they
start the ringdove,--farther and farther, still side by side, now out of
sight, as if the dense green of the summer had closed around them like
waves. But still the flute sounds on, and still they hear it, softer and
softer as they go. Hark! do you not hear it--you?

CHAPTER XIV.

There are certain events which to each man's lif