ess and without decline,--live habitually while young with persons
older, and when old with persons younger, than yourself.'"

"Shrewdly said indeed. I felicitate you on the evident result of the
maxim. And so Darrell has no home,--no wife and no children?"

"He has long been a widower; he lost his only son in boyhood, and his
daughter--did you never hear?"

"No, what?"

"Married so ill--a runaway match--and died many years since, without
issue."

"Poor man! It was these afflictions, then, that soured his life, and
made him the hermit or the wanderer?"

"There," said Lionel, "I am puzzled; for I find that, even after his
son's death and his daughter's unhappy marriage and estrangement from
him, he was still in Parliament and in full activity of career. But
certainly he did not long keep it up. It might have been an effort to
which, strong as he is, he felt himself unequal; or, might he have
known some fresh disappointment, some new sorrow, which the world never
guesses? What I have said as to his family afflictions the world knows.
But I think he will marry again. That idea seemed strong in his own mind
when we parted; he brought it out bluntly, roughly. Colonel Morley is
convinced that he will marry, if but for the sake of an heir."

VANCE.--"And if so, my poor Lionel, you are ousted of--"

LIONEL (quickly interrupting).--"Hush! Do not say, my dear Vance, do not
you say--you!--one of those low, mean things which, if said to me even
by men for whom I have no esteem, make my ears tingle and my cheek
blush. When I think of what Darrell has already done for me,--me who
have no claim on him,--it seems to me as if I must hate the man who
insinuates, 'Fear lest your benefactor find a smile at his own hearth, a
child of his own blood; for you may be richer at his death in proportion
as his life is desolate.'"

VANCE.--"You are a fine young fellow, and I beg your pardon. Take care
of that milestone: thank you. But I suspect that at least two-thirds of
those friendly hands that detained you on the way to me were stretched
out less to Lionel Haughton, a subaltern in the Guards, than to Mr.
Darrell's heir presumptive."

LIONEL.--"That thought sometimes galls me, but it does me good; for it
goads on my desire to make myself some one whom the most worldly would
not disdain to know for his own sake. Oh for active service! Oh for a
sharp campaign! Oh for fair trial how far a man in earnest can grapple
Fortune to his breast