nce to visit
the old Lord Montfort, at his villa near London, and thence to the
country-house of the Vipont Crookes. I stayed at the last two or three
weeks. While there, I received a letter from the elder Fairthorn, my
father's bailiff, entreating me to come immediately to Fawley, hinting
at some great calamity. On taking leave of my friend and his family,
something in the manner of his sister startled and pained me,--an
evident confusion, a burst of tears,--I know not what. I had never
sought to win her affections. I had an ideal of the woman I could
love,--it did not resemble her. On reaching Fawley, conceive the shock
that awaited me. My father was like one heart-stricken. The principal
mortgagee was about to foreclose,--Fawley about to pass forever from the
race of the Darrells. I saw that the day my father was driven from the
old house would be his last on earth. What means to save him?--how
raise the pitiful sum--but a few thousands--by which to release from the
spoiler's gripe those barren acres which all the lands of the Seymour or
the Gower could never replace in my poor father's eyes? My sole income
was a college fellowship, adequate to all my wants, but useless for sale
or loan. I spent the night in vain consultation with Fairthorn. There
seemed not a hope. Next morning came a letter from young Vipont Crooke.
It was manly and frank, though somewhat coarse. With the consent of
his parents he offered me his sister's hand, and a dowry of L10,000.
He hinted, in excuse for his bluntness, that, perhaps from motives of
delicacy, if I felt a preference for his sister, I might not deem myself
rich enough to propose, and--but it matters not what else he said. You
foresee the rest. My father's life could be saved from despair; his
beloved home be his shelter to the last. That dowry would more than
cover the paltry debt upon the lands. I gave myself not an hour to
pause. I hastened back to the house to which fate had led me. But,"
said Darrell, proudly, "do not think I was base enough, even with such
excuses, to deceive the young lady. I told her what was true; that I
could not profess to her the love painted by romance-writers and poets;
but that I loved no other, and that if she deigned to accept my hand, I
should studiously consult her happiness and gratefully confide to her my
own."

"I said also, what was true, that if she married me, ours must be for
some years a life of privation and struggle; that even the inter