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 to it! You look away: I offend you! I have no right to tax your benevolence for others; but, instead of showering favours upon me, so little would suffice for her!--if she were but above positive want, with that old man (she would not be happy without him), safe in such a cottage as you give to your own peasants! I am a man, or shall be one soon; I can wrestle with the world, and force my way somehow; but that delicate child, a village show, or a beggar on the high road!--no mother, no brother, no one but that broken-down cripple, leaning upon her arm as his crutch. I cannot bear to think of it. I am sure I shall meet her again somewhere; and when I do, may I not write to you, and will you not come to her help? Do speak; do say 'Yes,' Mr. Darrell."

The rich man's breast heaved slightly; he closed his eyes, but for a moment. There was a short and sharp struggle with his better self, and the better self conquered.

"Let go my reins; see, my horse puts down his ears; he may do you a mischief. Now canter on: you shall be satisfied. Give me a moment to—to unbutton my coat: it is too tight for me."

CHAPTER XII.

Guy Darrell gives way to an impulse, and quickly decides what he will do with it.

"Lionel Haughton," said Guy Darrell, regaining his young cousin's side, and speaking in a firm and measured voice, "I have to thank you for one very happy minute; the sight of a heart so fresh in the limpid purity of goodness is a luxury you cannot comprehend till you have come to my age; journeyed, like me, from Dan to Beersheba, and found all barren. Heed me: if you had been half-a-dozen years older, and this child for whom you plead had been a fair young woman, perhaps just as innocent, just as charming,—more in peril,—my benevolence would have lain as dormant as a stone. A young man's foolish sentiment for a pretty girl,—as your true friend, I should have shrugged my shoulders and said, 'Beware!' Had I been your father, I should have taken alarm and frowned. I should have seen the sickly romance which ends in dupes and deceivers. But at your age, you, hearty, genial, and open-hearted boy,—you, caught but by the chivalrous compassion for helpless female childhood,—oh, that you were my son,—oh, that my dear father's blood were in those knightly