Page:What Will He Do With It? - Routledge - Volume 1.djvu/419

 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 interest of her fortune must be devoted to my father while he lived, though every shilling of its capital would be settled on herself and her children. How I blessed her when she accepted me, despite my candour!--how earnestly I prayed that I might love and cherish and requite her!" Darrell paused, in evident suffering. "And, thank Heaven! I have nothing on that score wherewith to reproach myself; and the strength of that memory enabled me to bear and forbear more than otherwise would have been possible to my quick spirit and my man's heart. My dear father! his death was happy: his home was saved; he never knew at what sacrifice to his son! He was gladdened by the first honours my youth achieved. He was resigned to my choice of a profession, which, though contrary to his antique prejudices, that allowed to the representative of the Darrells no profession but the sword, still promised the wealth which would secure his name from perishing. He was credulous of my future, as if I had uttered not a vow, but a prediction. He had blessed my union, without foreseeing its sorrows. He had embraced my first-born,—true, it was a girl, but it was one link onward from ancestors to posterity. And almost his last words were these: 'You will restore the race; you will revive the name! and my son's children will visit the antiquary's grave, and learn gratitude to him for all that his idle lessons taught to your healthier vigour.' And I answered, 'Father, your line shall not perish from the land; and when I am rich and great, and lordships spread far round the lowly hall that your life ennobled, I will say to your grandchildren, 'Honour ye and your son's sons, while a Darrell yet treads the earth, honour him to whom I owe every thought which nerved me to toil for what you who come after me may enjoy.'

"And so the old man, whose life had been so smileless, died smiling."

By this time Lionel had stolen Darrell's hand into his own—his heart swelling with childlike tenderness, and the tears rolling down his cheeks.

Darrell gently kissed his young kinsman's forehead, and, extricating himself from Lionel's clasp, paced the room, and spoke on while pacing it.