Page:What Will He Do With It? - Routledge - Volume 2.djvu/306



Her voice quivered, despite herself, at the last words, and she began to bustle about the room--filled Waife's pipe, thrust it into his hands with a laugh, the false mirth of which went to his very heart, and then stepped from the open window into the little garden, and began to sing one of Waife's favourite simple old Border songs; but before she got through the first line, the song ceased, and she was was as lost to sight as a ringdove, whose note comes and goes so quickly amongst the impenetrable coverts.

But Waife had heard enough to justify profound alarm for Sophy's peace of mind, and to waken in his own heart some of its most painful associations. The reader, who knows the wrong inflicted on William Losely by Lionel Haughton's father--a wrong which led to all poor Willy's subsequent misfortunes--may conceive that the very name of Haughton was wounding to his ear; and when, in his brief, sole, and bitter interview with Darrell, the latter had dropped out that Lionel Haughton, however distant of kin, would be a more grateful heir than the grandchild of a convicted felon--if Willy's sweet nature could have admitted a momentary hate, it would have been for the thus vaunted son of the man who had stripped him of the modest all which would perhaps have saved his own child from the robber's guilt, and himself from the robber's doom. Long since, therefore, the reader will have comprehended why, when Waife came to meet Sophy at the riverside, and learned at the inn on its margin that the name of her younger companion was Lionel Haughton--why, I say, he had so morosely parted from the boy, and so imperiously bade Sophy dismiss all thought of meeting "the pretty young gentleman" again.

And now again this very Lionel Haughton to have stolen into the retreat in which poor Waife had deemed he left his treasure so secure! Was it for this he had fled from her? Did he return to find her youth blighted, her affections robbed from him, by the son of Charles Haughton? The father had despoiled his manhood of independence; must it be the son who despoiled his age of its only solace? Grant even that Lionel was worthy of Sophy--grant that she had been loyally wooed--must not that attachment be fruitless--be fatal? If Lionel were really now adopted by Darrell, Waife knew human nature too well to believe that Darrell would complacently hear Lionel ask a wife in her