Page:What Will He Do With It? - Routledge - Volume 2.djvu/309

 bestowed on me a joy, now becomes of value, since it will give dignity to--to Matilda's child, and--and to--" Lady Montfort sobbed.

Waife listened respectfully, and for the time was comforted. Certainly, in his own heart he was glad that Lionel Haughton was permanently separated from Sophy. There was scarcely a man on earth, of fair station and repute, to whom he would have surrendered Sophy with so keen a pang as to Charles Haughton's son.

The poor young lovers! all the stars seemed against them! Was it not enough that Guy Darrell should be so obdurate! must the mild William Losely be also a malefic in their horoscope?

But when, that same evening, the old man more observantly than ever watched his grandchild, his comfort vanished--misgivings came over him--he felt assured that the fatal shaft had been broken in the wound, and that the heart was bleeding inly.

True; not without prophetic insight had Arabella Crane said to the pining, but resolute, quiet child, behind the scenes of Mr. Rugge's show, "How much you will love one day." All that night Waife lay awake pondering--revolving--exhausting that wondrous fertility of resource which teemed in his inventive brain. In vain!

And now--(the day after this conversation with Lady Montfort, whose illness grieves, but does not surprise him)--now, as he sits and thinks, and gazes abstractedly into that far, pale, winter sky-now, the old man is still scheming how to reconcile a human loving heart to the eternal loss of that affection which has so many perishable counterfeits, but which, when true in all its elements--complete in all its varied wealth of feeling, is never to be forgotten and never to be replaced.

CHAPTER II.

AN OFFERING TO THE MANES.

Three sides of Waife's cottage were within Lady Montfort's grounds; the fourth side, with its more public, entrance, bordered the lane. Now, as he thus sate, he was startled by a low timid ring at the door which opened on