Page:What Will He Do With It? - Routledge - Volume 2.djvu/371

 England, which I shall do the day Lionel is married; and then, dear old friend, calm days, clear consciences:--In climes where whole races have passed away--proud cities themselves sunk in graves--where our petty grief for a squirearch's lost house we shall both grow ashamed to indulge--there we will moralise, rail against vain dreams and idle pride, cultivate vines and orange trees, with Horace--nay, nay, Dick--with the FLUTE!"

CHAPTER V.

MORE BOUNTEOUS RUN RIVERS WHEN THE ICE THAT LOCKED THEIR FLOW MELTS INTO THEIR WATERS. AND WHEN FINE NATURES RELENT, THEIR KINDNESS Is  SWELLED BY THE THAW.

Darrell escaped into the house; Fairthorn sunk upon the ground, and resigned himself for some minutes to unmanly lamentations. Suddenly he started up; a thought came into his brain--a hope into his breast. He made a caper--launched himself into a precipitate zig-zag--gained the hall-door-plunged into his own mysterious hiding-place--and in less than an hour re-emerged, a letter in his hand, with which he had just time to catch the postman, as that functionary was striding off from the back yard with the official bag.

This exploit performed, Fairthorn shambled into his chair at the dinner-table, as George Morley concluded the grace which preceded the meal that in Fairthorn's estimation usually made the grand event of the passing day. But the poor man's appetite was gone. As Sophy dined with Waife, the Morleys alone shared, with host and secretary, the melancholy entertainment. George was no less silent than Fairthorn; Darrell's manner perplexed him. Mrs. Morley, not admitted into her husband's confidence in secrets that concerned others, though in all his own he was to her conjugal sight _pellucidior vitro_, was the chief talker; and being the best woman in the world, ever wishing to say something pleasant, she fell to praising the dear old family pictures that scowled at her from the wall, and informed Fairthorn that she had made great progress with her sketch of the old house as seen from the lake, and was in doubt whether she should introduce in the foreground some figures of the olden time, as in Nash's Views