Page:What Will He Do With It? - Routledge - Volume 2.djvu/400

 cruelty of my letter to George! Know, Lady Montfort, that if Lionel had sacrificed his happiness to respect for Guy's ancestor-worship, Guy Darrell would have held himself bound in honour never to marry again. He told me so--told me he should be a cheat if he took any step to rob one from whom he had exacted such an offering-of the name, and the heritage, for which the offering had been made. And I then resolved that County Guy should not thus irrevocably shut the door on his own happiness! Lady Montfort, you know that this man loves you--as, verily, I believe, never other man in our cold century loved woman;--through desertion--through change--amidst grief--amidst resentment--despite pride;--dead to all other love--shrinking from all other ties--on, constant on-carrying in the depth of his soul to the verge of age, secret and locked up, the hopeless passion of his manhood. Do you not see that it is through you, and you alone, that Guy Darrell has for seventeen years been lost to the country he was intended to serve and to adorn? Do you not feel that if he now reject this last opportunity to redeem years so wasted, and achieve a fame that may indeed link his Ancestral Name to the honours of Posterity, you, and you alone, are the cause?"

"Alas--alas--but what can I do?"

"Do!--ay, true. The poor fellow is old now; you cannot care for him!--you still young, and so unluckily beautiful!--you, for whom young princes might vie. True; you can have no feeling for Guy Darrell, except pity!"

"Pity! I hate the word!" cried Lady Montfort, with as much petulance as if she had still been the wayward lively Caroline of old.

Again the Man of the World directed toward her face his shrewd eyes, and dropped out, "See him!"

"But I have seen him. You remember I went to plead for Lionel and Sophy--in vain!"

"Not in vain. George writes me word that he has informed you of Darrell's consent to their marriage. And I am much mistaken if his greatest consolation in the pang that consent must have cost him be not the thought that it relieves you from the sorrow and remorse his refusal had occasioned to you. Ah! there is but one person who can restore Darrell to the world-and that is yourself!"

Lady Montfort shook her head drearily.