Page:What Will He Do With It? - Routledge - Volume 2.djvu/403

 WILL HE DO WITH IT?"

SCENE--The banks of the lake at Fawley. George is lending his arm to Waife; Mrs. Morley, seated on her camp-stool at the opposite side of the water, is putting the last touch to her sketch of the Manor-house; Sir Isaac, reclined, is gravely contemplating the swans; the doe, bending over him, occasionally nibbles his ear; Fairthorn has uncomfortably edged himself into an angle of the building, between two buttresses, and is watching, with malignant eye, two young forms, at a distance, as they moved slowly yonder, side by side, yet apart, now lost, now emerging, through the gaps between melancholy leafless trees. Darrell, having just quitted Waife and George, to whose slow pace he can ill time his impatient steps, wonders why Lionel, whom, on arriving, he had, with brief cordial words, referred to Sophy for his fate, has taken more than an hour to ask a simple question, to which the reply may be pretty well known beforehand. He advances towards those melancholy trees. Suddenly one young form leaves the other--comes with rapid stride through the withered fern. Pale as death, Lionel seizes Guy Darrell's hand with convulsive grasp, and says: "I must leave you, sir; God bless you! All is over. I was the blindest fool--she refuses me."

"Refuses you!--impossible! For what reason?"

"She cannot love me well enough to marry," answered Lionel with a quivering lip, and an attempt at that irony in which all extreme anguish, at least in our haughty sex, delights to seek refuge or disguise. "Likes me as a friend, a brother, and so forth, but--nothing more. All a mistake, sir--all, except your marvellous kindness to me--to her--for which Heaven ever bless you."

"Yes, all a mistake of your own, foolish boy," said Darrell, tenderly; and, turning sharp, he saw Sophy hastening by, quickly and firmly, with her eyes looking straightward--on into space. He threw himself in her path.

"Tell this dull kinsman of mine that 'faint heart never