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100 went into the Line; and finally, in a country town, in which I don't think he was quartered, but having gone there on some sporting speculation, was unwillingly detained, married—"

"My mother!" said Lionel, haughtily; "and the best of women she is. What then?"

"Nothing, my dear young sir,—nothing, except that Mr. Darrell never forgave it. He has his prejudices: this marriage shocked one of them."

"Prejudice against my poor mother! I always supposed so! I wonder why? The most simple-hearted, inoffensive, affectionate woman."

"I have not a doubt of it; but it is beginning to rain. Let us go home. I should like some luncheon: it breaks the day."

"Tell me first why Mr. Darrell has a prejudice against my mother. I don't think that he has even seen her. Unaccountable caprice! Shocked him,too,—what a word! Tell me—I beg—I insist."

"But you know," said Fairthorn, half piteously, half snappishly, "that Mrs. Haughton was the daughter of a linen-draper, and her father's money got Charlie out of the county jail; and Mr. Darrell said, 'Sold even your name!' My father heard him say it in the hall at Fawley. Mr. Darrell was there during a long vacation, and your father came to see him. Your father fired up, and they never saw each other, I believe, again."

Lionel remained still as if thunder-stricken. Something in his mother's language and manner had at times made him suspect that she was not so well born as his father. But it was not the discovery that she was tradesman's daughter that galled him; it was the thought that his father was bought for the altar out of the county jail! It was those cutting words, "Sold even your name." His face, before very crimson, became livid; his head sank on his breast. He walked towards the old gloomy-house by Fairthorn's side, as one who, for the first time in life, feels on his heart the leaden weight of an hereditary shame.

Lionel saw Mr. Fairthorn devoting his intellectual being to the contents of a cold chicken-pie, he silently stepped out of the room and slunk away into a thick copse at the farthest