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Rh firmation of his tale—if he was then speaking truth to you, doubtless this was the lady of rank referred to in the Nurse's confession—doubtless this was the woman once palmed upon me as Matilda's confidante. In that case I have seen her. What, then?"

"Mother was not written on her face! She could never have been a mother. Oh, you may smile, Sir; but all my life I have been a reader of the human face; and there is in the aspects of some women the barrenness as of stone—no mother's throb in their bosom—no mother's kiss on their lips."

"I am a poor reader of women's faces," said Darrell; "but she must be very unlike women in general, who allows you to know her a bit better if you stood reading her face till doomsday. Besides, at the time you saw Gabrielle Desmarets, her mode of life had perhaps given to her an aspect not originally in her countenance. And I can only answer your poetic conceit by a poetic illustration—Niobe turned to stone; but she had a great many daughters before she petrified. Pardon me, if I would turn off by a jest a thought that I see would shock you, as myself, if gravely encouraged. Encourage it not. Let us suppose it only a chance that inquiry might confirm this conjecture; but let us shun that chance. Meanwhile, if inquiry is to be made, one more likely than either of us to get at the truth has promised to make it, and sooner or later we may learn from her the results—I mean that ill-fated Arabella Fosset, whom you knew as Crane."

Waife was silent; but he kept turning in his hand, almost disconsolately, the document which assoiled him from the felon's taint, and said at length, as Darrell was about to leave, "And this thing is of no use to her, then?"

Darrell came back to the old man's chair, and said, softly, "Friend, do not fancy that the young have only one path to happiness. You grieve that I cannot consent to Lionel's marriage with your Sophy. Dismiss from your mind the desire for the Impossible. Gently wean from hers what is but a girl's first fancy."

"It is a girl's first love."

"And if it be," said Darrell, calmly, "no complaint more sure to yield to change of air. I have known a girl as affectionate, as pure, as full of all womanly virtues, as your Sophy (and I can give her no higher praise)—loved more deeply than Lionel can love; professing, doubtless at the time believing, that she also loved for life; betrothed too; faith solemnized by promise; yet in less than a year she was another's wife. Change of air, change of heart! I do not underrate the effect which a