Page:What will he do with it.djvu/779

Rh crests, wrought before her confinement by the young wife—all of which had been consigned by the singer to the nurse, and which the nurse willingly disposed of to Mrs. Crane, with her own formal deposition of the facts, confirmed by her sister, Gabrielle's old confidential attendant, and who, more favored than her mistress, was living peaceably in the rural scenes of her earlier innocence, upon the interest of the gains she had saved in no innocent service—confirmed yet more by reference to many whose testimonials could trace, step by step, the child's record from its birth to its transfer to Jasper, and by the brief but distinct avowal, in tremulous lines, writ by Jasper himself. As a skein crossed and tangled, when the last knot is loosened, slips suddenly free, so this long-bewildering mystery now became clear as a commonplace! What years of suffering Darrell might have been saved had he himself seen and examined the nurse—had his inquiry been less bounded by the fear of his pride—had the great lawyer not had himself for a client!

Darreli silently returned to Alban Morley the papers over which he had cast his eye as they walked slowly to and fro the sloping banks of the lake.

"It is well," said he, glancing fondly, as Fairthorn had glanced before him, toward the old House, now freed from doom, and permitted to last its time; "it is well," he repeated, looking away toward that part of the landscape where he could just catch a glimpse of Sophy's light form beyond the barbed thorn-tree; "it is well," he repeated thrice, with a sigh. "Poor human nature! Alban, can you conceive it, I, who once so dreaded that that poor child should prove to be of my blood, now, in knowing that she is not, feel a void, a loss! To Lionel lam so distant a kinsman!—to his wife, to his children, what can I be? A rich old man: the sooner he is in his grave the better. A few tears, and then the will! But, as your nephew says, 'This life is but a school;' the new-comer in the last form thinks the head-boy just leaving so old! And to us, looking back, it seems but the same yesterday whether we were the last comer or the head-boy."

"I thought," said Alban, plaintively, "that, for a short time at least, I had done with 'painful subjects.' You revel in them! County Guy, you have not left school yet; leave it with credit; win the best prize." And Alban plunged at once into. He grew eloquent; the Party, the Country, the Great Measure to be intrusted to Darrell, if he would but undertake it as a member of the Cabinet; the Peerage, the