soldier, call that thought—'comfort?' Oh, Alban!—out on you! Fie! fie! No!—leave such a thought to the lips of a William Losely! He indeed, clasping his hands, faltered forth some such word; he seemed to count on my forlorn privation of kith and kindred—no heir to my wealth—no representative of my race—would I deprive myself of—ay—your very words—of a solace—a comfort! He asked me, at least, to inquire."
"And you answered?"
"Answered so as to quell and crush in the bud all hopes in the success of so flagrant a falsehood—answered: 'Why inquire? Know that, even if your tale were true, I have no heir, no representative, no descendant in child of Jasper—the grandchild of William—Losely. I can at least leave my wealth to the son of Charles Haughton. True, Charles Haughton was a spendthrift—a gamester; but he was neither a professional cheat nor a convicted felon.'"
"You said that—oh, Darrell!"
The Colonel checked himself. But for Charles Haughton, the spendthrift and gamester, would William Losely have been the convicted felon? He checked that thought, and hurried on—'And how did William Losely reply?"
"He made no reply—he skulked away without a word."
Darrell than proceeded to relate the interview which Jasper had forced on him at Fawley during Lionel's visit there—on Jasper's part, an attempt to tell the same tale as William had told—on Darrell's part, the same scornful refusal to hear it out. "And," added Darrell, "the man, finding it thus impossible to dupe my reason, had the inconceivable meanness to apply to me for alms. I could not better show the disdain in which I held himself and his story than in recognizing his plea as a mendicant. I threw my purse at his feet, and so left him.
"But," continued Darrell, his brow growing darker and darker, "but wild and monstrous as the story was, still the idea that it MIGHT be true—a supposition which derived its sole strength from the character of Jasper Losely—from the interest he had in the supposed death of a child that alone stood between himself and the money he longed to grasp—an interest which ceased when the money itself was gone, or rather changed into the counter-interest of proving a life that, he thought, would re-establish a hold on me—still, I say, an idea that the story might be true, would force itself on my fears, and if so, though my resolution never to acknowledge the child of Jasper Losely as a representative, or even as a daughter, of my house, would of course be immovable—yet it would become my duty to see that her infancy
