by the law—her relationship, both to him from whom you would guard her, and to him whose hearth you have so tenderly reared her to grace, suddenly dragged to-day—would not the shame kill her? And in that disclosure how keen would be the anguish of Darrell!"
"Oh Heavens!" cried Caroline Montfort, white as ashes, and wringing her hands, "you freeze me with terror. But this man cannot be so fallen as you describe. I have seen him—spoken with him in his youth—hoped then to assist in a task of conciliation, pardon. Nothing about him then foreboded so fearful a corruption. He might be vain, extravagant, selfish, false—ah, yes! he was false indeed!—but still the ruffian you paint, banded with common criminals, cannot be the same as the gay, dainty, perfumed, fair-faced adventurer with whom my ill-fated playmate fled her father's house. You shake your head—what is it you advise?"
"To expedite your own project—to make at once the resolute attempt to secure to this poor child her best, her most rightful, protector—to let whatever can be done to guard her from danger, or reclaim her father from courses to which despair may be driving him—to let, I say, all this be done by the person whose interest in doing it effectively is so paramount—whose ability to judge of and decide on the wisest means is so immeasurably superior to all that lies within our own limited experience of life."
"But you forget that our friend told me that he had appealed to—to Mr. Darrell on his return to England; that Mr. Darrell had peremptorily refused to credit the claim; and had sternly said that, even if Sophy's birth could be proved, he would not place under his father's roof the grandchild of William Losely."
"True; and yet you hoped reasonably enough to succeed where he, poor outcast, had failed."
"Yes, yes; I did hope that Sophy—her manners formed, her education completed—all her natural exquisite graces so cultured and refined as to justify pride in the proudest kindred—I did hope that she should be brought, as it were by accident, under his notice; that she would interest and charm him; and that the claim, when made, might thus be welcomed with delight. Mr. Darrell's abrupt return to a seclusion so rigid forbids the opportunity that might easily have been found or made if he had remained in London, But suddenly, violently to renew a claim that such a man has rejected, before he has ever seen the dear child—before his heart and his taste plead for her—who would dare to do it? or, if so daring, who could hope success?"
