iota of his resolves against a union between Lionel and Sophy. True, Lionel had induced him to say, "Could it be indisputably proved that no drop of Jasper Losely's blood were in this girl's veins—that she were the lawful child of honest parents, however humble—my right to stand between her and yourself would cease." But a lawyer's experience is less credulous than a lover's hope. And to Darrell's judgment it was wholly improbable that any honest parents, however humble, should have yielded their child to a knave like Jasper, while it was so proba ble that his own persuasion was well-founded, and that she was Jasper's daughter, though not Matilda's.
The winter evening had closed. George and Darrell were conversing in the library; the theme, of course, was Waife; and Darrell listened with vivid interest to George's graphic accounts of the old man's gentle, playful humor—with its vague desultory under-currents of poetic fancy or subtle wisdom. But when George turned to speak of Sophy's endearing, lovely nature, and, though cautiously, to intimate an appeal on her behalf to Darrell's sense of duty, or susceptibility to kindly emotions, the proud man's brow became knit, and his stately air evinced displeasure. Fortunately, just at a moment when farther words might have led to a permanent coldness between men so disposed to esteem each other, they heard the sound of wheels on the frosty ground—the shrill bell at the porch-door.
CHAPTER V.
The vagabond received in the Manor House at Fawley.
Very lamely, very feebly, declining Lionel's arm, but leaning heavily on his crutch-stick, Waife crossed the threshold of the Manor House. George sprang forward to welcome him. The old man looked on the preacher's face with a kind of wandering uncertainty in his eye, and George saw that his cheek was very much flushed. He limped on through the hall, still leaning on his staff, George and Lionel at either side. A pace or two, and there stood Darrell! Did he, the host, not spring forward to offer an arm, to extend a hand! No, such greeting in Darrell would have been but vulgar courtesy. As the old man's eye rested on him, the superb gentleman bowed low—bowed as we bow to kings!
They entered the library. Darrell made a sign to George
