Darrell turned, and looked toward George, as if in surprise to see him still lingering there.
"I have now but to place before you this letter from my uncle to myself; it enters into those details which it would have misbecome me specially to discuss. Remember, I entreat you, in reading it, that it is written by your oldest friend—by a man who has no dull discrimination in the perplexities of life, or the niceties of honor."
Darrell bowed his head in assent, and took the letter. George was about to leave the room.
"Stay," said Darrell, "'tis best to have but one interview—one conversation on the subject which has been just enforced on me; and the letter may need a comment, or a message to your uncle." He stood hesitating, with the letter open in his hand; and, fixing his keen eye on George's pale and powerful countenance, said, "How is it that, with an experience of mankind, which you will pardon me for assuming to be limited, you yet read so wondrously the complicated human heart?"
"If I really have that gift," said George, "I will answer your question by another: Is it through experience that we learn to read the human heart—or is it through sympathy? If it be experience, what becomes of the Poet? If the Poet be born, not made, is it not because he is born to sympathize with what he has never experienced?"
"I see! There are born Preachers!"
Darrell reseated himself, and began Alban's letter. He was evidently moved by the Colonel's account of Lionel's grief—muttering to himself, "Poor boy!—but he is brave—he is young." When he came to Alban's forebodings, on the effects of dejection upon the stamina of life, he pressed his hand quickly against his breast as if he had received a shock! He mused awhile before he resumed his task; then he read rapidly and silently till his face flushed, and he repeated in a hollow tone, inexpressibly mournful, "'Let the young man live, and the old name die with Guy Darrell.' Ay, ay! see how the world sides with Youth! What matters all else, so that Youth have its toy!" Again his eye hurried on impatiently till he came to the passage devoted to Lady Montfort; then George saw that the paper trembled violently in his hand, and that his very lips grew white. "'Serious apprehensions,'" he muttered. "I owe 'consideration to such a friend.' This man is without a heart!"
He clenched the paper in his hand without reading farther. "Leave me this letter, George; I will give an answer to that
