and to you before night." He caught up his hat as he spoke, passed into the lifeless picture-gallery, and so out into the open air. George, dubious and anxious, gained the solitude of his own room, and locked the door.
CHAPTER III.
At last the great Question by Torture is fairly applied to Guy Darrell.
What will he do with it? What will Guy Darrell do with the thought that weighs on his brain, rankles in his heart, perplexes his dubious conscience? What will he do with the Law which has governed his past life? What will he do with that shadow of a Name, which, alike in swarming crowds or in lonely burial-places, has spelled his eye and lured his step as a beckoning ghost? What will he do with the Pride from which the mask has been so rudely torn? What will he do with idols so long revered? Are they idols, or are they but symbols and images of holy truths? What will he do with the torturing problem, on the solution of which depends the honor due to consecrated ashes, and the rights due to beating hearts? There, restless he goes, the arrow of that question in his side—now through the broad waste lands—now through the dim woods, pausing oft with short quick sigh, with hand swept across his brow as if to clear away a cloud;—now snatched from our sight by the evergreens round the tomb in that still church-yard—now emerging slow, with melancholy eyes fixed on the old roof-tree! What will he do with it? The Question of Questions in which all Futurity is opened, has him on its rack. What will he do with it? Let us see.
CHAPTER IV.
Immunis aram, si tetigit manus,
Non sumptuosa blandior hostia,
Mollivit aversas Penates,
Farre pio et saliente mica—Horat.
It is the gray of the evening. Fairthorn is sauntering somewhat sullenly along the banks of the lake. He has missed, the last three days, his walk with Sophy—missed the pleasing excitement of talking at her, and of the family in whose obsolete glo-
