"Is it so? Is it certain? Is there no doubt that she is the child of these honored parents?" asked Waife, tremulously.
"None," answered Alban; "we bring with us proofs that will clear up all my story."
The old man bowed his head over Sophy's fair locks for a moment; then raised it, serene and dignified; "You are mine for a moment yet, Sophy," said he.
"Yours as ever—more fondly, gratefully than ever," cried Sophy.
"There is but one man to whom I can willingly yield you, Son of Charles Haughton, take my treasure."
"I consent to that," cried Vance, "though I am put aside like the Remorseless Baron. And, Lionello mio, if Frank Vance is a miser, so much the better for his niece."
"But," faltered Lionel.
Oh, falter not. Gaze into those eyes; read that blush now! She looks coy, not reluctant. She bends before him—adorned as for love, by all her native graces. Air seems brightened by her bloom. No more the Outlaw-Child of Ignominy and Fraud, but the Starry Daughter of Poetry and Art! Lo, where they glide away under the leafless, melancholy trees. Leafless and melancholy! No! Verdure and blossom and the smile of spring are upon every bough.
"I suppose," said Alban, "it will not now break Lionel's heart to learn that not an hour before I left London I heard from a friend at the Horse Guards that it has been resolved to substitute the regiment for Lionel's; and it will be for some time yet, I suspect, that he must submit to be ingloriously happy. Come this way, George; a word in your ear." And Alban, drawing his nephew aside, told him of Jasper's state, and of Arabella's request. "Not a word to-day on these mournful topics to poor Willy. To-day let nothing add to his pain to have lost a grandchild, or dim his consolation in the happiness and security his Sophy gains in that loss. But to-morrow you will go and see this stricken-down sinner, and prepare the father for the worst. I made a point of seeing Dr. F. last night. He gives Jasper but a few weeks. He compares him to a mountain, not merely shattered by an earthquake, but burned out by its own inward fires."
"A few weeks only," sighed George. "Well, Time, that seems everything to man, has not even an existence in the sight of God. To that old mam I owe the power of speech to argue, to exhort, and to comfort; he was training me to kneel by the death-bed of his son!"
