Book 7 - Chapter 25

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_ BOOK VII CHAPTER XXV

"Quem Fors dierum cunque dabit
Lucro appone."--HORAT.

Lionel stood, expectant, in the centre of the room, and as the two female forms entered, the lights were full upon their faces. That younger face--it is she--it is she, the unforgotten--the long-lost. Instinctively, as if no years had rolled between--as if she were still the little child, he the boy who had coveted such a sister--he sprang forward and opened his arms, and as suddenly halted, dropped the arms to, his side, blushing, confused, abashed. She! that vagrant child!--she! that form so elegant--that great peeress's pupil--adopted daughter, she the poor wandering Sophy! She!--impossible!

But her eyes, at first downcast, are now fixed on him. She, too, starts--not forward, but in recoil; she, too, raises her arms, not to open, but to press them to her breast; and she, too, as suddenly checks an impulse, and stands, like him, blushing, confused, abashed.

"Yes," said Caroline Montfort, drawing Sophy nearer to her breast, "yes, you will both forgive me for the surprise. Yes, you do see before you, grown up to become the pride of those who cherish her, that Sophy who--"

"Sophy!" cried Lionel advancing; "it is so, then! I knew you were no stroller's grandchild."

Sophy drew up: "I am, I am his grandchild, and as proud to be so as I was then."

"Pardon me, pardon me; I meant to say that he too was not what he seemed. You forgive me," extending his hand, and Sophy's soft hand fell into his forgivingly.

"But he lives? is well? is here? is--" Sophy burst into tears, and Lady Montfort made a sign to Lionel to go into the garden, and leave them. Reluctantly and dizzily, as one in a dream, he obeyed, leaving the vagrant's grandchild to be soothed in the fostering arms of her whom, an hour or two ago, he knew but by the titles of her rank and the reputation of her pride.

It was not many minutes before Lady Montfort rejoined him.

"You touched unawares," said she, "upon the poor child's most anxious cause of sorrow. Her grandfather; for whom her affection is so sensitively keen, has disappeared. I will speak of that later; and if you wish, you shall be taken into our consultations. But--" she paused, looked into his face-open, loyal face, face of gentleman--with heart of man in its eyes, soul of man on its brow; face formed to look up to the stars which now lighted it--and laying her hand lightly on his shoulder, resumed with hesitating voice: "but I feel like a culprit in asking you what, nevertheless, I must ask, as an imperative condition, if your visits here are to be renewed--if your intimacy here is to be established. And unless you comply with that condition, come no more; we cannot confide in each other."

"Oh, Lady Montfort, impose any condition. I promise beforehand."

"Not beforehand. The condition is this: inviolable secrecy. You will not mention to any one your visits here; your introduction to me; your discovery of the stroller's grandchild in my adopted daughter."

"Not to Mr. Darrell?"

"To him least of all; but this I add, it is for Mr. Darrell's sake that I insist on such concealment; and I trust the concealment will not be long protracted."

"For Mr. Darrell's sake?"

"For the sake of his happiness," cried Lady Montfort, clasping her hands. "My debt to him is larger far than yours; and in thus appealing to you, I scheme to pay back a part of it. Do you trust me?"

"I do, I do."

And from that evening Lionel Haughton became the constant visitor in that house.

Two or three days afterwards Colonel Morley, quitting England for a German Spa at which he annually recruited himself for a few weeks, relieved Lionel from the embarrassment of any questions which that shrewd observer might otherwise have addressed to him. London itself was now empty. Lionel found a quiet lodging in the vicinity of Twickenham. And when his foot passed along the shady lane through yon wicket gate into that region of turf and flowers, he felt as might have felt that famous Minstrel of Ercildoun, when, blessed with the privilege to enter Fairyland at will, the Rhymer stole to the grassy hillside, and murmured the spell that unlocks the gates of Oberon, _

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