“Here is the letter,” said Lady Eleanor, entering; “let us hope you can read its intentions better than we have.”
“Flattering, certainly,” muttered Daly, as he conned over the lines to himself. “It's quite plain they mean to do something generous. I trust I may learn it before I sail.”
“Sail! you are not about to travel, are you?” asked Lady Eleanor, in a voice that betrayed her dread of being deprived of such support.
“Oh! I forgot I had n't told you. Yes, madam, another of those strange riddles which have beset my life compels me to take a long voyage—to America.”
“To America!” echoed Helen; and her eye glanced as she spoke to the Indian war-cloak and the weapons that lay beside his chair.
“Not so, Helen,” said Daly, smiling, as if replying to the insinuated remark; “I am too old for such follies now. Not in heart, indeed, but in limb,” added he, sternly; “for I own I could ask nothing better than the prairie or the pine-forest. I know of no cruelty in savage life that has not its counterpart amid our civilization; and for the rude virtues that are nurtured there, they are never warmed into existence by the hotbed of selfishness.”
“But why leave your friends,—your sister?”
“My sister!” He paused, and a tinge of red came to his cheek as he remembered how she had failed in all attention to the Darcys. “My sister, madam, is self-willed and headstrong as myself. She acknowledges none of the restraints or influence by which the social world consents to be bound and regulated; her path has ever been wild and erratic as my own. We sometimes cross, we never contradict, each other.” He paused, and then muttered to himself, “Poor Molly! how different I knew you once! And so,” added he, aloud, “I must leave without seeing Darcy! and there stands Sandy, admonishing me that my time is already up. Good-bye, Lady Eleanor; good-bye, Helen.” He turned his head away for a second, and then, in a voice of unusual feeling, said: “Farewell is always a sad word, and doubly sad when spoken by one old as I am; but if my heart is heavy at this moment, it is the selfish sorrow of him who parts from those so near. As for you, madam, and your fortunes, I am full of good hope. When people talk of suffering virtue, believe me, the element of courage must be wanting; but where the stout heart unites with the good cause, success will come at last.”
He pressed his lips to the hands he held within his own, and hurried, before they could reply, from the room.
“Our last friend gone!” exclaimed Lady Eleanor, as she sank into a chair.