midnight
And Guy Darrell might rail at her inconstancy -- her heartlessness ; but to boast that she had lowered herself by the proffers that were dictated by repentance , Guy Darrell could not do that ; -- he was a gentleman . Still there was much left to say . He could own that he thought she would now accept his hand ; and when Fairthorn looked happy at that thought , and hinted at excuses for her former fickleness , it was a great relief to Darrell to fly into a rage ; but if the flute-player meanly turned round and became himself Caroline 's accuser , then poor Fairthorn was indeed frightened ; for Darrell 's trembling lip or melancholy manner overwhelmed the assailant with self-reproach , and sent him sidelong into one of his hidden coverts . But at this moment Fairthorn was a support to him under other trials -- Fairthorn , who respects as he does , as no one else ever can , the sanctity of the Darrell line -- who would shrink like himself from the thought that the daughter of Jasper Losely , and in all probability not a daughter of Matilda Darrell , should ever be mistress of that ancestral hall , lowly and obscure and mouldering though it be -- and that the child of a sharper , a thief , a midnight assassin , should carry on the lineage of knights and warriors in whose stainless scutcheons , on many a Gothic tomb or over the portals of ruined castles , was impaled the heraldry of Brides sprung from the loins of Lion Kings ! Darrell , then , doing full justice to all Sophy 's beauty and grace , purity and goodness , was more and more tortured by the conviction that she could never be wife to the man on whom , for want of all nearer kindred , would devolve the heritage of the Darrell name . On the other hand , Sophy 's feelings towards her host were almost equally painful and embittered . The tenderness and reverence that he had showed to her beloved grandfather , the affecting gratitude with which Waife spoke of him , necessarily deepened her prepossessions in his favour as Lionel 's kinsman ; and though she saw him so sparingly , still , when they did meet , she had no right to complain of his manner .