“We can tell you nothing; the official letter may explain more to your clear-sightedness, and I will fetch it.” So saying, Lady Eleanor arose and left the room. Scarcely had the door closed, when Daly stood up, and, walking over, leaned his arm on the back of Helen's chair. “You received my letter, did you not?” said he, hurriedly. “You know the result of the trial?” Helen nodded assent, while a secret emotion covered her face with crimson, as Daly resumed,-- “There was ill-luck everywhere: the case badly stated; Lionel absent; I myself detained in Dublin, by an unavoidable necessity,--everything unfortunate even to the last incident. Had I been there, matters would have taken another course. Still, Helen, Forester was right; and, depend upon it, there is no scanty store of generous warmth in a heart that can throb so strongly beneath the aiguiletted coat of an aide-de-camp. The holiday habits of that tinsel life teach few lessons of self-devotion, and the poor fellow has paid the penalty heavily.” “What has happened?” said Helen, in a voice scarcely audible. “He is disinherited, I hear. All his prospects depended on his mother; she has cast him off, and, as the story goes, is about to marry. Marriage is always the last vengeance of a widow.” “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?”