own reading-room; and he had it in his own library in Carlton Gardens. Our Mr. Darrell's mother was very pretty, even as I remember her: she died when he was about ten years old. And she too was a relation of yours,—a Haughton by blood,—but perhaps you will be ashamed of her, when I say she was a governess in a rich mercantile family. She had been left an orphan. I believe old Mr. Darrell (not that he was old then) married her because the Haughtons could or would do nothing for her, and because she was much snubbed and put upon, as I am told governesses usually are,—married her because, poor as he was, he was still the head of both families, and bound to do what he could for decayed scions. The first governess a Darrell, ever married; but no true Darrell would have called that a mesalliance since she was still a Haughton and 'Fors non mutat genus, Chance does not change race."
"But how comes it that the Haughtons, my grandfather Haughton, I suppose, would do nothing for his own kinswoman?"
"It was not your grandfather Robert Haughton, who was a generous man,—hewas then a mere youngster, hiding himself for debt,—but your great—grandfather, who was a hard man and on the turf. He never had money to give,—only money for betting. He left the Haughton estates sadly clipped. But when Robert succeeded, he came forward, was godfather to our Mr. Darrell, insisted on sharing the expense of sending him to Eton, where he became greatly distinguished; thence to Oxford, where he increased his reputation; and would probably have done more for him, only Mr. Darrell, once his foot on the ladder, wanted no help to climb to the top."
"Then my grandfather, Robert, still had the Haughton estates? Their last relics had not been yet transmuted by Mr. Cox into squares and a paragon?"
"No; the grand old mansion, though much dilapidated, with its park, though stripped of salable timber, was still left with a rental from farms that still appertained to the residence, which would have sufficed a prudent man for the luxuries of life, and allowed a reserve fund to clear off the mortgages gradually. Abstinence and self-denial for one or two generations would have made a property, daily rising in value as the metropolis advanced to its outskirts, a princely estate for a third. But Robert Haughton, though not on the turf, had a grand way of living; and while Guy Darrell went into the law to make a small patrimony a large fortune, your father, my dear young sir, was put into the Guards to reduce a large patrimony—into Mr. Cox's distillery."
