if I add that if that gentleman was ever Charles Haughton's particular friend, he could scarcely have been a very wise one. For, unless his appearance greatly belie his years he must have been little more than a boy when Charles Haughton left Lionel fatherless."
Here, in the delicacy of tact, seeing that Mrs. Haughton looked ashamed of the subject, and seemed aware of her imprudence, the Colonel rose, with the request—cheerfully granted—that Lionel might be allowed to come to breakfast with him the next morning.
CHAPTER XI.
Reserving to a later occasion any more detailed description of Colonel Morley, it suffices for the present to say that he was a man of a very fine understanding, as applied to the special world in which he lived. Though no one had a more numerous circle of friends, and though with many of those friends he was on that footing of familiar intimacy which Darrell's active career once, and his rigid seclusion of late, could not have established with any idle denizen of that brilliant society in which Colonel Morley moved and had his being, yet to Alban Morley's heart (a heart not easily reached) no friend was so dear as Guy Darrell. They had entered Eton on the same day—left it the same day—lodged while there in the same house; and though of very different characters, formed one of those strong, imperishable, brotherly affections which the Fates weave into the very woof of existence.
Darrell's recommendation would have secured to any young protégé Colonel Morley's gracious welcome and invaluable advice. But both as Darrell's acknowledged kinsman and as Charles Haughton's son, Lionel called forth his kindliest sentiments, and obtained his most sagacious deliberations. He had already seen the boy several times before waiting on Mrs. Haughton, deeming it would please her to defer his visit until she could receive him in all the glories of Gloucester Place; and he had taken Lionel into high favor, and deemed him worthy of a conspicuous place in the world. Though Darrell, in his letter to Colonel Morley, had emphatically distinguished the position
