THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 GIFT OF 
 Ada Nisbet 
 
 ENGLISH READING ROOM 

 
 JUL171986
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS 
 
 BY 
 
 SIR EDWARD BULWER/LYTTON, BART. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 THE CASSELL PUBLISHING CO. 
 31 EAST I;TH ST. (UNION SQUARE)
 
 THE MERSHON COMPANY PRESS, 
 RAHVVAY, N. J.
 
 Al 
 
 A WORD TO THE READER. 
 
 PREFIXED TO THE FIRST EDITION OF 1837. 
 
 THOU must not, my old and partial friend, look into this work 
 for that species of interest which is drawn from stirring adven- 
 tures and a perpetual variety of incident. To a Novel of the 
 present day are necessarily forbidden the animation, the 
 excitement, the bustle, the pomp, and the stage-effect which 
 History affords to Romance. Whatever merits, in thy gentle 
 eyes, "Rienzi," or "The Last Days of Pompeii," may have 
 possessed, this Tale, if it please thee at all, must owe that happy 
 fortune to qualities widely different from those which won 
 thy favor to pictures of the Past. Thou must sober down 
 thine imagination, and prepare thyself for a story not dedicated 
 to the narrative of extraordinary events nor the elucidation 
 of the characters of great men. Though there is scarcely a 
 page in this work episodical to the main design, there may be 
 much that may seem to thee wearisome and prolix, if thou wilt 
 not lend thyself, in a kindly spirit, and with a generous trust, 
 to the guidance of the Author. In the hero of this tale thou 
 wilt find neither a majestic demigod, nor a fascinating demon. 
 He is a man with the weaknesses derived from humanity, with 
 the strength that we inherit from the soul ; not often obstinate 
 in error, more often irresolute in virtue ; sometimes too aspir- 
 ing, sometimes too despondent : influenced by the circum- 
 stances to which he yet struggles to be superior, and changing 
 in character with the changes of time and fate ; but never 
 wantonly rejecting those great principles by which alone we 
 can work out the Science of Life a desire for the Good, a 
 passion for the Honest, a yearning after the True. From such 
 principles, Experience, that severe Mentor, teaches us at 
 length the safe and practical philosophy which consists of 
 Fortitude to bear, Serenity to enjoy, and Faith to look beyond ! 
 
 It would have led, perhaps, to more striking incidents, and 
 have furnished an interest more intense, if I had cast Mai-
 
 4 A WORD TO THE READER. 
 
 travers, the Man of Genius, amidst those fierce but ennobling 
 struggles with poverty and want to which genius is so often 
 condemned. But wealth and lassitude have their temptations 
 as well as penury and toil. And for the rest I have taken 
 much of my tale and many of my characters from real life, and 
 would not unnecessarily seek other fountains when the Well of 
 Truth was in my reach. 
 
 The Author has said his say, he retreats once more into 
 silence and into shade ; he leaves you alone with the creations 
 he has called to life the representatives of his emotions and 
 his thoughts the intermediators between the individual and 
 the crowd : Children not of the clay, but of the spirit, may 
 they be faithful to their origin ! so should they be monitors, 
 not loud but deep, of the world into which they are cast, 
 struggling against the obstacles that will beset them, for the 
 heritage of their parent the right to survive the grave ! 
 
 LONDON, August 12, 1837.
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 BOOK I. 
 
 To yap vtd^ov kv ToioioSe fto 
 'X.upocaiv avrovp ' HOI vuv ov 6d^.irof deov 
 Oi>J' dfififjot; avde irvev[j.aruv ovfiev ithovei 
 A/l/l* r/JwaZf afioxOov k!-aipei fiiov. 
 
 SOPH. Trachin 144. 
 
 Youth pastures in a valley of its own : 
 
 The glare of noon the rains and winds of heaven 
 
 Mar not the calm yet virgin of all care. 
 
 But ever with sweet joys it buildeth up 
 
 The airy halls of life." 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 " My meaning in't, I protest, was very honest in the behalf of the maid 
 * * * * yet, who would have suspected an ambush where I was taken ? " 
 
 Alts Well that Ends Well, Act. iv. Sc. 3. 
 
 SOME four miles distant from one of our northern manufactur- 
 ing towns, in the year 18 , was a wide and desolate common; 
 a more dreary spot it is impossible to conceive the herbage 
 grew up in sickly patches from the midst of a black and stony 
 soil. Not a tree was to be seen in the whole of the comfortless 
 expanse. Nature herself had seemed to desert the solitude, as ii 
 scared by the ceaseless din of the neighboring forges ; and even 
 Art, which presses all things into service, had disdained to cull 
 use or beauty from these unpromising demesnes. There was 
 something weirdand primeval in the aspect of theplace; especially 
 when in the long nights of winter you beheld the distant fires and 
 lights, which give to the vicinity of certain manufactories so 
 preternatural an appearance, streaming red and wild over the 
 waste. So abandoned by man appeared the spot, that you found 
 it difficult to imagine that it was only from human fires that its 
 black and barren desolation was illumined. For miles along the 
 moor you detected no vestige of any habitation ; but as you 
 approached the verge nearest to the town, you could just perceive
 
 6 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 at a little distance from the main road, by which the common 
 was intersected, a small, solitary, and miserable hovel. 
 
 Within this lonely abode, at the time in which my story opens, 
 were seated two persons. The one was a man of about fifty years 
 of age, and in a squalid and wretched garb, which was yet relieved 
 by an affectation of ill-assorted finery. A silk handkerchief, which 
 boasted the ornament of a large brooch of false stones, was twisted 
 jauntily.round a muscular but meagre throat ; his'tattered breeches 
 were also decorated by buckles, one of pinchbeck, and one of 
 steel. His frame was lean, but broad and sinewy, indicative of 
 considerable strength. His countenance was prematurely marked 
 by deep furrows, and his grizzled hair waved over a low, rugged 
 and forbidding brow, on which there hung an everlasting frown 
 that no smile from the lips (and the man smiled often) could 
 chase away. It was a face that spoke of long continued and 
 hardened vice it was one in which the Past had written indelible 
 characters. The brand of the hangman could not have stamped 
 it more plainly, nor have more unequivocally warned the suspi- 
 cion of honest or timid men. 
 
 He was employed in counting some few and paltry coins, 
 which, though an easy matter to ascertain their value, he told 
 and retold, as if the act could increase the amount. " There 
 must be some mistake here, Alice," he said in a low and muttered 
 tone : " we can't be so low you know I had two pounds in the 
 drawer but Monday, and now Alice, you must have stolen 
 some of the money curse you." 
 
 The person thus addressed sat at the opposite side of the 
 smouldering and sullen fire ; she now looked quietly up, and 
 her face singularly contrasted that of the man. 
 
 She seemed about fifteen years of age, and her complexion 
 was remarkably pure and delicate, even despite the sunburnt 
 tinge which her habits of toil had brought it. Her auburn hair 
 hung in loose and natural curls over her forehead, and its luxur- 
 iance was remarkable even in one so young. Her countenance 
 was beautiful, nay, even faultless, in its small and child-like 
 features, but the expression pained you it was so vacant. In 
 repose it was almost the expression of an idiot but when she 
 spoke, or smiled, or even moved a muscle, the eyes, color, lips, 
 kindled into a life, which proved that the intellect was still there, 
 though but imperfectly awakened. 
 
 "I did not steal any, father," she said in a quiet voice; "but I 
 should like to have taken some, only I knew you would beat 
 me if I did." 
 
 "And what do you want money for?"
 
 ERNEST MALTR AVERS. 7 
 
 "To get food when I'm hungry." . 
 
 "Nothing else ?" 
 
 " I don't know." 
 
 The girl paused "Why don't you let me ?" she said, after a 
 while, "why don't you let me go and work with the other girls at 
 the factory ? I should make money there for you and me both." 
 
 The man smiled such a smile it seemed to bring into sud- 
 den play all the revolting characteristics of his countenance. 
 " Child," he said, " you are just fifteen, and a sad fool you are : 
 perhaps if you went to the factory, you would get away from 
 me; and what should I do without you? No, I think, as you 
 are so pretty, you might get more money another way." 
 
 The girl did not seem to understand this allusion ; but re- 
 peated, vacantly, "I should like to go to the factory." 
 
 " Stuff ! " said the man, angrily, " I have three minds to 
 
 Here he was interrupted by a loud knock at the door of the 
 hovel. 
 
 The man grew pale. " What can that be? "he muttered. "The 
 hour is late near eleven. Again again ! Ask who knocks, 
 Alice." 
 
 The girl stood for a moment or so at the door ; and as she 
 stood, her form, rounded yet slight, her earnest look, her varying 
 color, her tender youth, and a singular grace of attitude and ges- 
 ture, would have inspired an artist with the very ideal of rustic 
 beauty. 
 
 After a pause, she placed her lips to a chink in the door, and 
 repeated her father's question. 
 
 "Pray pardon me," said a clear, loud, yet courteous voice, "but 
 seeing a light at your window, I have ventured to ask if anyone 
 within will conduct me to ; I will pay the service hand- 
 somely." 
 
 " Open the door, Alley," said the owner of the hut. 
 
 The girl drew a large wooden bolt from the door ; and a tall 
 figure crossed the threshold. 
 
 The new-comer was in the first bloom of youth, perhaps about 
 eighteen years of age, and his air and appearance surprised both 
 sire and daughter. Alone, on foot, at such an hour, it was im- 
 possible for anyone to mistake him for other than a gentleman ; 
 yet his dress was plain and somewhat soiled by dust, and he car- 
 ried a small knapsack on his shoulder. As he entered he lifted 
 his hat with somewhat foreign urbanity, and a profusion of fair 
 brown hair fell partially over a high and commanding forehead. 
 His features were handsome, without being eminently so, and 
 his aspect was at once bold and prepossessing.
 
 8 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 "lam much obliged by your civility," he said, advancing care- 
 lessly, and addressing the man, who surveyed him with a scru- 
 tinizing eye ; "and trust, my good fellow, that you will increase 
 the obligation by accompanying me to ." 
 
 " You can't miss well your way," said the man, surlily ; " the 
 lights will direct you." 
 
 " They have rather misled me, for they seern to surround the 
 whole common, and there is no path across it that I can see ; 
 however, if you will put me in the right road, I will not trouble 
 you further." 
 
 "It is very late," replied the churlish landlord, equivocally. 
 
 "The better reason why I should be at . Come, my good 
 
 friend, put on your hat, and I will give you half a guinea for 
 your trouble." 
 
 The man advanced, then halted ; again surveyed his guest, 
 and then said, "Are you quite alone, sir?" 
 
 "Quite." 
 
 " Probably you are known at ?" 
 
 " Not I. But what matters that to you ? I am a stranger in 
 these parts." 
 
 " It is full four miles." 
 
 " So far, and I am fearfully tired already ! " exclaimed the 
 young man with impatience. As he spoke, he drew out his 
 watch. " Past eleven, too ! " 
 
 The watch caught the eye of the cottager ; that evil eye spark- 
 led. He passed his hand over his brow. " I am thinking, sir," 
 ne said, in a more civil tone than he had yet assumed, " that as you 
 are so tired, and the hour is so late, you might almost as well 
 
 " What ?" exclaimed the stranger, stamping somewhat petu- 
 lantly. 
 
 " Idon't like to mention it ; but my poor roof is at your service, 
 and I would go with you to at daybreak to-morrow." 
 
 The stranger stared at the cottager, and then at the dingy 
 walls of the hut. He was about, very abruptly, to reject the 
 hospitable proposal, when his eye rested suddenly upon the form 
 of Alice, who stood, eager-eyed and open-mouthed, gazing on 
 the handsome intruder. As she caught his eye, she blushed 
 deeply, and turned aside. The view seemed to change the in- 
 tentions of the stranger. He hesitated a moment, then mut- 
 tered between his teeth ; and sinking his knapsack on the 
 ground, he cast himself into a chair beside the fire, stretched 
 his limbs, and cried gaily, "So be it, my host; shut up your house 
 again. Bring me a cup of beer, and a crust of bread, and so 
 much for supper ! As for bed, this chair will do vastly well."
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 9 
 
 " Perhaps we can manage better for you than that chair," an- 
 swered the host. " But our best accommodation must seem bad 
 enough to a gentleman ; we are very poor people hard-work- 
 ing, but very poor." 
 
 " Never mind me," answered the stranger, busying himself 
 stirring the fire ; " I am tolerably well accustomed to greater hard- 
 ships than sleeping on a chair in an honest man's house ; and 
 although you are poor, I will take it for granted you are 
 honest." 
 
 The man grinned, and turning to Alice, bade her spread what 
 their larder would afford. Some crusts of bread, some cold 
 potatoes, and some tolerably strong beer, composed all the fare 
 set before the traveller. 
 
 Despite his previous boasts, the young man made a wry face 
 at these Socratic preparations, while he drew his chair to the 
 board. But his look grew more gay as he caught Alice's eye ; 
 and as she lingered by the table, and faltered out some hesitat- 
 ing words of apology, he seized her hand, and pressing it ten- 
 derly " Prettiest of lasses," said he and while he spoke he 
 gazed on her with undisguised admiration " a man who has 
 travelled on foot all day, through the ugliest country within the 
 three seas, is sufficiently refreshed at night by the sight of so 
 fair a face." 
 
 Alice hastily withdrew her hand, and went and seated herself in 
 acorner of the room, whence she continued to look at the stranger 
 with her usual vacant gaze,but with a half-smile upon her rosy lips. 
 
 Alice's father looked hard first at one, then at the other. 
 
 " Eat, sir," said he, with a sort of chuckle, " and no fine words ; 
 poor Alice is honest, as you said just now." 
 
 "To be sure," answered the traveller, employing with great 
 zeal a set of strong, even and dazzling teeth at the tough crusts ; 
 "to be sure she is. I did not mean to offend you ; but the fact 
 is, I am half a foreigner ; and abroad, you know, one may say a 
 civil thing to a pretty girl without hurting her feelings, or her 
 father's either." 
 
 " Half a foreigner ! why you talk English as well as I do," 
 said the host, whose intonation and words were, on the whole, 
 a little above his station. 
 
 The stranger smiled. " Thank you for the compliment," said 
 he. " What I meant was, that I have been a great deal abroad ; in 
 fact, I have just returned from Germany. But I am English-born." 
 
 "And going home ?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Far from hence ?"
 
 IO ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 "About thirty miles, I believe." 
 
 " You are young, sir, to be alone." 
 
 The traveller made no answer, but finished his uninviting re- 
 past, and drew his chair again to the fire. He then thought he 
 had sufficiently ministered to his host's curiosity to be entitled 
 to the gratification of his own. 
 
 " You work at the factories, I suppose ? " said he. 
 
 " I do, sir. Bad times." 
 
 " And your pretty daughter ? " 
 
 " Minds the house." 
 
 " Have you no other children ?" 
 
 " No ; one mouth beside my own is as much as I can feed, 
 and that scarcely. But you would like to rest now ; you can 
 have my bed, sir ; I can sleep here." 
 
 " By no means," said the stranger, quickly ; "just put a few 
 more coals on the fire, and leave me to make myself comfortable." 
 
 The man rose, and did not press his offer, but left the room 
 for a supply of fuel. Alice remained in her corner. 
 
 "Sweetheart !" said the traveller, looking round and satisfy- 
 ing himself that they were alone, "I should sleep well if I could 
 get one kiss from those coral lips." 
 
 Alice hid her face with her hands. 
 
 "Do I vex you?" 
 
 " Oh no, sir." { 
 
 At this assurance the traveller rose, and approached Alice 
 softly. He drew away her hands from her face, when she said, 
 gently, "Have you much money about you ?" 
 
 "Oh, the mercenary baggage !" said the traveller to himself ; 
 and then replied, aloud, " Why, pretty one ? Do you sell your 
 kisses so high, then ?" 
 
 Alice frowned, and tossed the hair from her brow. " If you 
 have money," she said, in a whisper, " don't say so to father. 
 Don't sleep if you can help it. I'm afraid hush he comes ! " 
 
 The young man returned to his seat with an altered manner. 
 And as his host entered, he for the first time surveyed him 
 closely. The imperfect glimmer of the half-dying and single 
 candle threw into strong lights and shades the marked, rugged 
 and ferocious features of the cottager; and the eye of the travel- 
 ler, glancing from the face to the limbs and frame, saw that 
 whatever of violence the mind might design, the body might 
 well execute. 
 
 The traveller sank into a gloomy reverie. The wind howled 
 the rain beat through the casement shone no solitary star all 
 was dark and sombre; should he proceed alone might he not
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVKRS. II 
 
 suffer a greater danger upon'lhat wide and desert moor might 
 not the host follow assault him in the dark ? He had no 
 weapon, save a stick. But within, he had at least a rude resource 
 in the large kitchen poker that was beside him. At all events, it 
 would be better to wait for the present. He might at any time, when 
 alone, withdraw the bolt from the door, and slip out unobserved 
 
 Such was the fruit of his meditations while his host plied the fire. 
 
 "You will sleep sound to-night," said hi.i entertainer, smiling. 
 
 "Humph ! Why, I am <?tw-fatigued; 1 dare say it will be an 
 hour or two before I fall asleep; but when I once am asleep, I 
 sleep like a rock ! " 
 
 "Come, Alice," said her father, "let us leave the gentleman. 
 Good-night, sir." 
 
 "Good-night good-night," returned the traveller, yawning. 
 
 The father and daughter disappeared through a door in the 
 corner of the room. The guest heard them ascend the creak- 
 ing stairs all was still. 
 
 " Fool that I am," said the traveller, to himself, "will nothing 
 teach me that I am no longer a student at Gottingen, or cure 
 me of these pedestrian adventures? Had it not been for that 
 girl's blue eyes, I should be safe at by this time; if, indeed, 
 the grim father had not murdered me by the road. However, 
 we'll balk him yet ; another half hour, and I am on the moor; 
 we must give him time. And in the meanwhile, here is the poker. 
 At the worst it is but one to one; but the churl is strongly built." 
 
 Although the traveller thus endeavored to cheer his courage, 
 his heart beat more loudly than its wont. He kept his eyes 
 stationed at the door by which the cottagers had vanished and 
 his hand on the massive poker. 
 
 While the stranger was thus employed below, Alice, instead of 
 turning to her own narrow cell, went into her father's room. 
 
 The cottager was seated at the foot of his bed, muttering to 
 himself, and with eyes fixed on the ground. 
 
 The girl stood before him, gazing on his face, and with her 
 arms lightly crossed above her bosom. 
 
 " It must be worth twenty guineas," said the host, abruptly, 
 to himself. 
 
 " What is it to you, father, what the gentleman's watch is worth?" 
 
 The man started. 
 
 " You mean," continued Alice, quietly, " you mean to do some 
 injury to that young man; but you shall not ! " 
 
 The cottager's face grew black as night. "How," he began 
 in a loud voice, but suddenly dropped the tone into a deep 
 growl " how dare you talk to me so ? go to bed go to bed,,"
 
 IS ERNEST MALTR AVERS. 
 
 'No, father." 
 
 'No?" 
 
 'I will not stir from this room until daybreak." 
 
 'We will soon see that," said the man with an oath. 
 
 'Touch me, and I will alarm the gentleman, and tell him that " 
 
 'What?" 
 
 The girl approached her father, placed her lips to his ear, and 
 whispered, "That you intend to murder him." 
 
 The cottager's frame trembled from head to fooi; he shut his 
 eyes, and gasped painfully for breath. "Alice," said he, gently, 
 after a pause "Alice, we are often nearly starving." 
 
 " I am you never ! " 
 
 " Wretch, yes, if I do drink too much one day, I pinch for it the 
 next. But go to bed, I say I mean no harm to the young man. 
 Think you I would twist myself a rope? no, no ; go along, go 
 along." 
 
 Alice's face, which before had been earnest and almost in- 
 telligent, now relapsed into its wonted vacant stare. 
 
 "To be sure, father, they would hang you if you cut his 
 throat. Don't forget that ; good-night"; and so saying, she 
 walked to her own opposite chamber. 
 
 Left alone, the host pressed his hand tightly to his forehead, 
 and remained motionless for nearly half an hour. 
 
 "If that cursed girl would but sleep," he muttered at last, 
 turning round, "it might be done at once. And there's the 
 pond behind, as deep as a well; and I might say at daybreak 
 that the boy had bolted. He seems quite a stranger here no- 
 body'll miss him. He must have plenty of blunt to give half a 
 guinea to a guide across a common ! I want money, and I won't 
 work if I can help it, at least." 
 
 While he thus so'iloquized, the air seemed to oppress him; he 
 opened the window, he leant out the rain beat upon him. He 
 closed the window with an oath; took off his shoes, stole to the 
 threshold, and, by the candle, which he shaded with his hand, 
 surveyed the opposite door. It was closed. He then Irent 
 anxiously forward and listened. 
 
 "All's quiet," thought he, "perhaps he sleeps already. I will 
 steal down. If Jack Walters would but come to-night, the job 
 would be done charmingly." 
 
 With that he crept gently down the stairs. In a corner, at the 
 foot of the staircase, lay sundry matters, a few faggots, and a 
 cleaver. He caught up the last. "Aha," he muttered; "and 
 there's the sledge-hammer somewhere for Walters." Leaning 
 himself against the door, he then applied his eye to a chink
 
 ERNEST MALRRAVERS. l 
 
 which admitted a dim view of the room within, lighted fitfully by 
 the fire. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 " What have we here ? 
 A carrion death !" 
 
 Merchant of Venice, Act ii. Sc. 7. 
 
 IT was about this time that the stranger deemed it advisable 
 to commence his retreat. The slight and suppressed sound of 
 voices, which at first he had heard above in the conversation of 
 the father and child, had died away. The stillness at once 
 encouraged and warned him. He stole to the front door, softly 
 undid the bolt, and found the door locked, and the key missing. 
 He had not observed that during his repast, and ere his sus- 
 picions had been aroused, his host, in replacing the bar, and 
 relocking the entrance, had abstracted the key. His fears were 
 now confirmed. His next thought was the window the shutter 
 only protected it half-way, and was easily removed ; but the 
 aperture of th^ lattice, which only opened in part like most 
 cottage casements, was far too small to admit his person. His 
 only means of escape was in breaking the whole window; a 
 matter not to be effected without noise and consequent risk. 
 
 He paused in despair. He was naturally of a strong-nerved 
 and gallant temperament, nor unaccustomed to those perils of 
 life and limb, which German students delight to brave ; but 
 his heart well-nigh failed him at that moment. The silence be- 
 came distinct and burdensome to him, and a chill moisture gath- 
 ered to his brow. While he stood irresolute and in suspense, 
 striving to collect his thoughts, his ear, preternaturally sharpened 
 by fear, caught the faint n.-uffled sound of creeping footsteps 
 he heard the stairs creak. The sound broke the spell. The 
 previous vague apprehension gave way, when the danger became 
 actually at hand. His presence of mind returned at once. He 
 went back quickly to the fireplace, seized the poker, and began 
 stirring the fire, and coughing loud, and indicating as vigor- 
 ously as possible that he was wide awake. 
 
 He felt that he was watched lie felt that he was in momentary 
 peril. He felt that the appearance of slumber would be the 
 signal for a mortal conflict. Time passed, all remained silent ; 
 nearly half an hour had elapsed since he had heard the steps 
 upon the stairs. His situation began to prey upon his nerves, 
 it irritated them, it became intolerable. It was not now fear 
 that he experienced, it was the overwrought sense of mortal
 
 14 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 enmity the consciousness that a man may feel when he knows 
 that the eye of a tiger is on him, and who, while in suspense 
 he has regained his courage, foresees that sooner or later the 
 spring must come ; the suspense itself becomes an agony, and 
 he desires to expedite the deadly struggle he cannot shun. 
 
 Utterly incapable any longer to bear his own sensations, the 
 traveller rose at last, fixed his eyes upon the fatal door, and was 
 about to cry aloud to the listener to enter, when he heard a 
 slight tap at the window; it was twice repeated; and at the 
 third time a low voice pronounced the name of Uarvil. It was 
 clear, then, that accomplices had arrived; it was no longer 
 against one man that he should have to contend. He drew his 
 breath hard, and listened with throbbing ears. He heard steps 
 without upon the plashing soil; they retired all was still. 
 
 He paused a few minutes, and walked deliberately and firmly 
 to the inner door, at which he fancied his host stationed; with 
 a steady hand he attempted to open the door ; it was fastened 
 on the opposite side. "So!" said he bitterly, and grinding 
 his teeth; " I must die like a rat in a cage. Well, I'll die biting." 
 
 He returned to his former post, drew himself up to his full 
 height, and stood grasping his homely weapon, prepared for the 
 worst, and not altogether undated with a proud consciousness 
 of his own natural advantages of activity, stature, strength and 
 daring. Minutes rolled on ! the silence was broken by some one 
 at the inner door ; he heard the bolt gently withdrawn. He 
 raised his weapon with both hands ; and started to find the in- 
 truder was only Alice. She came in with bare feet, and pale as 
 marble, her finger on her lips. 
 
 She approached she touched him. 
 
 " They are in the shed behind," she whispered, " looking for the 
 sledge-hammer theymean tomurderyou;getyougone quick." 
 
 "How? the door is locked." 
 
 " Stay. I have taken the key from his room." 
 
 She gained the door, applied the key the door yielded. The 
 traveller threw his knapsack once more over his shoulder, and 
 made but one stride to the threshold. The girl stopped him. 
 "Don't say any thingabout it: heismyfather,theywouldhanghim." 
 
 " No, no. But you ? are safe, I trust ? depend on my grati- 
 tude. I shall be at to-morrow the best inn seek me if 
 
 you can ! Which way now ?" 
 
 "Keep to the left." 
 
 The stranger was already several paces distant ; through the 
 darkness, and in the midst of the rain, he fled on with the speed 
 of youth. The girl lingered an instant, sighed, then laughed
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 15 
 
 aloud ; closed and re-barred the door, and was creeping back, 
 when from the inner entrance advanced the grim father, and 
 another man, of broad, short, sinewy frame, his arms bare, and 
 wielding a large hammer. 
 
 "How?" asked the host; "Alice here, and hell and the 
 devil! have you let him go?" 
 
 " I told you that you should not harm him ! " 
 With a violent oath the ruffian struck hisdaughter to the ground, 
 sprang over her body, unbarred the door, and, accompanied by 
 his comrade, set off in vague pursuit of his intended victim. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 " You knew none so well, of my daughter's flight." 
 
 Merchant of Venice, Act iii. Sc. I. 
 
 THE day dawned ; it was a mild, damp, hazy morning; the 
 sod sank deep beneath the foot, the roads were heavy with mire, 
 and the rain of the past night lay here and there in broad, shallow 
 pools. Towards the town, wagons, carts, pedestrian groups 
 were already moving ; and, now and then, you caught the sharp 
 horn of some early coach, wheeling its be-cloaked outside and be- 
 nightcapped inside passengers along the northern thoroughfares. 
 
 A young man bounded over a stile into the road just opposite 
 to the mile-stone, that declared him to be one mile from . 
 
 "Thank Heaven!" he said, almost aloud. "After spending 
 the night wandering about morasses like a will-o'-the-wisp, I 
 approach a town at last. Thank Heaven, again, and for all its 
 mercies this night ! I breathe freely. I AM SAFE." 
 
 He walked on somewhat rapidly ; he passed a slow wagon 
 he passed a group of mechanics he passed a drove of sheep, 
 and now he saw walking leisurely before him a single figure. It 
 was a girl, in a worn and humble dress, who seemed to seek her 
 weary way with pain and languor. He was about also to pass 
 her, when he heard a low cry. He turned, and beheld in the 
 wayfarer his preserver of the previous night. 
 
 '* Heavens ! is it indeed you ? Can I believe my eyes ?" 
 
 "I was coming to seek you, sir," said the girl, faintly. "I 
 too have escaped ; I shall never go back to father ; I have no 
 roof to cover my head now." 
 
 " Poor child ! but how is this ? Did they ill-use you for re- 
 leasing me ?" 
 
 " Father knocked me down, and beat me again when he came 
 back : but that is not all," she added, in a very low tone.
 
 l6 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 "What else?" 
 
 The girl grew red and white by turns. She set her teeth 
 rigidly, stopped short, and then walking on quicker than before, 
 replied " It don't matter ; I will never go back I'm alone 
 now. What, what shall I do ?" and she wrung her hands. 
 
 The traveller's pity was deeply moved. " My good girl," said 
 he, earnestly, "you have saved my life, and I am not ungrateful. 
 Here" (and he placed some gold in her hand), "get yourself a 
 lodging, food and rest ; you look as if you wanted them ; and 
 see me again this evening when it is dark, and we can talk un- 
 observed." 
 
 The girl took the money passively, and looked up in his face 
 while he spoke ; the look was so unsuspecting, and the whole 
 countenance was so beautifully modest and virgin-like, that had 
 any evil passion prompted the traveller's last words, it must have 
 fled scared and abashed as he met the gaze. 
 
 " My poor girl," said he, embarrassed, and after a short pause ; 
 "you are very young, and very, very pretty. In this town you 
 will be exposed to many temptations ; take care where you 
 lodge ; you have, no doubt, friends here?" 
 
 "Friends? what are friends?" answered Alice. 
 
 " Have you no relations ; no mother's kin ? " 
 
 " None." 
 
 "Do you know where to ask shelter?" 
 
 "No, sir; for I can't go where father goes, lest he should find 
 me out." 
 
 "Well, then, seek some quiet inn, and meet me this evening, 
 just here, half a mile from the town, at seven. I will try and 
 think of something for you in the meanwhile. But you seem 
 tired, you walk with pain ; perhaps it will fatigue you to come 
 I mean, you had rather perhaps rest another day." 
 
 " Oh, no, no ! it will do me good to see you again, sir." 
 
 The young man's eyes met hers, and hers were not withdrawn ; 
 their soft blue was suffused with tears they penetrated his soul. 
 
 He turned away hastily, and saw that they were already the 
 subject of curious observation to the various passengers that 
 overtook them. "Don't forget!" he whispered, and strode on 
 with a pace that soon brought him to the town. 
 
 He inquired for the principal hotel entered it with an air 
 that bespoke that nameless consciousness of superiority which 
 belongs to those accustomed to purchase welcome wherever 
 welcome is bought and sold and before a blazing fire and no 
 unsubstantial breakfast, forgot all the terrors of the past night, 
 or rather felt rejoiced to think that he added added a new and
 
 ERNESt MALTR AVERS. 17 
 
 strange hazard to the catalogue of adventure already experi- 
 enced by Ernest Maltravers. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 " Con una Dama tenia 
 Un galan conversacion." * 
 
 MORATIN: El Teatro Espanol. Num. 15. 
 
 MALTRAVERS was first at the appointed place. His character 
 was in most respects singularly energetic, decided, and prema- 
 ture in development ; but not so in regard to women: with them 
 he was the creature of the moment ; and, driven to and fro by 
 whatever impulse, or whatever passion, caught the caprice of a 
 wild, roving, and all-poetical imagination, Maltravers was, half- 
 unconsciously, a poet a poet of action, and woman was his 
 muse. 
 
 He had formed no plan of conduct towards the poor girl he 
 was to meet. He meant no harm to her. If she had been less 
 handsome, he would have been equally grateful ; and her dress, 
 and youth, and condition, would equally have compelled him 
 to select the hour of dusk for an interview. 
 
 He arrived at the spot. The winter night had already de- 
 scended; but a sharp frost had set in : the air was clear, the stars 
 were bright, and the long shadows slept, still and calm, along 
 the broad road, and whitened fields beyond. 
 
 He walked briskly to and fro, without much thought of the 
 interview, or its object, half chanting old verses, German and 
 English, to himself, and stopping to gaze every moment at the 
 silent stars. 
 
 At length he saw Alice approach : she came up to him timidly 
 and gently. His heart beat more quickly ; he felt that he was 
 young and alone with beauty. " Sweet girl," he said, with in- 
 voluntary and mechanical compliment, "how well this light be- 
 comes you ! How shall I thank you for not forgetting me ? " 
 
 Alice surrendered her hand to his without a struggle. 
 
 ' What is your name? "said he, bending his face down to hers. 
 
 'Aliae Darvil." 
 
 'And your terrible father, is he, in truth, your father ?" 
 
 ' Indeed he is my father and mother too ! " 
 
 'What made you suspect his intention to murder me ? Has 
 he ever attempted the like crime?" 
 
 "No; but lately he has often talked of robbery. He is very 
 poor, sir. And when I saw his eye, and when afterwards, while 
 
 * With a dame he held a gallant conversation.
 
 l8 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 your back was turned, he took the key from the door, I felt 
 that that you were in danger." 
 
 " Good girl go on." 
 
 " I told him so when we went upstairs. I did not know what 
 to believe, when he said he would not hurt you; but I stole the 
 key of the front door, which he had thrown on the table, and 
 went to my room. I listened at my door; I heard him go down- 
 stairs : he stopped therefor some time; and I watched him from 
 above. The place where he was opened to the field by the back- 
 way. After some time, I heard a voice whisper him: I knew the 
 voice, and then they both went out by the back way; so I stole 
 down, and I went out and listened; and I knew the other man 
 was John Walters. I'm afraid of him, sir. And then Walters 
 said, says he, 'I will get the hammer, and, sleep or wake, we'll 
 do it.' And father said, ' It's in the shed.' So I saw there was 
 no time to be lost, sir, and and but you know all the rest." 
 
 "But how did you escape?" 
 
 " Oh, my father, after talking to Walters, came to my room, 
 and beat and and frightened me ; and when he was gone to 
 bed, I put on my clothes, and stole out ; it was just light ; and 
 walked on till I met you." 
 
 "Poor child, in what a den of vice have you been brought up !" 
 
 " Anan, sir." 
 
 " She don't understand me. Have you been taught to read and 
 write?" 
 
 "Oh, no!" 
 
 "But I suppose you have been taught, at least, to say your 
 catechism and you pray sometimes ? " 
 
 "I have prayed to father not to beat me." 
 
 "But to God?" 
 
 " God, sir ! what is that? "* 
 
 Maltravers drew back shocked and appalled. Premature 
 philosopher as he was, this depth of ignorance perplexed his 
 wisdom. He had read all the disputes of schoolmen, whether or 
 not the notion of a Supreme Being is innate : but he had never 
 before been brought face to face with a living creature who was 
 unconscious of a God. 
 
 After a pause he said " My poor girl, we misunderstand each 
 other. You know that there is a God? " 
 
 " No, sir."
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. ip 
 
 "Did no one ever tell you who made the stars you now sur- 
 vey the earth on which you tread ? " 
 
 "No." 
 
 " And have you never thought of it yourself?" 
 
 "Why should I? What has that to do with being cold and 
 hungry?" 
 
 Maltravers looked incredulous. "You see that great build- 
 ing, with the spire rising in the starlight?" 
 
 "Yes, sir, sure." 
 
 "What is it called?" 
 
 'Why, a church." 
 
 ' Did you never go into it ? " 
 
 ' No." 
 
 ' What do people do there ?" 
 
 ' Father says one man talks nonsense, and the other folk listen 
 to him." 
 
 "Your father is no matter. Good Heavens ! what shall I 
 do with this unhappy child?" 
 
 " Yes, sir, I am very unhappy," said Alice, catching at the 
 last words ; and the tears rolled silently down her cheeks. 
 
 Maltravers was never more touched in his life. Whatever 
 thoughts of gallantry might have entered his young head, had he 
 found Alice such as he might reasonably have expected, he now 
 felt there was a kind of sanctity in her ignorance; and his grati- 
 tude and kindly sentiment towards her took almost a brotherly 
 aspect. " You know, at least, what school is? " he asked. 
 
 " Yes, I have talked with girls who go to school." 
 
 "Would you like to go there, too?" 
 
 " Oh, no, sir pray not ! " 
 
 "What would you like to do, then? Speak out, child. I owe 
 you so much, that I should be too happy to make you comfort- 
 able and contented in your own way." 
 
 " I should like to live with you, sir." Maltravers started, and 
 half smiled, and colored. But looking on her eyes, which were 
 fixed earnestly on his, there was so much artlessness in their 
 soft, unconscious gaze, that he saw she was wholly ignorant of 
 the interpretation that might be put upon so Candida confession. 
 
 I have said that Maltravers was a wild, enthusiastic, odd being 
 he was in fact, full of strange German romance and metaphysi- 
 cal speculations. He had once shut himself up for months to 
 study astrology and had even been suspected of a serious hunt 
 after the philosopher's stone; another time he had narrowly es- 
 caped with life and liberty from a frantic conspiracy of the 
 young republicans of his university, in which being bolder and
 
 20 EkNEST MALTRAVEKS. 
 
 madder than most of them, he had been an active ringleader ; 
 it was, indeed, some such folly that had compelled him to quit 
 Germany sooner than himself or his parents desired. He had 
 nothing of the sober Englishman about him. Whatever was 
 strange and eccentric had an irresistible charm for Ernest Mal- 
 travers. And agreeably to this disposition, he now resolved an 
 idea that enchanted his mobile and fantastic philosophy. He 
 himself would educate this charming girl he would write fair 
 and heavenly characters upon this blank page he would act 
 the Saint Preux to this Julie of Nature. Alas, he did not think 
 of the result which the parallel should have suggested ! At 
 that age, Ernest Maltravers never damped the ardor of an ex- 
 periment by the anticipation of consequences. 
 
 "So," he said, after a short reverie, "so you would like to live 
 with me? But, Alice, we must not fall in love with each other." 
 
 " I don't understand, sir." 
 
 " Never mind," said Maltravers, a little disconcerted. 
 
 " I always wished to go into service." 
 
 " Ha ! "' 
 
 "And you would be a kind master." 
 
 Maltravers was half disenchanted. 
 
 "No very flattering preference," thought he : "so much the 
 safer for us. Well, Alice, it shall be as you wish. Are you 
 comfortable where you are, in your new lodging ? " 
 
 "No!" 
 
 " Why, they do not insult you ? " 
 
 "No ; but they make a noise, and I like to be quiet to think 
 of you ! " 
 
 The young philosopher was reconciled again to the scheme. 
 
 " Well, Alice go back I will take a cottage to-morrow, and 
 you shall be my servant, and I will teach you to read and write, 
 and say your prayers, and know that you have a Father above who 
 loves you better than he below. Meet me again at the same hour 
 to-morrow. Why do you cry, Alice ? why do you cry ? " 
 
 " Because because," sobbed the girl, " I am so happy, and I 
 shall live with you and see you." 
 
 "Go, child go, child," said Maltravers, hastily; and he 
 walked away with a quicker pulse than became his new char- 
 acter of master and preceptor. 
 
 He looked back, and saw the girl gazing at him; he waved his 
 hand, and she moved on and slowly followed him back to the town. 
 
 Maltravers, though not an elder son, was the heir of affluent 
 fortunes; he enjoyed a munificent allowance that sufficed for the 
 whims of a youth who had learned in Germany none of the ex-
 
 ERNEST MALTR AVERS. 21 
 
 travagant notions common to young Englishmen of similar birth 
 and prospects. He was a spoiled child, with no law but his own 
 fancy, his return home was not expected, there was nothing to 
 prevent the indulgence of his new caprice. The next day he hired 
 a cottage in the neighborhood, which was one of those pretty 
 thatched edifices, with verandahs and monthly roses, a conserv- 
 atory and a lawn, which justify the English proverb about a cot- 
 tage and love. It had been built by a mercantile bachelor for 
 some fair Rosamund, and did credit to his taste. An old woman, 
 let with the house, was to cook and do the work. Alice was but 
 a nominal servant. Neither the old woman nor the landlord com- 
 prehended the Platonic intentions of the young stranger. But 
 he paid his rent in advance, and they were not particular. He, 
 however, thought it prudent to conceal his name. It was one 
 sure to be known in a town not very distant from the residence 
 of his father, a wealthy and long-descended country gentleman. 
 He adopted, therefore, the common name of Butler; which, in- 
 deed, belonged to one of his maternal connections, and by that 
 name alone was he known both in the neighborhood and to Alice. 
 From her he would not have sought concealment, but somehow 
 or other no occasion ever presented itself to induce him to talk 
 much to her of his parentage or birth. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 " Thought would destroy their Paradise." GRAY. 
 
 MALTRAVERS found Alice as docile a pupil as any reasonable 
 preceptor might have desired. But still, reading and writing 
 they are very uninteresting elements ! Had the groundwork been 
 laid, it might have been delightful to raise the fairy palace of 
 knowledge ; but the digging the foundations and the construct- 
 ing the cellars is weary labor. Perhaps he felt it so, for in a 
 few days Alice was handed over to the very oldest and ugliest 
 writing-master that the neighboring town could afford. The 
 poor girl at first wept much at the exchange ; but the grave re- 
 monstrances and solemn exhortations of Maltravers reconciled 
 her at last, and she promised to work hard and pay every atten- 
 tion to her lessons. I am not sure, however, that it was the 
 tedium of the work that deterred the idealist perhaps he felt 
 its danger and at the bottom of his sparkling dreams and 
 brilliant follies, lay a sound, generous, and noble heart. He was 
 fond of pleasure, and had been already the darling of the senti-
 
 22 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 mental German ladies. But he was too young and too vivid, and 
 too romantic, to be what is called a sensualist. He could not 
 look upon a fair face, and a guileless smile, and all the ineffable 
 symmetry of a woman's shape, with the eye of a man buying 
 cattle for base uses. He very easily fell in love, or fancied he 
 did, it is true, but then he could not separate desire from 
 fancy, or calculate the game of passion without bringing the 
 heart or the imagination into the matter. And though Alice was 
 very pretty and very engaging, he was not yet in love with her, 
 and he had no intention of becoming so. 
 
 He felt the evening somewhat long, when for the first time 
 Alice discontinued her usual lesson ; but Maltravershad abun- 
 dant resources in himself. He placed Shakespeare and Schiller 
 on his table, and lighted his German meerschaum he read till 
 he became inspired, and then he wrote and when he had com- 
 posed a few stanzas he was not contented till he had set them to 
 music, and tried their melody with his voice. For he had all 
 the passion of a German for song and music that wild Mal- 
 travers ! and his voice was sweet, his taste consummate, his 
 science profound. As the sun puts out a star, so the full blaze 
 of his imagination, fairly kindled, extinguished for the time his 
 fairy fancy for his beautiful pupil. 
 
 It was late that night when Maltravers went to bed and as 
 he passed through the narrow corridor that led to his chamber, 
 he heard a light step flying before him, and caught the glimpse 
 of. a female figure escaping through a distant door. "The silly 
 child," thought he, at once divining the cause; "she has been 
 listening to my singing. I shall scold her." But he forgot 
 that resolution. 
 
 The next day, and the next, and many days passed, and Mal- 
 travers saw but little of the pupil for whose sake he had shut 
 himself up in a country cottage, in the depth of winter. Still he 
 did not repent his purpose, nor was he in the least tired of his 
 seclusion he would not inspect Alice's progress, for he was 
 certain he should be dissatisfied with its slowness and peop 1 ;., 
 however handsome, cannot learn to read and write in a day. 
 But he amused himself, notwithstanding. He was glad of an 
 opportunity to be alone with his own thoughts, forhe was at one 
 of those periodical epochs of life when we like to pause and 
 breathe awhile, in brief respite from that methodical race in 
 which we run to the grave. He wished to re-collect the stores 
 of his past experience, and repose on his own mind, before he 
 started afresh upon the active world. The weather was cold and 
 inclement j but Ernest Maltravers was a hardy lover of
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 23 
 
 and neither snow nor frost could detain him from his daily ram- 
 bles. So about noon, he regularly threw aside books and papers, 
 and took his hat and staff, and went whistling or humming his 
 favorite airs through the dreary streets, or along the bleak waters, 
 or amidst the leafless woods, just as the humor seized him ; for 
 he was not an Edwin or Harold, who reserved speculation only 
 for lonely brooks and pastoral hills. Maltravers delighted to 
 contemplate nature in men as well as in sheep or trees. The 
 humblest alley in a crowded town had something poetical for 
 him; he was ever ready to mix in a crowd, if it were only gath- 
 ered round a barrel-organ or a dog-fight, and listen to all that 
 was said, and notice all that was done. And this I take to be 
 the true poetical temperament essential to every artist who 
 aspires to be something more than a scene-painter. But, above 
 all things, he was most interested in any display of human pas- 
 sions or affections; he loved to see the true colors of the heart, 
 where they are most transparent in the uneducated and poor 
 for he was something of an optimist, and had a hearty faith in 
 the loveliness of our nature. Perhaps, indeed, he owed much of 
 the insight into and mastery over character that he was after- 
 wards considered to display, to his disbelief that there is any 
 wickedness so dark as not to be susceptible of the light in some 
 place or another. But Maltravers had his fits of unsociability, 
 and then nothing but the most solitary scenes delighted him. 
 Winter or summer, barren waste or prodigal verdure, all had 
 beauty in his eyes; for their beauty lay in his own soul, through 
 which he beheld them. From these walks he would return home 
 at dusk, take his simple meal, rhyme or read away the long 
 evenings with such alternation as music or the dreamy thoughts 
 of a young man with a gay life before him could afford. Happy 
 Maltravers! youth and genius have luxuries all the Rothschilds 
 cannot purchase ! And yet, Maltravers, you are ambitious! 
 life moves too slowly for you ! you would push on the wheels 
 of the clock ! Fool brilliant fool ! you are eighteen and a 
 poet ! What more can you desire? Bid Time stop forever ! 
 
 One morning Ernest rose earlier than his wont, and sauntered 
 carelessly through the conservatory which adjoined his sitting- 
 room; observing the plants with placid curiosity (for besides 
 being a little of a botanist, he had odd visionary notions about 
 the life of plants, and he saw in them a hundred mysteries which 
 the herbalists do not teach us), when he heard a low and very 
 musical voice singing at a little distance. He listened, and recog- 
 nized, with surprise, words of his own, which he had lately set 
 to music, and was sufficiently pleased with to sing nightly.
 
 24 ERNEST MALTR AVERS. 
 
 When the song ended, Maltravers stole softly through the con- 
 servatory, and as he opened the door which led into the garden, 
 he saw at the open window of a little room which was appor- 
 tioned to Alice and jutted out from the building in the fanciful 
 irregularity common to ornamental cottages, the form of his dis- 
 carded pupil. She did not observe him, and it was not till he 
 twice called her by name that she started from her thoughtful 
 and melancholy posture. 
 
 "Alice," said he, gently, "put on your bonnet, and walk with 
 me in the garden ; you look pale, child ; the fresh air will do 
 you good." 
 
 Alice colored and smiled, and in a few moments was by his 
 side. Maltravers, meanwhile, had gone in and lighted hismeer- 
 schaum, for it was his great inspirer whenever his thoughts were 
 perplexed, or he felt his usual fluency likely to fail him, and such 
 was the case now. With this faithful ally he awaited Alice in the 
 little walk that circled the lawn, amidst shrubs and evergreens. 
 
 "Alice," said he after a pause; but he stopped short. 
 
 Alice looked up at him with grave respect. 
 
 "Tush !" said Maltravers ; "perhaps the smoke is unpleasant 
 to you. It is a bad habit of mine." 
 
 "No, sir," answered Alice; and she seemed disappointed. 
 Maltravers paused, and picked up a snowdrop. 
 
 "It is pretty," he said ; "do you love flowers?" 
 
 "Oh, dearly," answered Alice, with some enthusiasm ; "I 
 never saw many till I came here." 
 
 " Now then, I can go on," thought Maltravers ; why I cannot 
 say, for I do not see the sequitur; but on he went in medias res. 
 "Alice, you sing charmingly." 
 
 "Ah ! sir you you " she stopped abruptly, andtremblad 
 visibly. 
 
 "Yes, I overheard you, Alice." 
 
 " And you are angry?" 
 
 "I ! Heaven forbid ! It is a talent, but you don't know what 
 that is ; I mean that it is an excellent thing to have an ear, and 
 a voice, and a heart for music ; and you have all three." 
 
 He paused, for he felt his hand touched ; Alice suddenly 
 clasped and kissed it. Maltravers thrilled through his whole 
 frame ; but there was something in the girl's look that showed 
 she was wholly unaware that she had committed an unmaidenly 
 or forward action. 
 
 " I was so afraid you would be angry," she said, wiping her eyes 
 as she dropped his hand; "and now I suppose you know all." 
 
 "All!"
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 25 
 
 "Yes ; how I listened to you every evening, and lay awake 
 the whole night with the music ringing in my ears, till I tried to 
 go over it myself ; and so at last I ventured to sing aloud. I 
 like that much better than learning to read." 
 
 All this was delightful to Maltravers ; the girl had touched 
 upon one of his weak points ; however, he remained silent. 
 Alice continued 
 
 "And now, sir, I hope you will let me come and sit outside the 
 door every evening and hear you ; I will make no noise I will 
 be so quiet." 
 
 "What, in that cold corridor, these bitter nights?" 
 
 "I am used to cold, sir. Father would not let me have a fire 
 when he was not at home." 
 
 " No, Alice, but you shall come into the room while I play, 
 and I will give you a lesson or two. I am glad you have so good 
 an ear ; it may be a means of your earning your own honest live- 
 lihood when you leave me." 
 
 "When I but I never intend to leave you, sir!" said Alice, 
 beginning fearfully and ending calmly. 
 
 Maltravers had recourse to the meerschaum. 
 
 Luckily, perhaps, at this time, they were joined by Mr. Sim- 
 cox, the old writing-master. Alice went in to prepare her books; 
 but Maltravers laid his hand upon the preceptor's shoulder. 
 
 " You have a quick pupil, I hope, sir," said he. 
 
 "Oh, very, very, Mr. Butler. She comes on famously. She 
 practices a great deal when I am away, and I do my best." 
 
 " And," asked Maltravers, in a grave tone, "have you succeeded 
 in instilling into the poor child's mind some of those more 
 sacred notions of which I spoke to you in our first meeting?" 
 
 "Why, sir, she was indeed quite a heathen quite a Mahome- 
 tan, I may say; but she is a little better now." 
 
 " What have you taught her ? " 
 
 " That God made her." 
 
 "That is a great step." 
 
 "And that He loves good girls, and will watch over them." 
 
 "Bravo! You beat Plato." 
 
 " No, sir, I never beat any one except little Jack Turner; but 
 he is a dunce." 
 
 " Bah! What else do you teach her ? " 
 
 " That the devil runs away with bad girls, and 
 
 " Stop there, Mr. Sfmcox. Nevermind the devil yet awhile. 
 Let her first learn to do good, that God may love her; the rest 
 will follow. I would rather make people religious through their 
 best feelings than their worst, through their gratitude and af-
 
 i6 ERNESf MALTRAVERS. 
 
 factions, rather than their fears and calculations of risk and 
 punishment." 
 
 Mr. Simcox stared. 
 
 " Does she say her prayers ? " 
 
 " I have taught her a short one." 
 
 "Did she learn it readily ?" 
 
 " Lord love her, yes ! When I told her she ought to pray to 
 God to bless her benefactor, she would not rest till I had re- 
 peated a prayer out of our Sunday-school book, and she got it 
 by heart at once." 
 
 "Enough, Mr. Simcox. I will not detain you longer." 
 
 Forgetful of his untasted breakfast, Maltravers continued his 
 meerschaum and his reflections: he did not cease, till he had 
 convinced himself that he was but doing his duty to Alice, by 
 teaching her to cultivate the charming talent she evidently pos- 
 sessed, and through which she might secure her own independ- 
 ence. He fancied that he should thus relieve himself of a charge 
 and responsibility which often perplexed him. Alice would 
 leave him, enabled to walk the world in an honest professional 
 path. It was an excellent idea. " But there is danger," whispered 
 Conscience. " Aye," answered Philosophy and Pride, those wise 
 dupes that are always so solemn, and always so taken in; "but 
 what is virtue without trial ? " 
 
 And now every evening, when the windows were closed, and 
 the hearth burnt clear, while the winds stormed, and the rain 
 beat without, a lithe and lovely shape hovered about the student's 
 chamber; and his wild songs were sungbyavoice which Nature 
 had made even sweeter than his own. 
 
 Alice's talent for music was indeed surprising; enthusiastic 
 and quick as he himself was in all he undertook, Maltravers was 
 amazed at her rapid progress. He soon taught her to play by 
 ear; and Maltravers could not but notice that her hand, always 
 delicate in shape, had lost the rude color and roughness of labor. 
 He thought of that pretty hand more often than he ought to 
 have done, and guided it over the keys when it could have 
 found its way very well without him. 
 
 On coming to the cottage, he had directed the old servant to 
 provide suitable and proper clothes for Alice; but now that she 
 was admitted "to sit with the gentleman," the crone had the 
 sense, without waiting for new orders, to buy the " pretty young 
 woman" garments, still indeed simple, but of better materials, 
 and less rustic fashion; and Alice's redundant tresses were now 
 carefully arranged into orderly and glossy curls, and even the 
 texture was no longer the same; and happiness and health
 
 ERNEST MALTUAVERS. 47 
 
 "bloomed on her downy cheeks, and smiled from the dewy lips, 
 which never quite closed over the fresh white teeth, except when 
 she was sad; but that seemed never, now she was not banished 
 from Maltravers. 
 
 To say nothing of the unusual grace and delicacy of Alice's 
 form and features, there is nearly always something of Nature's 
 own gentility in very young women (except, indeed, when they 
 gut together and fall a-giggling); it shames us men to see how 
 much sooner they are polished into conventional shape than our 
 rough, masculine angels. A vulgar boy requires Heaven knows 
 what assiduity to move three steps I do not say like a gentle- 
 man, but like a body that has a soul in it; but give the least ad- 
 vantage of society or tuition to a peasant girl, and a hundred to 
 one she will glide into refinement before the boy can make a 
 bow without upsetting the table. There is sentiment in all women, 
 and sentiment gives delicacy to thought, and tact to manner. 
 But sentiment with men is generally acquired, an oft pring of 
 the intellectual quality, not, as with the other sex, of the moral. 
 
 In the course of his musical and vocal lessons, Maltravers 
 gently took the occasion to correct poor Alice's frequent offences 
 against grammar and accent: and her memory was prodigiously 
 quick and retentive. The very tones of her voice seemed altered 
 in the ear of Maltravers; and, somehow or other, the time came 
 when he was no longer sensible of the difference in their rank. 
 
 The old woman-servant, when she had seen how it would be 
 from the first, and taken a pride in her own prophecy, as she or- 
 dered Alice's new dresses, was a much better philosopher than 
 Maltravers; though he was already up to his ears in the moon- 
 lit abyss of Plato; and had filled a dozen commonplace books 
 with criticisms on Kant. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 " Young man, I fear thy blood is rosy red, 
 Thy heart is soft." 
 
 D'AGUILAR'S Fiesco, Act iii. Sc. i. 
 
 As education does not consist in reading and writing only, so 
 Alice, while still very backward in those elementary arts, fore- 
 stalled some of their maturest results in her intercourse with 
 Maltravers. Before the inoculation took effect, she caught 
 knowledge in the natural way. For the refinement of a graceful 
 mind and a happy manner is very contagious. And Maltravers 
 was encouraged by her quickness in music to attempt such in-
 
 28 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 struction in other studies as conversation could afford, ft is a 
 better school than parents and masters think for: there was a 
 time when all information was given orally; and probably the 
 Athenians learned more from hearing Aristotle, than we do from 
 reading him. It was a delicious revival of Academe in the 
 walks, or beneath the rustic porticoes of that little cottage the 
 romantic philosopher and the beautiful disciple! And his talk 
 was much like that of a sage of the early world, with some wist- 
 ful and earnest savage for a listener: of the stars and their 
 courses of beasts, and birds, and fishes, and plants, and flow- 
 ers the wide family of Nature of the beneficence and power 
 of God of the mystic and spiritual history of man. 
 
 Charmed by her attention and docility, Maltravers at length 
 diverged from lore into poetry; he would repeat to her the sim- 
 plest and most natural passages he could remember in his favor- 
 ite poets; he would himself compose verses elaborately adapted 
 to her understanding; she liked the last the best, and learned 
 them the easiest. Never had young poet a more gracious inspi- 
 ration, and never did this inharmonious world more compla- 
 cently resolve itself into soft dreams, as if to humor the novitiate 
 of the victims it must speedily take into its joyless priesthood. 
 And Alice had now quietly and insensibly carved out her own 
 avocations the tenor of her service. The plants in the con- 
 servatory had passed under her care, and no one else was privi- 
 leged to touch Maltravers's books, or arrange the sacred litter of 
 a student's apartment. When he came down in the morning, 
 or returned from his walks, everything was in order, yet, by a 
 kind of magic, just as he wished it; the flowers he loved best 
 bloomed, fresh-gathered, on his table; the very position of the 
 large chair, just in that corner by the fireplace, whence, on en- 
 tering the room, its hospitable arms opened with the most cor- 
 dial air of welcome, bespoke the presiding genius of a woman; 
 and then, precisely as the clock struck eight, Alice entered, so 
 pretty and smiling, and happy-looking, that it was no wonder 
 the single hour at first allotted to her extended into three. 
 
 Was Alice in love with Maltravers? she certainly did not ex- 
 hibit the symptoms in the ordinary way she did not grow more 
 reserved, and agitated, and timid there was no worm in the 
 bud of her damask cheek: nay, though from the first she had 
 been tolerably bold, she was more free and confidential, more at 
 her ease every day; in fact, she never for a moment suspected 
 that she ought to be otherwise; she had not the conventional 
 and sensitive delicacy of girls who, whatever their rank of life, 
 have been taught that there is a mystery and a peril in love; she
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 29 
 
 had a vague idea about girls going wrong, but she did not know 
 that love had anything to do with it; on the contrary, according 
 to her father, it had connection with money, not love; all that she 
 felt was so natural, and so very sinless. Could she help being 
 so delighted to listen to him, and so grieved to depart? What 
 thus she felt she expressed, no less simply and no less guilelessly; 
 and the candor some'times completely blinded and misled him. 
 No, she could not be in love, or she could not so frankly own 
 that she loved him it was a sisterly and grateful sentiment. 
 
 "The dear girl I am rejoiced to think so," said Maltravers 
 to himself; " I knew there would be no danger." 
 
 Was he not in love himself? the reader must decide. 
 
 "Alice," said Maltravers, one evening, after a long pause of 
 thought and abstraction on his side, while she was unconsciously 
 practising her last lesson on the piano "Alice, no, don't turn 
 round sit where you are, but listen to me. We cannot always 
 live in this way." 
 
 Alice was instantly disobedient she did turn round, and those 
 great blue eyes were fixed on his own with such anxiety and 
 alarm, that he had no resource but to get up and look round for 
 his meerschaum. But Alice, who divined by an instinct his 
 slightest wish, brought it to him, while he was yet hunting, amidst 
 the further corners of the room, in places where it was certain 
 not to be. There it was, already filled with the fragrant Salonica, 
 glittering with the 'gilt pastile, which, not too healthfully, adul- 
 terates the seductive weed with odors that pacify the repugnant 
 censure of the fastidious for Maltravers was an epicurean even 
 in his worst habits; there it was, I say, in that pretty hand 
 which he had to touch as he took it; and while he lit the weed, 
 he had again to blush and shrink beneath those great blue eyes. 
 
 "Thank you, Alice," he said; " thank you. Do sit down 
 there out of the draught. I am going to open the window, the 
 night is so lovely." 
 
 He opened the casement, overgrown with creepers, and the 
 moonlight lay fair and breathless upon the smooth lawn. The 
 calm and holiness of the night soothed and elevated his thoughts; 
 he had cut himself off from the eyes of Alice, and he proceeded 
 with a firm, though gentle, voice: 
 
 " My dear Alice, we cannot always live together in this way; 
 you are now wise enough to understand me, so listen patiently. 
 A young woman never wants a fortune so long as she has a good 
 character; she is always poor and despised without one. Now, 
 a good character in this world is lo'st as much by imprudence as 
 guilt; and if you were to live with me much longer, it would be
 
 30 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 imprudent, and your character would suffer so much that you 
 would not be able to make your own way in the world; far, then, 
 from doing you a service, I should have done you a deadly in- 
 jury, which I could not atone for: besides, Heaven knows what 
 may happen worse than imprudence; for, I am very sorry to 
 say," added Maltravers, with great gravity, " that you are much 
 too pretty and engaging to to in short, it won't do. I must 
 go home; my friends will have a right to complain of me if I 
 remain thus lost to them many weeks longer. And you, my dear 
 Alice, are now sufficiently advanced to receive better instruction 
 than I or Mr. Simcox can give you. I therefore propose to place 
 you in some respectable family, where you will have more com- 
 fort and a higher station than you have here. You can finish 
 your education, and instead of being taught, you will be thus 
 enabled to become a teacher to others. With your beauty, 
 Alice" (and Maltravers sighed), "and natural talents, and ami- 
 able temper, you have only to act well and prudently to secure 
 at last a worthy husband and a happy home. Have you heard 
 me, Alice ? Such is the plan I have formed for you." 
 
 The young man thought as he spoke, with honest kindness and 
 upright honor; it was a bitterer sacrifice than perhaps the reader 
 thinks for. But Maltravers, if he had an impassioned, had not 
 a selfish heart; and he felt, to use his own expression, more em- 
 phatic than eloquent, that "it would not do," to live any longer 
 alone with this beautiful girl, like the tv/o children whom the good 
 Fairy kept safe from sin and the world in the Pavilion of Roses. 
 
 But Alice comprehended neither the danger to herself, nor 
 the temptations that Maltravers, if he could not resist, desired 
 to shun. She rose, pale and trembling approached Maltravers, 
 aad laid her hand gently on his arm. 
 
 " I will go away, when and where you wish the sooner the 
 better to-morrow yes, to-morrow; you are ashamed of poor 
 Alice; and it has been very silly of me to be so happy." (She 
 struggled with her emotion a moment, and went on.) "You 
 know Heaven can hear me, even when I am away from you, and 
 when I know morel can pray better; and Heaven will bless you, 
 sir, and make you happy, for I never can pray for anything else." 
 
 With these words she turned away, and walked proudly towards 
 the door. But when she reached the threshold, she stopped and 
 looked around, as if to take a last farewell. All the associations 
 and memories of that beloved spot rushed upon her she gasped 
 for breath, tottered, and fell to the ground insensible. 
 
 Maltravers was already by her side; he lifted her lightweight 
 in his arms; he uttered wild and impassioned exclamations
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 31 
 
 'Alice, beloved Alice forgive me; we will never part!" He 
 chafed her hand in his own, while her head lay on his bosom, 
 and he kissed again and again those beautiful eyelids, till they 
 opened slowly upon him, and the tender arms tightened round 
 him involuntarily. 
 
 i " Alice,"he whispered " Alice, dear Alice, I love thee." Alas, 
 it was true: he loved and forgot all but that love. He was 
 eighteen. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 " How like a younker or a prodigal, 
 The scarfed bark puts from her native bay ! " 
 
 Merchant of Venice. 
 
 WE are apt to connect the voice of Conscience with the still- 
 ness of midnight. But I think we wrong that innocent hour. It 
 is that terrible "NEXT MORNING," when reason is wide awake, 
 upon which remorse fastens its fangs. Has a man gambled away 
 his all, or shot his friend in a duel has he committed a crime, 
 or incurred a laugh it is the next morning, when the irretrieva- 
 ble Past rises before him like a spectre; then doth the church- 
 yard of memory yield up its grisly dead then is the witching 
 hour when the foul fiend within us can least tempt perhaps, but 
 most torment. At night we have one thing to hope for, one 
 refuge to fly to oblivion and sleep! But at morning, sleep is 
 over, and we are called upon coldly to review, and re-act, and 
 live again the waking bitterness of self-reproach. Maltravers 
 rose a penitent and unhappy man remorse was new to him, 
 and he felt as if he had committed a treacherous and fraudulent 
 as well as guilty deed. This poor girl, she was so innocent, so 
 confiding, so unprotected, even by her own sense of right. He 
 went down-stairs listless and dispirited. He longed yet dreaded 
 to encounter Alice. He heard her step in the conservatory 
 paused, irresolute, and at length joined her. For the first time 
 she blushed and trembled, and her eyes shunned his. But when 
 he kissed her hand in silence, she whispered, "And am I now to 
 leave you?" And Maltravers answered fervently, " Never !" 
 and then her face grew so radiant with joy, that Maltraverswas 
 comforted despite himself. Alice knew no remorse, though she 
 felt agitated and ashamed; as she had not comprehended the 
 danger, neither was she aware of the fall. In fact, she never 
 thought of herself. Her whole soul was with him; she gave him 
 back in love the spirit she had caught from him in knowledge, 
 they strolled together through the garden all that day,
 
 32 ERNEST MAI/fRAVERS. 
 
 and Maltravers grew reconciled to himself. He had done wrong, 
 it is true; but then perhaps Alice had already suffered as much 
 as she could in the world's opinion, by living with him alone, 
 though innocent, so long. And now she had an everlasting 
 claim to h4s protection she should never know shame or want. 
 And the love that had led to the wrong should, by fidelity and 
 devotion, take from it the character of sin. 
 
 Natural and commonplace sophistries! L' homme se pique. ! as 
 old Montaigne said; Man is his own sharper! The conscience 
 is the most elastic material in the world. To-day you cannot 
 stretch it over a mole-hill, to-morrow it hides a mountain. 
 
 Oh, how happy they were now that young pair! How the days 
 flew like dreams! Time went on, winter passed away, and the 
 early spring, with its flowers and sunshine, was like a mirror to 
 their own youth. Alice never accompanied Maltravers in his 
 walks abroad, partly because she feared to meet her father, and 
 partly because Maltravers himself was fastidiously averse to all 
 publicity. But then they had all that little world of three 
 acres lawn and fountain, shrubbery and terrace to themselves, 
 and Alice never asked if there was any other world without. 
 She was now quite a scholar, as Mr. Simcox himself averred. 
 She could read aloud and fluently to Maltravers, and copied out 
 his poetry in a small, fluctuating hand, and he had no longer to 
 chase throughout his vocabulary for short Saxon monosyllables 
 to make the bridge of intercourse between their ideas. Eros 
 and Psyche are ever united, and Love opens all the petals of the 
 soul. On one subject alone, Maltravers was less eloquent than 
 of yore. He had not succeeded as a moralist, and he thought 
 it hypocritical to preach what he did not practise. But Alice 
 was gentler and purer, and as far as she knew, sweet fool! bet- 
 ter than ever she had invented a new prayer for herself; and 
 she prayed as regularly and as fervently as if she were doing 
 nothing amiss. But the code of heaven is gentler than that of 
 earth, and does not declare that ignorance excuseth not the crime. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 " Some clouds sweep on as vultures for their prey. 
 * * * * # 
 
 No azure more shall robe the firmament, 
 Nor spangled stars be glorious." 
 
 BYRON, Heaven and Earth. 
 
 IT was a lovely evening in April, the weather was unusually 
 mild and serene for the time of the year, in the northern districts
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 33 
 
 of our isle, and the bright drops of a recent shower sparkled upon 
 the buds of the lilac and laburnum that clustered around the cot- 
 tage of Maltravers. The little fountain that played in the centre 
 of a circular basin, on whose clear surface the broad-leaved water 
 lily cast its fairy shadow, added to the fresh green of the lawn ; 
 
 " And softe as velvet the yonge grass," 
 
 on which the rare and early flowers were closing their heavy lids- 
 That twilight shower had given a racy and vigorous sweetness 
 to the air which stole over many a bank of violets, and slightly 
 stirred the golden ringlets of Alice as she sat by the side of her 
 entranced and silent lover. They were seated on a rustic bench 
 just without the cottage, and the open windows behind them ad- 
 mitted the view of that happy room with its litter of books and 
 musical instruments eloquent of the POETRY of HOME. 
 
 Maltravers was silent, for his flexile and excitable fancy was 
 conjuring up a thousand shapes along the transparent air, or 
 upon those shadowy violet banks. He was not thinking, he was 
 imagining. His genius reposed dreamily upon the calm, but 
 exquisite sense of his happiness. Alice was not absolutely in his 
 thoughts, but unconsciously she colored them all if she had 
 left his side, the whole charm would have been broken. But 
 Alice, who was not a poet or a genius, was thinking, and think- 
 ing only of Maltravers. . . . His image was " the broken mir- 
 ror" multiplied in a thousand faithful fragments over everything 
 fair and soft in that lovely microcosm before her. But they were 
 both alike in one thing they were not with the Future, they 
 were sensible of the Present the sense of the actual life, the en- 
 joyment of the breathing time was strong within them. Such 
 is the privilege of the extremes of our existence Youth and 
 Age. Middle life is never with to-day, its home is in to-mor- 
 row . . . anxious, and scheming, and desiring, and wishing this 
 plot ripened, and that hope fulfilled, while every wave of the for- 
 gotten Time brings it nearer and nearer to the end of all things. 
 Half our life is consumed in longing to be nearer death. 
 
 "Alice," said Maltravers, waking at last from his reverie, and 
 drawing that light, childlike form nearer to him, "you enjoy 
 this hour as much as I do." 
 
 " Oh, much more ! " 
 
 " More ! and why so?" 
 
 "Because I am thinking of you, and perhaps you are not 
 thinking of yourself." 
 
 Maltravers smiled, and stroked those beautiful ringlets, and 
 kissed that smooth, innocent forehead, and Alice nestled in his 
 breast.
 
 34 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 " How young you look by this light, Alice ! " said he, ten- 
 derly looking down. 
 
 " Would you love me less if I were old ! " asked Alice. 
 
 "I suppose I should never have loved you in the same way, 
 if you had been old when I first saw you." 
 
 " Yet I am sure I should have felt the same for you if you 
 had been oh ! ever so old ! " 
 
 " What, with wrinkled cheeks, and palsied head, and a brown 
 wig, and no teeth, like Mr. Simcox?" 
 
 " Oh, but you could never be like that ! You would always 
 look young your heart would be always in your face. That 
 dear smile ah, you would look beautiful to the last ! " 
 
 " But Simcox, though not very lovely now, has been, I dare 
 say, handsomer than I am, Alice ; and I shall be contented to 
 look as well when I am as old ! " 
 
 " I should never know you were old, because I can see you 
 just as 1 please. Sometimes, when you are thoughtful, your 
 brows meet, and you look so stern that I tremble ; but then I 
 think of you when you last smiled, and look up again, and though 
 you are frowning still, you seem to smile. I am sure you are 
 different to other eyes than to mine . . . and time must kill me 
 before, in my sight, it could alter you." 
 
 " Sweet Alice, you talk eloquently, for you talk love." 
 
 " My heart talks to you. Ah ! I wish it could say all it felt. 
 I wish it could make poetry like you, or that words were music 
 I would never speak to you in anything else. I was so delighted 
 to learn music, because when I played I seemed to be talking to 
 you. I am sure that whoever invented music did it because he 
 loved dearly and wanted to say so. I said '/ie,' but I think it 
 was a woman. Was it?" 
 
 " The Greeks I told you of, and whose life was music, thought 
 it was a god." 
 
 "Ah, but you say the Greeks made Love a god. Were they 
 wicked for it?" 
 
 "Our own God above is Love," said Ernest, seriously, "as 
 our own poets have said and sung. But it is a love of another 
 nature divine, not human. Come, we will go within, the air 
 grows cold for you." 
 
 They entered, his arm round her waist. The room smiled 
 upon them its quiet welcome ; and Alice, whose heart had not 
 half vented its fulness, sat down to the instrument still to " talk 
 love " in her own way. 
 
 But it was Saturday evening. Now every Saturday, Maltravers 
 received from the neighboring town the provincial newspaper
 
 ERNKST MALTRAVERS. 35 
 
 this was his only medium of communication with the great 
 world. But it was not for that communication that he always 
 seized it with avidity, and fed on it with interest. The county 
 in which his father resided bordered on the shire on which 
 Ernest sojourned, and the paper included the news of that familiar 
 district in its comprehensive columns. It therefore satisfied 
 Ernest's conscience and soothed his filial anxieties to read from 
 time to time, that " Mr. Maltravers was entertaining a distin- 
 guished party of friends at his noble mansion of Lisle Court" ; 
 or that " Mr. Maltravers' foxhounds had met on such a day at 
 something copse" ; or that "Mr. Maltravers, with his usual 
 munificence, had subscribed twenty guineas to the new county 
 gaol." . . . And as now Maltravers saw the expected paper laid 
 beside the hissing urn, he seized it eagerly, tore the envelope, and 
 hastened to the well-known corner appropriated to the paternal 
 district. The very first words that struck his eyes were these : 
 
 "ALARMING ILLNESS OF MR. MALTRAVERS. 
 
 " We regret to state that this exemplary and distinguished 
 gentleman was suddenly seized on Wednesday night with a 
 
 severe spasmodic affection. Dr. was immediately sent 
 
 for, who pronounced it to be gout in the stomach the first med- 
 ical assistance from London has been summoned. 
 
 "Postcript. We have just learned, in answer to our inquiries 
 at Lisle Court, that the respected owner is considerably worse ; 
 but slight hopes are entertained of his recovery. Captain Mal- 
 travers, his eldest son and heir, is at Lisle Court. An express 
 had been despatched in search of Mr. Ernest Maltravers, who, 
 involved by his high English spirit in some dispute with the 
 authorities of a despotic government, had suddenly disappeared 
 from Gottingen, where his extraordinary talents had highly dis- 
 tinguished him. He is supposed to be staying at Paris." 
 
 The paper dropped on the floor. Ernest threw himself back 
 on the chair, and covered his face with his hands. 
 
 Alice was beside him in a moment. He looked up, and caught 
 her wistful and terrified gaze. " Oh, Alice ! " he cried, bitterly, 
 and almost pushing her away, "if you could but guess my re- 
 morse ! " Then springing on his feet, he hurried from the room. 
 
 Presently the whole house was in commotion. The gardener, 
 who was always in the house about supper-time, flew to the town 
 for post-horses. The old woman was in despair about the laun- 
 dress, for her first and only thought was for "master's shirts." 
 Ernest locked himself in his room. Alice ! poor Alice ! 
 
 In little more than twenty minutes the chaise was at the
 
 36 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 door : and Ernest, pale as death, came into the room where he 
 had left Alice. 
 
 She was seated on the floor, and the fatal paper was on her 
 lap. She had been endeavoring, in vain, to learn what had so 
 sensibly affected Maltravers, for, as I said before, she was unac- 
 quainted with his real name, and therefore the ominous para- 
 graph did not even arrest her eye. 
 
 He took the paper from her, for he wanted again and again 
 to read it : some little word of hope or encouragement must 
 have escaped him. And then Alice flung herself on his breast. 
 " Do not weep," said he ; " Heaven knows I have sorrow enough 
 of my own ! My father is dying ! So kind, so generous, so in- 
 dulgent ! O God, forgive me ! Compose yourself, Alice. You 
 will hear from me in a day or two." 
 
 He kissed her ; but the kiss was cold and forced. He hurried 
 away. She heard the wheels grate on the pebbles. She rushed to 
 the window ; but that beloved face was not visible. Maltravers 
 had drawn theblinds,and thrown himself back to indulge his grief. 
 A moment more, and even the vehicle that bore him away was 
 gone. And before her were the flowers, and the starlit lawn, and 
 the playful fountain, and the bench where they had sat in such 
 heartfelt and serene delight. He was gone; and often, oh, how 
 often, did Alice remember that his last words had been uttered 
 in estranged tones that his last embrace had been without 
 love ! 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 " Thy due from me 
 
 Is tears : and heavy sorrows of the blood, 
 Which nature, love, and filial tenderness, 
 Shall, O dear father, pay thee plenteously ! " 
 
 Second Part of Henry IV., Act iv. Sc. 4. 
 
 IT was late at night when the chaise that bore Maltravers 
 stopped at the gates of a park lodge. It seemed an age before 
 the peasant within was aroused from the deep sleep of labor- 
 loving health. "My father," he cried, while the gate creaked 
 on its hinges; "my father is he better? Is he alive?" 
 
 " Oh, bless your heart, Master Ernest, the "squire was a little 
 better this evening." 
 
 " ThanK heaven ! On on ! " 
 
 The horses smoked and galloped along a road that wound 
 through venerable and ancient groves. The moonlight slept
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 37 
 
 soft upon the sward, and the cattle, disturbed from their sleep, 
 rose lazily up, and gazed upon the unseasonable intruder. 
 
 It was a wild and weird scene, one of those noble English 
 parks at midnight, with its rough forest-ground broken into dell 
 and valley, its never-innovated and mossy grass overrun with 
 fern, and its immemorial trees, that have looked upon the birth, 
 and look yet upon the graves, of a hundred generations. Such 
 spots are the last proud and melancholy trace of Norman knight- 
 hood and old romance, left to the laughing landscapes of culti- 
 vated England. They always throw something of shadow and 
 solemn gloom upon minds that feel their associations, like that 
 which belongs to some ancient and holy edifice. They are the 
 cathedral aisles of Nature, with their darkened vistas, and 
 columned trunks, and arches of mighty foliage. But in ordinary 
 times the gloom is pleasing, and more delightful than all the cheer- 
 ful lawns and sunny slopes of the modern taste. Now to Maltravers 
 it was ominous and oppressive: the darkness of death seem brood- 
 ingin every shadow,and itswarningvoicemoaningin everybreeze. 
 
 The wheels stopped again. Lights flitted across the basement 
 story; and one above, more dim than the rest, shone palely from 
 the room in which the sick man slept. The bell rang shrilly out 
 from amidst the dark ivy that clung around the porch. The heavy 
 door swung back Maltravers was on the threshold. His father 
 lived was better was awake. The son was in his father's arms. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 " The guardian oak 
 
 Mourned o'er the roof it shelter'd : the thick air 
 Labor'd with doleful sounds." 
 
 ELLIOTT of Sheffield. 
 
 MANY days had passed, and Alice was still alone; but she 
 had heard twice from Maltravers. The letters were short and 
 hurried. One time his father was better, and there were hopes; 
 another time, and it was not expected that he could survive the 
 week. They were the first letters Alice had ever received from 
 him. Those first letters are an event in a girl's life in Alice's 
 life they were a very melancholy one. Ernest did not ask her 
 to write to him ; in fact, he felt, at such an hour, a repugnance 
 to disclose his real name, and receive the letters of clandestine 
 love in the house in which a father lay in death. He might 
 have given the feigned address he had previously assumed, at 
 some distant post-town, where his person was not known. But,
 
 38 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 then, to obtain such letters, he must quit his father's side fof 
 hours. The thing was impossible. These difficulties Mai. 
 travers did not explain to Alice. 
 
 She thought it singular he did not wish to hear from her; 
 but Alice was humble. What could she say worth troubling 
 him with, and at such an hour? But how kind in him to write ! 
 how precious those letters ! and yet they disappointed her, and 
 cost her floods of tears: they were so short so full of sorrow 
 there was so little love in them ; and "dear," or even "dearest 
 Alice," that uttered by the voice was so tender, looked cold 
 upon the lifeless paper. If she but knew the exact spot where 
 he was, it would be some comfort ; but she only knew that he 
 was away, and in grief; and though he was little more than 
 thirty miles distant, she felt as though immeasurable space 
 divided them. However, she consoled herself as she could; and 
 strove to shorten the long, miserable day by playing all over the 
 airs he liked, and reading all the passages he had commended. 
 She should be so improved when he returned ; and how lovely 
 the garden would look ; for every day its trees and bosquets 
 caught a new smile from the deepening spring. Oh, they would 
 be so happy once more ! Alice now learned the life thit lies in 
 the future ; and her young heart had not, as yet, been taught 
 that of that future there is any prophet but Hope ! 
 
 Maltravers, on quitting the cottage, had forgotten that Alice 
 was without money, and now that he found that his stay would 
 be indefinitely prolonged, he sent a remittance. Several bills 
 were unpaid some portion of the rent was due ; and Alice, as 
 she was desired, intrusted the old servant with a bank note, 
 with which she was to discharge these petty debts. One even- 
 ing, as she brought Alice the surplus, the good dame seemed 
 greatly discomposed. She was pale and agitated ; or, as she 
 expressed it, "had a terrible fit of the shakes." 
 
 " What is the matter, Mrs. Jones? you have no news of him 
 of of my of your master?" 
 
 " Deart heart, miss no," answered Mrs. Jones ; " how should 
 I ? But I'm sure I don't wish to frighten you ; there has been 
 two sitch robberies in the neighborhood ! " 
 
 "Oh, thank Heaven, that's all," exclaimed Alice. 
 
 " Oh, don't go for to thank Heaven for that, miss; it's a shock- 
 ing thing for two lone females like us, and them ere windows 
 all open to the ground ! You sees, as I was taking the note to 
 be changed at Mr. Harris's, the great grocer's shop, where all 
 the poor folk was a-buying agin to-morrow" (for it was Satur- 
 day night, the second Saturday after Ernest's departure ; from
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 39 
 
 that hegira Alice dated all her chronology), "and everybody 
 was a-talking about the robberies last night. La, miss, they 
 bound old Betty you know Betty a most respectable 'oman, 
 who has known sorrows, and drinks tea with me once a week. 
 Well, miss, they (only think !) bound Betty to the bedpost, with 
 nothing on her but her shift poor old soul ! And as Mr. Harris 
 gave me the change (please to see, miss, it's all right), and I 
 asked for half gould, miss, it's more convenient, sitch an ill- 
 looking fellow was by me, a-buying o' baccy, and he did so 
 stare at the money, that I vows I thought he'd have rin away 
 with it from the counter; so I grabbed it up and went away. 
 But, would you believe, miss, just as I got into the lane, afore 
 you turns through the gate, I chanced to look back, and there, 
 sure enough, was that ugly fellow close behind, a-running like 
 mad. O, I set up such a skreetch ; and young Dobbins was 
 a-taking his cow out of the field, and he perked up over the 
 hedge when he heard me ; and the cow, too, with her horns, 
 Lord bless her ! So the fellow stopped, and I bustled through 
 the gate, and got home. But la, miss, if we are all robbed and 
 murdered ?" 
 
 Alice had not heard much of this harangue ; but what she 
 did hear, very slightly affected her strong, peasant-born nerves; 
 not half so much, indeed, as the noise Mrs. Jones made in 
 double-locking all the doors, and barring, as well as a peg and 
 a rusty inch of chain would allow, all the windows which 
 operation occupied at least an hour and a half. 
 
 All at last was still. Mrs. Jones had gone to bed in the 
 arms of sleep she had forgotten her terrors and Alice had 
 crept upstairs, and undressed, and said her prayers, and wept a 
 little ; and with the tears yet moist upon her dark eye-lashes, 
 had glided into dreams of Ernest. Midnight was passed the 
 stroke of one sounded unheard from the clock at the foot of the 
 stairs. The moon was gone a slow, drizzling rain was falling 
 upon the flowers, and cloud and darkness gathered fast and 
 thick around the sky. 
 
 About this time, a low, regular, grating sound commenced at 
 the thin shutters of the sitting-room below, preceded by a very 
 faint noise, like the tinkling of small fragments of glass on the 
 gravel without. At length it ceased, and the cautious and 
 partial gleam of a lanthorn fell along the floor; another moment 
 and two men stood in the room. 
 
 " Hush, Jack ! " whispered one ; " hang out the glim, and let's 
 look about us." 
 
 The dark-lanthorn, now fairly unmuffled, presented to the
 
 40 ERNEST MAI.TRAVERS. 
 
 gaze of the robbers nothing that could gratify their cupidity. 
 Books and music, chairs, tables, carpet, and fire-irons, though 
 valuable enough in a house-agent's inventory, are worthless to 
 the eyes of a housebreaker. They muttered a mutual curse. 
 
 "Jack," said the former speaker, "we must make a dash at 
 the spoons and forks, and then hey for the money. The old 
 girl had thirty shiners, besides flimsies." 
 
 The accomplice nodded assent ; the lanthorn was again par- 
 tially shaded, and with noiseless and stealthy steps the men 
 quitted the apartment. Several minutes elapsed, when Alice 
 was awakened from her slumber by a loud scream; she started, 
 all was again silent ; she must have dreamt it ; her little heart 
 beat violently at first, but gradually regained its tenor. She 
 rose, however, and the kindness of her nature being more sus- 
 ceptible than her fear she imagined Mrs. Jones might be ill 
 she would go to her. With this idea she began partially dress- 
 ing herself, when she distinctly heard heavy footsteps and a 
 strange voice in the room beyond. She was now thoroughly 
 alarmed her first impulse was to escape from the house her 
 next to bolt the door, and call aloud for assistance. But who 
 would hear her cries ? Between the two purposes, she halted ir- 
 resolute . . . and remained, pale and trembling, seated at the 
 foot of the bed, when a broad light streamed through the chinks 
 of the door an instant more, and a rude hand seized her. 
 
 "Come, mem, don't be fritted, we won't harm you; but 
 where's the gold-dust where's the money? the old girl says 
 you've got it. Fork it over." 
 
 "Oh mercy, mercy ! John Walters, is that you ?" 
 
 "Damnation ! " muttered the man, staggering back, "so you 
 knows me, then ; but you shan't peach ; you shan't scrag me, 
 b t you." 
 
 While he spoke, he again seized Alice, held her forcibly down 
 with one hand, while with the other he deliberately drew from a 
 side pouch a long case-knife. In that moment of deadly peril, 
 the second ruffian, who had hitherto delayed in securing the 
 servant, rushed forward. He had heard the exclamation of Alice, 
 he heard the threat of his comrade ; he darted to the bedside, 
 cast a hurried gaze upon Alice, and hurled the intended murderer 
 to the other side of the room. 
 
 "What, man, art mad?" he growled, between his teeth. 
 "Don't you know her? It is Alice ; it is my daughter." 
 
 Alice had sprung up when released from the murderer's knife, 
 and now with eyes strained and starting with horror, gazed 
 upon the dark and evil face of her deliverer.
 
 EUNKST MALTRAVERS. 4! 
 
 " O God, it is it is my father ! " she muttered, and fell senseless. 
 
 "Daughter, or no daughter," said John Walters, "I shall not 
 put my scrag in her power ; recollect how she fritted us before, 
 when she run away." 
 
 Darvil stood thoughtful and perplexed and his associate 
 approached doggedly, with a look of such settled ferocity as it was 
 impossible for even Darvil to contemplate without a shudder. 
 
 "You say right," muttered the father, after a pause, but fixing 
 his strong gripe on his comrade's shoulder, "the girl must not be 
 left here the cart has a covering. We are leaving the country ; 
 1 have a right to my daughter she shall go with us. There, man, 
 grab the money it's on the table ; . . . you've got the spoons. 
 Now, then " as Darvil spoke he seized his daughter in his 
 arms ; threw over her a shawl and a cloak that lay at hand, and 
 was already on the threshold. 
 
 "Idon'thalf-like it," said Walters, grumblingly itbeen'tsafe." 
 
 "At least it is as safe as murder !" answered Darvil, turning 
 round with a ghastly grin. "Make haste." 
 
 When Alice recovered her senses, the dawn was breaking slowly 
 along desolate and sullen hills. She was lying upon rough straw 
 the cart was jolting over the ruts of a precipitous, lonely road, 
 and by her 4ide scowled the face of that dreadful father. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 " Yet he beholds her with the eyes of mind - 
 He sees the form which he no more shall meet - 
 She like a passionate thought is come and gone, 
 While at his feet the bright rill bubbles on." 
 
 ELLIOTT of Sheffield. 
 
 IT was a little more than three weeks after that fearful night, 
 when the chaise of Maltravers stopped at the cottage door the 
 windows were shut up ; no one answered the repeated summons 
 of the post-boy. Maltravers himself, alarmed and dismayed, 
 descended from the vehicle ; he was in deep mourning. He went 
 impatiently to the back entrance ; that was also locked ; round 
 to the French windows of the drawing-room, always hitherto 
 half-opened, even in the frosty days of winter, they were now 
 closed, like the rest. He shouted in terror, "Alice, Alice!" 
 no sweet voice answered in breathless joy, no fairy step bounded 
 forward in welcome. At this moment, however, appeared the 
 form of the gardener, coming across the lawn. The tale was soon 
 t<?H ; the house had been robbed. the old woman found gagged.
 
 42 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 and fastened to her bed-post Alice flown. A magistrate had 
 been applied to suspicion fell upon the fugitive. None knew 
 anything of her origin or name, not even the old woman. Mal- 
 travers had naturally and sedulously ordained Alice to preserve 
 that secret, and she was too much in fear of being detected and 
 claimed by her father, not to obey the injunction with scrupulous 
 caution. But it was known, at least, that she had entered the 
 house a poor peasant girl ; and what more common than for ladies 
 of a certain description to run away from their lover, and take 
 some of his property by mistake? And a poor girl like Alice, 
 what else could be expected ? The magistrate smiled, and the 
 constables laughed. After all, it was a good joke at the young 
 gentleman's expense ! Perhaps, as they had no orders from Mal- 
 travers, and they did not know where to find him, and thought 
 he would be little inclined to prosecute, the search was not very 
 rigorous. But two houses had been robbed the night before. 
 Their owners were more on the alert. Suspicion fell upon a man 
 of infamous character, John Walters ; he had disappeared from 
 the place. He had been last seen with an idle, drunken fellow, 
 who was said to have known better days, and who at one time 
 had been a skilful and well-paid mechanic, till his habits of theft 
 and drunkenness threw him out of employ ; and he had been 
 since accused of connection with a gang of coiners tried and 
 escaped from want of sufficient evidence against him. That man 
 was Luke Darvil. His cottage was searched ; but he also had 
 fled. The trace of cart-wheels by the gate of Maltravers gave a 
 faint clue to pursuit ; and after an active search of some days, 
 persons answering to the description of the suspected burglars 
 with a young female in their company were tracked to a small 
 inn, notorious as a resort for smugglers, by the sea-coast. But 
 there every vestige of their supposed whereabouts disappeared. 
 
 And all this was told to the stunned Maltravers ; the garrulity 
 off the gardener precluded the necessity of his own inquiries, and 
 the name of Darvil explained to him all that was dark to others. 
 And Alice was suspected of the basest and the blackest guilt ! 
 Obscure, beloved, protected as she had been, she could not es- 
 cape the calumny from which he had hoped everlastingly to shield 
 her. But did he share that hateful thought ? Maltravers was 
 too generous and too enlightened. 
 
 " Dog ! " said he, grinding his teeth, and clenching his hands, 
 at the startled menial, " dare to utter a syllable of suspicion 
 against her, and I will trample the breath out of your body ! " 
 
 The old woman who had vowed that for the 'varsnl world she 
 would not stay in- the house after such a " night of shakes,"
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 43 
 
 had now learned the news of her master's return, and came hob- 
 bling up to him. She arrived in time to hear his menace to her 
 fellow-servant. 
 
 "Ah, that's right; give it to him, your honor, bless your good 
 heart that's what I siiys. Miss rob the house ! says I Miss 
 run away. Oh no depend on it they have murdered her, and 
 buried the body." 
 
 Maltravers gasped for breath, but without uttering another 
 word he re-entered the chaise and drove to the house of the 
 magistrate He found that functionary a worthy and intelligent 
 man of the world. To him he confided the secret of Alice's 
 birth and his own. The magistrate concurred with him in be- 
 lieving that Alice had been discovered and removed by her father. 
 New search was made gold was lavished. Maltravers himself 
 headed the search in person. But all came to the same result 
 as before, save by that descriptions he heard of the person the 
 dress the tears, of the young female who had accompanied the 
 men supposed to be Darvil and Walters, he was satisfied that 
 Alice yet lived ; he hoped she might yet escape and return. In 
 that hope he lingered for weeks for months, in the neighbor- 
 hood ; but time passed and no tidings. . . . He was forced at 
 length to quit a neighborhood at once so saddened and en- 
 deared. But he secured a friend in the magistrate, who prom- 
 ised to communicate with him if Alice returned, or her father 
 was discovered. He enriched Mrs. Jones for life, in gratitude 
 for her vindication of his lost and early love ; he promised the 
 amplest rewards for the smallest clue. And with a crushed and 
 desponding spirit, he obeyed at last the repeated and anxious 
 summons of the guardian to whose care, until his majority was 
 attained, the young orphan was now intrusted. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 " Sure there are poets that did never dream 
 Upon Parnassus." DENHAM. 
 
 "Walk sober off, before a sprightlier age 
 
 Come tittering on, and shove you from the stage." POPE. 
 
 " Hence to repose your trust in me was wise." 
 
 DRYDEN'S Absalom and Achitophel. 
 
 MR. FREDERICK CLEVELAND, a younger son of the Earl of 
 Byrneham, and therefore entitled to the style and distinction of 
 "Honorable," was the guardian of Ernest Maltravers. He was
 
 44 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 now about the age of forty-three ; a man of letters and a man 
 of fashion, if the last half-obsolete expression be permitted to 
 us, as being at least more classical and definite than any other 
 which modern euphuism has invented to convey the same mean- 
 ing. Highly educated, and with natural abilities considerably 
 above mediocrity, Mr. Cleveland early in life had glowed with 
 the ambition of an author. . . . He had written well and grace- 
 fully but his success, though respectable, did not satisfy his 
 aspirations. The fact is, that a new school of literature ruled 
 the public, despite the critics a school very different from that 
 in which Mr. Cleveland had formed his unimpassioned and pol- 
 ished periods. And as that old Earl, who in the time of Charles 
 the First was the reigning wit of the court, in the time of Charles 
 the Second was considered too dull even fora butt, so every age 
 has its own literary stamp and coinage, and consigns the old 
 circulation to its shelves and cabinets, as neglected curiosities. 
 Cleveland could not become the fashion with the public as an 
 author, though the coteries cried him up and the reviewers 
 adored him^and the ladies of quality and the amateur dilet- 
 tanti bought and bound his volumes of careful poetry and ca- 
 denced prose. But Cleveland had high birth and a handsome 
 competence his manners were delightful, his conversation 
 fluent and his disposition was as amiable as his mind was cul- 
 tured. He became, therefore, a man greatly sought after in so- 
 ciety both respected and beloved. If he had not genius, he 
 had great good sense ; he did not vex his urbane temper and 
 kindly heart with walking after a vain shadow, and disquieting 
 himself in vain. Satisfied with an honorable and unenvied repu- 
 tation, he gave up the dream of that higher fame which he clear- 
 ly saw denied to his aspirations and maintained his good-humor 
 with the world, though in his secret soul he thought it was very 
 wrong in its literary caprices. Cleveland never married ; he 
 lived partly in town, but principally at Temple Grove, a villa 
 not far from Richmond. Here, with an excellent library, beauti- 
 ful grounds, and a circle of attached and admiring friends, which 
 comprised all the more refined and intellectual members of what 
 is termed, with emphasis, Good Society this accomplished and 
 elegant person passed a life, perhaps much happier than he would 
 have known had his young visions been fulfilled, and it had be- 
 come his stormy fate to lead the rebellious and fierce Democ- 
 racy of Letters. 
 
 Cleveland was indeed, if not a man of high and original genius, 
 at least, very superior to the generality of patrician authors. In 
 retiring, himself, from frequent exercise in the arena, he gave
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 45 
 
 up his mind with renewed zest to the thoughts and masterpieces 
 of others. From a well-read man, he became a deeply instructed 
 one. Metaphysics, and some of the material sciences, added 
 new treasures to information more light and miscellaneous, and 
 contributed to impart weight and dignity to a mind that might 
 otherwise have become somewhat effeminate and frivolous. His 
 social habits, his clear sense, and benevolence of judgment, made 
 him also an exquisite judge of all those indefinable nothings or 
 little things, that, formed into a total, become knowledge of the 
 Great World. I say the Great World for of the world with- 
 out the circle of the great, Cleveland naturally knew but little. 
 But of all that related to that subtle orbit in which gentlemen 
 and ladies move in elevated and ethereal order, Cleveland was 
 a profound philosopher. It was the mode with many of his ad- 
 mirers to style him the Horace Walpole of the day. But though 
 in some of the more external and superficial points of character 
 they were alike, Cleveland had considerable less cleverness,- and 
 infinitely more heart. 
 
 The late Mr. Maltravers, a man not indeed of literary habits, 
 but an admirer of those who were an elegant, high-bred, hos- 
 pitable seigneifr de province had been one of the earliest of 
 Cleveland's friends Cleveland had been his fag at Eton and he 
 found Hal Maltravers (Handsome Hal !) had become the darl- 
 ing of the clubs, when he made his own ddbut in society. They 
 were inseparable for a season or two and when Mr. Maltravers 
 married, and enamored of country pursuits, proud of his old hall, 
 and sensibly enough conceiving that he was a greater man in 
 his own broad lands than in the republican aristocracy of Lon- 
 don, settled peaceably at Lisle Court, Cleveland corresponded 
 with him regularly, and visited him twice a year. Mrs. Mal- 
 travers died in giving birth to Ernest, her second son. Her hus- 
 band loved her tenderly, and was long inconsolable for her loss. 
 He could not bear the sight of the child that had cost him so 
 dear a sacrifice. Cleveland and his sister, Lady Julia Danvers, 
 were residing with him at the time of this melancholy event ; 
 and with judicious and delicate kindness, Lady Julia proposed 
 to place the unconscious offender amongst her own children for 
 some months. The proposition was accepted, and it was two 
 years before the infant Ernest was restored to the paternal man- 
 sion. During the greater part of that time, he had gone through 
 all the events and revolutions of baby life, under the bachelor 
 roof of Frederick Cleveland. The result of this was,that the latter 
 loved the child like a father. Ernest's first intelligible word 
 hailed Cleveland as "papa"; and when the urchin was at length
 
 46 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 deposited at Lisle Court, Cleveland talked all the nurses out of 
 breath with admonitions, and cautions, and injunctions, and 
 promises and threats, which might have put many a careful 
 mother to the blush. This circumstance formed a new tie be- 
 tween Cleveland and his friend. Cleveland's visits were now 
 three times a year, instead of twice. Nothing was done for Er- 
 nest without Cleveland's advice. He was not even breeched till 
 Cleveland gave his grave consent. Cleveland chose his school 
 and took him to it, and he spent a week of every vacation in 
 Cleveland's house. The boy never got into a scrape, or won a 
 prize, or wanted a //)>, or coveted a book, but what Cleveland 
 was the first to know of it. Fortunately, too, Ernest manifested 
 by times tastes which the graceful author thought similar to his 
 own. He early developed very remarkable talents, and a love 
 for learning though these were accompanied with a vigor of life 
 and soul an energy a daring which gave Cleveland some un- 
 easiness, and which did not appear to him at all congenial with 
 the moody shyness of an embryo genius, or the regular placidity 
 of a precocious scholar. Meanwhile the relation between father 
 and son was rather a singular one. Mr. Maltravers had over- 
 come his first, not unnatural, repugnance to the innocent cause 
 of his irremedial loss. He was now fond and proud of his boy 
 as he was of all things that belonged to him. He spoiled and 
 petted him even more than Cleveland did. But he interfered 
 very little with his education or pursuits. His eldest son, Cuth- 
 bert, did not engross all his heart, but occupied all his care. 
 With Cuthbert he connected the heritage of his ancient name, 
 and the succession of his ancestral estates. Cuthbert was not 
 a genius, nor intended to be one ; he was to be an accomplished 
 gentleman, and a great proprietor. The father understood Cuth- 
 bert, and could see clearly both his character and career. He 
 had no scruples in managing his education, and forming his 
 growing mind. But Ernest puzzled him. Mr. Maltravers was 
 even a little embarrassed in the boy's society ; he never quite 
 overcame that feeling of strangeness toward him which he had 
 experienced when he first received him back from Cleveland, 
 and took Cleveland's directions about his health and so forth. 
 It always seemed to him as if his friend shared his right to the 
 child ; and he thought it a sort of presumption to scold Ernest, 
 though he very often swore at Cuthbert. As the younger son 
 grew up, it certainly was evident that Cleveland did understand 
 him better than his own father did ; and so, as I have before 
 said, on Cleveland the father was not displeased passively to 
 shift the responsibility of the rearing.
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 47 
 
 Perhaps Mr. Malt. ravers might not have been so indifferent, 
 had Ernest's prospects been those of a younger son in general. 
 If a profession had been necessary for him, Mr. Maltravers 
 would have been naturally anxious to see him duly fitted for it. 
 But from a maternal relation, Ernest inherited an estate of 
 about four thousand pounds a year; and he was thus made in- 
 dependent of his father. This loosened another tie between 
 them; and so by degrees Mr. Maltravers learned to consider 
 Ernest h'ss us his own son, to be advised or rebuked, praised or 
 controlled, than as a very affectionate, promising, engaging boy, 
 who, somehow or other, without any trouble on his part, was 
 very likely to do great credit to his family, and indulge his ec- 
 centricities upon four thousand pounds a year. The first time 
 that Mr. Maltravers was seriously perplexed about him was when 
 the boy, at the age of sixteen, having taught himself German, 
 and intoxicated his wild fancies with " Werter " and the "Rob- 
 bers," announced his desire, which sounded very like a demand, 
 of going to Gottingen, instead of to Oxford. Never was Mr. 
 Maltravers's notions of a proper and gentlemanlike finish to 
 education more completely and rudely assaulted. He stammered 
 out a negative, and hurried to his study to write a long letter to 
 Cleveland, who, himself an Oxford prize-man, would, he was 
 persuaded, see the matter in the same light. Cleveland answered 
 the letter in person : listened in silence to all the father had to 
 say, and then strolled through the park with the young man. 
 The result of the latter conference was, that Cleveland declared 
 in favor of Ernest. 
 
 " But, my dear Frederick," said the astonished father, " I 
 thought the boy was to carry off all the prizes at Oxford ?" 
 
 " 1 carried off some, Maltravers; but I don't see what good 
 they did me." 
 
 "Oh, Cleveland ! " 
 
 " I am serious." 
 
 " But it is such a very odd fancy." 
 
 " Your son is a very odd young man." 
 
 " I fear he is so I fear he is, poor fellow ! But what will he 
 learn at Gottingen ? " 
 
 " Languages and Independence," said Cleveland. 
 
 " And the classics the classics you are such an excellent 
 Grecian ! " 
 
 "There are great Grecians in Germany," answered Cleveland. 
 " And Ernest cannot well unlearn what he knows already. M v 
 dear Maltravers, the boy is not like most clever young men. He 
 must either go through action, and adventure, and excitement
 
 48 ERNEST 
 
 in his own way, or he will be an idle dreamer or an impracti- 
 cable enthusiast all his life. Let him alone. So Cuthbert is 
 gone into the Guards ? " 
 
 " But he went first to Oxford." 
 
 " Humph ! What a fine young man he is ! " 
 
 " Not so tall as Earnest, but " 
 
 " A handsomer face," said Cleveland. " He is a son to be 
 proud of in one way, as I hope Ernest will be in another. 
 Will you show me your new hunter ? " 
 
 ****** 
 
 It was to the house of this gentleman, so judiciously made 
 his guardian, that the student of Gottingen now took his mel- 
 ancholy way. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 "But if a little exercise you choose, 
 
 Some zest for ease, 'tis not forbidden liere ; 
 Amid the groves you may indulge the Muse, 
 Or tend the blooms and deck the vernal year." 
 
 Castle of Independence. 
 
 THE house of Mr. Cleveland was an Italian villa adapted to 
 an English climate. Through an Ionic arch you entered a do- 
 main of some hundred or eighty acres in extent, but so well 
 planted and so artfully disposed, that you could not have sup- 
 posed the unseen boundaries enclosed no ampler a space. The 
 road wound through the greenest sward, in which trees of ven- 
 erable growth were relieved by a profusion of shrubs, and fiowers 
 gathered into baskets intertwined with creepers, or blooming 
 from classic vases, placed with a tasteful care in such spots as 
 required the filling ///, and harmonized well with the object 
 chosen. Not an old ivy-grown pollard, not a modest and bending 
 willow, but was brought out, as it were, into a peculiar feature by 
 the art of the owner. Without being overloaded, or too minutely 
 elaborate (the common fault of the rich man's villa), the whole 
 place seemed one diversified and cultivated garden ; even the 
 air almost took a different odor from different vegetation, with 
 each winding of the road ; and the colors of the flowers and 
 foliage varied with every view. 
 
 At length, when, on a lawn sloping towards a glassy lake over- 
 hung by limes and chestnuts, and backed by a hanging wood, 
 the house itself came in sight, the whole prospect seemed sud- 
 denly to receive its finishing and crowning fenture. The house 
 was long and low. A deep peristyle that supported the roof ex-
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 49 
 
 tended the whole length, and being raised above the basement, 
 had the appearance of a covered terrace; broad flights of steps, 
 with massive balustrades, supporting vases of aloes and orange- 
 trees, led to the lawn; and under the peristyle were arranged 
 statues, Roman antiquities, and rare exotics. On this side the 
 lake another terrace, very broad, and adorned, at long intervals, 
 with urns and sculpture, contrasted the shadowy and sloping 
 bank beyond ; and commanded, through unexpected openings 
 in the trees, extensive views of the distant landscape, with the 
 stately Thames winding through the midst. Theinteriorof the 
 house corresponded with the taste without. All the principal 
 rooms, even those appropriated to sleep, were on the same floor. 
 A small but lofty and octagonal hall conducted to a suite of four 
 rooms. At one extremity was a moderately sized dining-room, 
 with a ceiling copied from the rich and gay colors of Guide's 
 "Hours"; and landscapes painted by Cleveland himself, with 
 no despicable skill, were let into the walls. A single piece of 
 sculpture, copied from the Piping Faun, and tinged with a flesh- 
 like glow by purple and orange draperies behind it, relieved 
 without darkening the broad and arched window which formed 
 its niche. This communicated with a small picture-room, not 
 indeed rich with those immortal gems for which princes are can- 
 didates; for Cleveland's fortune was but that of a private gen- 
 tleman, though managed with a discreet if liberal economy, it 
 sufficed for all his elegant desires. But the pictures had an in- 
 terest beyond that of art, and their subjects were within the 
 reach of a collector of ordinary opulence. They made a series 
 of portraits some originals, some copies (and the copies were 
 often the best) of Cleveland's favorite authors. And it was 
 characteristic of the man, that Pope's worn and thoughtful coun- 
 tenance looked down from the central place of honor. Appro- 
 priately enough, this room led into the library, the largest room 
 in the house, the only one indeed that was noticeable from its 
 size, as well as from its embellishments. It was nearly sixty feet 
 in length. The book-cases were crowned with bronze busts, 
 while at intervals, statues, placed in open arches, backed with 
 mirrors, gave the appearance of galleries, opening from the book- 
 lined walls, and introduced an inconceivable air of classic light- 
 ness and repose into the apartment ; with these arches the win- 
 dows harmonized so well, opening on the peristyle, and bringing 
 into delightful view the sculpture, the flowers, the terraces, and 
 the lake without, that the actual prospects half seduced you into 
 the belief that they were designs by some master hand of the 
 poetical gardens that yet crown the hills of Rome. Even the
 
 <|A ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 coloring of the prospects on a sunny day favored the delusion, 
 owing to the deep, rich hues of the simple draperies, and tiie 
 stained glass of which the upper panes of the windows were com- 
 posed. Cleveland was especially fond of sculpture; he was sen- 
 sible, too, of the mighty impulse which that art has received in 
 Europe within the last half-century. He was even capable of 
 asserting the doctrine, not yet sufficiently acknowledged in this 
 country, that Flaxman surpassed Canova. He loved sculpture, 
 too, not only for its own beauty, but for the beautifying and in- 
 tellectual effect that it produces wherever it is admitted. It is 
 a great mistake, he was wont to say, in collectors of statues, to 
 arrange them pifle mtte in one long monotonous gallery. The 
 single relief, or statue, or bust, or simple urn, introduced appro- 
 priately in the smallest apartment we inhabit, charms us infi- 
 nitely more than those gigantic museums, crowded into rooms 
 never entered but for show, and without a chill, uncomfortable 
 shiver. Besides, this practice of galleries, which the herd con- 
 sider orthodox, places sculpture out of the patronage of the pub- 
 lic. There are not a dozen people who can afford galleries. 
 But every moderately affluent gentleman can afford a statue or 
 abust. The influence, too, upon a man's mind and taste, created 
 by the constant and habitual view of monuments of the only 
 imperishable art which resorts to physical materials, is unspeak- 
 able. Looking upon the Greek marble, we become acquainted, 
 almost insensibly, with the character of the Greek life and liter- 
 ature. That Aristides, that Genius of Death, that fragment of 
 the unrivalled Psyche, are worth a thousand Scaligers ! 
 
 " Do you ever look at the Latin translations when you read 
 ^Eschylus?" said a schoolboy once to Cleveland. 
 
 "That is my Latin translation," said Cleveland, pointing to 
 the Laocoon. 
 
 The library opened, at the extreme end, to a small cabinet for 
 curiosities and medals, which, in a straight line, conducted to a 
 long belvidere, terminating in a little circular summer-house, that 
 by a sudden wind of the lake below, hung perpendicularly over its 
 transparent tide, and, seen from the distance, appeared almost 
 suspended on air, so light with its slender columns and arching 
 dome. Another door from the library opened upon the cor- 
 ridor which conducted to the principal sleeping-chambers; the 
 nearest was that of Cleveland's private study, communicating 
 with his bedroom and dressing-closet. The other rooms were 
 appropriated to, and named after, his several friends. 
 
 Mr. Cleveland had been advised by a hasty line of the move- 
 ments of his ward, and he received the young man with a smile
 
 ERNEST MALTR AVERS. 51 
 
 of welcome, though his eyes were moist and his lips trembled 
 for the boy was like his father ! a new generation had com- 
 menced for Cleveland. 
 
 "Welcome, my dear Ernest," said he; "I am so glad to see 
 you, that I will not scold you for your mysterious absence. 
 This is your room, you see your name over the door; it is a 
 larger one than you used to have, for you are a man now; and 
 there is your German sanctum adjoining for Schiller and the 
 meerschaum ! a bad habit that, the meerschaum! butnotworse 
 than the Schiller, perhaps ! You see you are in the peristyle im- 
 mediately. The meerschaum is good for flowers, 1 fancy, so have 
 no scruple. Why, my dear boy, how pale you are ! Be cheered 
 be cheered. Well, I must go myself, or you will infect me." 
 
 Cleveland hurried away; he thought of his lost friend. Ernest 
 sank upon the first chair, and buried his face in his hands. Cleve- 
 land's valet entered, and bustled about and unpacked the port- 
 manteau, and arranged the evening dress. But Ernest did not 
 look up nor speak; the first bell sounded; the second tolled 
 unheard upon his ear. He was thoroughly overcome by his 
 emotions. The first notes of Cleveland's kind voice had touched 
 upon a soft chord that months of anxiety and excitement had 
 strained to anguish, but had never woke to tears. His nerves 
 were shattered those strong young nerves ! He thought of his 
 father when he first saw Cleveland; but when he glanced round 
 the room prepared for him, and observed the care for his com- 
 fort, and the tender recollections of his most trifling peculiar- 
 ities everywhere visible, Alice, the watchful, the humble, the 
 loving, the lost Alice, rose before him. Surprised at his ward's 
 delay, Cleveland entered the room ; there sat Ernest still, his 
 face buried in his hands. Cleveland drew them gently away, 
 and Maltravers sobbed like an infant. It was an easy matter to 
 bring tears to the eyes of that young man: a generous or tender 
 thought, an old song, the simplest air of music, sufficed for that 
 touch of the mother's nature. But the vehement and awful pas- 
 sion which belongs to manhood when thoroughly unmanned 
 this was the first time in which the relief of the stormy bitter- 
 ness was known to him !
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVEkS. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 " Musing full sadly in his sullen mind." SPENCER. 
 
 " Then forth issued from under the altar-smoke 
 A dreadful fiend." Ibid, on Superstition. 
 
 NINE times out of ten it is over the Bridge of Sighs that we 
 pass the narrow gulf from Youth to Manhood. That interval 
 is usually occupied by an ill-placed or disappointed affection. 
 We recover, and we find ourselves a new being. The intellect 
 has become hardened by the fire through which it has passed. 
 The mind profits by the wrecks of every passion, and we may 
 measure our road to wisdom by the sorrows we have undergone. 
 But Maltravers was yet on the bridge, and, for a time, both mind 
 and body were prostrate and enfeebled. Cleveland had the 
 sagacity to discover that the affections had their share in the 
 change that he grieved to witness, but he had also the delicacy 
 not to force himself into the young man's confidence. But by 
 little and little his kindness so completely penetrated the heart 
 of his ward, that Ernest one evening told him his whole tale. 
 As a man of the world, Cleveland perhaps rejoiced that it was 
 no worse, for he had feared some existing entanglement perhaps 
 with a married woman. But as a man who was better than the 
 World in general, he sympathized with the unfortunate girl whom 
 Ernest pictured to him in faithful and unflattered colors, and he 
 long forebore consolation which he foresaw would be unavail- 
 ing. He felt, indeed, .that Ernest was not a man to "betray the 
 noon of manhood to a myrtle-shade " ; that with so sanguine, 
 buoyant, and hardy a temperament, he would at length recover 
 from a depression which, if it could bequeath a warning, might 
 as well not be wholly divested of remorse. And he also knew 
 that few became either great authors or great men (and he fan- 
 cied Ernest was born to be one or the other), without the fierce 
 emotions and passionate struggles, through which the Wilhelm 
 Meister of real life must work out his apprenticeship, and attain 
 the Master Rank. But at last he had serious misgivings about the 
 health of his ward. A constant and spectral gloom seemed bear- 
 ing the young man to the grave. It was in vain that Cleveland, 
 who secretly desired him to thirst for a public career, endeavored 
 to arouse his ambition the boy's spirit seemed quite broken 
 and the visit of a political character, the mention of a political 
 work, drove him at once into his solitary chamber. At length his 
 mental disease took a new turn. He became, of a sudden, most 
 morbidly and fanatically I was about to say, religious : but
 
 ERNEST MALTKAVF.RS. 53 
 
 that is not the word; let me call it pseudo-religious. His strong 
 sense and cultivated taste did not allow him to delight in the 
 raving tracts of illiterate fanatics and yet out of the benign 
 and simple elements of the Scripture he conjured up for him- 
 self a fanaticism quite as gloomy and intense. He lost sight of 
 God the Father, and night and day dreamt only of God the 
 Avenger. His vivid imagination was perverted to raise out of its 
 own abyss phantoms of colossal terror. He shuddered aghast 
 at his own creations, and earth and heaven alike seemed black 
 with the everlasting wrath. These symptoms completely baffled 
 and perplexed Cleveland. He knew not what remedy to ad- 
 minister and to his unspeakable grief and surprise he found 
 that Ernest, in the true spirit of his strange bigotry, began to 
 regard Cleveland the amiable, the benevolent Cleveland as 
 one no less out of the pale of grace than himself. His elegant 
 pursuits, his cheerful studies, were considered by the young but 
 stern enthusiast as the miserable recreations of Mammon and 
 the world. There seemed every probability that Ernest Mal- 
 travers would die in a madhouse, or, at best, succeed to the de- 
 lusions, without the cheerful intervals, of Cowper. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 " Sagacious, bold, and turbulent of wit, 
 Restless unfixed in principles and place. DRYDEN. 
 
 " Whoever acquires a veiy great number of ideas interesting to the society 
 in which he lives, will be regarded in that society as a man of abilities. 
 
 HELVETIUS. 
 
 IT was just when Ernest Maltravers was so bad that he could 
 not be worse, that a young man visited Temple Grove. The 
 name of this young man was Lnmley Ferrers, his age about 
 twenty-six, his fortune about eight hundred a year he followed 
 no profession. Lumley Ferrers had not what is usually called 
 genius; that is, he had no enthusiasm; and if the word talent 
 be properly interpreted as meaning the talent of doing some- 
 thing better than others, Ferrers had not much to boast of on 
 that score. He had no talent for writing, nor for music, nor 
 painting, nor the ordinary round of accomplishments; neither 
 at present had he displayed much of the hard and useful talent 
 for action and business. But Ferrers had what is often better 
 than genius or talent; he had a powerful and most acute mind. 
 
 He had, moreover, great animation of manner, high physical 
 spirits, a witty, odd ? racy vein of conversation ? determined assur*
 
 54 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 ance, and profound confidence in his own resources. He was 
 fond of schemes, stratagems, and plots they amused and ex- 
 cited him his power of sarcasm, and of argument, too, was 
 great, and he usually obtained an astonishing influence over those 
 with whom he was brought in contact. His high spirits and a 
 most happy frankness of bearing carried off and disguised his 
 leading vices of character, which were callousness to what- 
 ever was affectionate, and insensibility to whatever was moral. 
 Though less learned than Maltravers, hewason the whole a very 
 instructed man. He mastered the surface of many sciences, 
 because satisfied with their general principles, and threw the study 
 aside never to be forgotten (for his memory was like a vice) but 
 never to be prosecuted any further. To this he added a general 
 acquaintance with whatever is most generally acknowledged as 
 standard in ancient or modern literature. What is admired only 
 by a few, Lumley never took the trouble to read. Living amongst 
 trifles, he made them interesting and novel byjiiis mode of view- 
 ing and treating them. And here indeed was a talent it was the 
 talent of social life the talent of enjoyment to the utmost with 
 the least degree of trouble to himself. Lumley Ferrers was thus 
 exactly one of those men whom everybody calls exceedingly 
 clever, and yet it would puzzle one to say in what he was so clever. 
 It was, indeed, that nameless power which belongs to ability, 
 and which makes one man superior, on the whole, to another, 
 though, in many details by no means remarkable. I think it is 
 Goethe who says somewhere, that in reading the life of the greatest 
 genius, we always find that he was acquainted with some men 
 superior to himself, who yet never attained to general distinction. 
 To the class of these mystical superior men Lumley Ferrers might 
 have belonged ; for though an ordinary journalist would have 
 beaten him in the arts of composition, few men of genius, how' 
 ever eminent, could have felt themselves above Ferrers in the 
 ready grasp and plastic vigor of natural intellect. It only re- 
 mains to be said of this singular young man, whose character as 
 yet was but half developed, that he had seen a great deal of the 
 world, and could live at ease and in content with all the tem- 
 pers and ranks ; fox-hunters or scholars, lawyers or poets, 
 patricians or parvenus, it was all one to Lumley Ferrers. 
 
 Ernest was, as usual, in his own room when he heard, along 
 the corridor without, all that indefinable bustling noise which 
 announces an arrival. Next came a most ringing laugh, and 
 then a sharp, clear, vigorous voice, that ran through his ears like 
 a dagger. Ernest was immediately aroused to all the majesty of 
 indignant suUenness, He walked put on the terrace of the por*
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 55 
 
 tico, to avoid the repetition of the disturbance : and once more 
 settled back into his broken and hypochondriacs! reveries. 
 Pacing to and fro that part of the peristyle which occupied the 
 more retired wing of the house, with his arms folded, his eyes 
 downcast, his brows knit, and all the angel darkened on that 
 countenance, which formerly looked as if, like truth, it could 
 shame the devil and defy the world, Ernest followed the evil 
 thought that mastered him, through the Valley of the Shadow. 
 Suddenly he was aware of something some obstacle which he 
 had not previously encountered. He started, and saw before him 
 a young man, of plain dress, gentlemanlike appearance, and 
 striking countenance. 
 
 "Mr. Maltravers, I think, "said the stranger, and Ernest recog- 
 nized the voice that had so disturbed him ; " this is lucky ; we 
 can now introduce ourselves, for I find Cleveland means us to 
 be intimate. Mr. Lumley Ferrers, Mr. Ernest Maltravers. There 
 now, I am the elder, so I first offer my hand, and grin properly. 
 People always grin when they make a new acquaintance ! Well, 
 that's settled. Which way are you walking?" 
 
 Maltravers, could, when he chose it, be as stately as if he never 
 had been out of England. He now drew himself up in displeased 
 astonishment ; extricated his hand from the grip of Ferrers, and 
 saying, very coldly, " Excuse me, sir, I am busy," stalked back to 
 his chamber. He threw himself into his chair, and was pres- 
 ently forgetful of his late annoyance, when, to his inexpressible 
 amazement and wrath, he heard again the sharp, clear voice 
 close to his elbow. 
 
 Ferrers had followed him through the French casement into 
 the room. " You are busy, you say, my dear fellow. I want to 
 write some letters : we shan't interrupt each other don't dis- 
 turb yourself": and Ferrers seated himself at the writing-table, 
 dipped the pen into the ink, arranged blotting-book and paper 
 before him in due order, and was soon employed in covering 
 page after page with the most rapid and hieroglyphical scrawl 
 that ever engrossed a mistress, or perplexed a dun. 
 
 " The presuming puppy ! " growled Maltravers, half audibly, 
 but effectually roused from himself ; and examining with some 
 curiosity so cool an intruder, he was forced to own that the 
 countenance of Ferrers was not that of a puppy. 
 
 A forehead compact and solid as a rock of granite, overhung 
 small, bright, intelligent eyes of a light hazel ; the features were 
 handsome, yet rather too sharp and fox-like ; the complexion, 
 though not highly colored, was of that hardy, healthy hue which 
 generally betokens a robust constitution, and high animal spirits ;
 
 56 ERNEST MALTKAVERS. 
 
 the jaw was massive, and, to a physiognomist, betokened firm- 
 ness and strength of character ; but the lips, full and large, 
 were those of a sensualist, and their restless play, and habitual 
 half-smile, spoke of gaiety and humor, though when in repose 
 there was in them something furtive and sinister. 
 
 Maltravers looked at him in grave silence; but when Ferrers, 
 concluding his fourth letter before another man would have got 
 through his first page, threw down the pen, and looked full at 
 Maltravers, with a good-humored but penetrating stare, there 
 was something so whimsical in the intruder's expression of face, 
 and indeed in the whole scene, that Maltravers bit his lip to 
 restrain a smile, the first he had known for weeks. 
 
 "I see you read, Maltravers," said Ferrers, carelessly turning 
 over the volumes on the table. "All very right : we should begin 
 life with books ; they multiply the sources of employment ; so 
 does capital ; but capital is of no use, unless we live on the in- 
 terest ; books are waste paper, unless we spend in action the 
 wisdom we get from thought. Action, Maltravers, action ; that 
 is the life for us. At our age we have passion, fancy, sentiment ; 
 we can't read them away, nor scribble them away ; we must live 
 upon them generously, but economically." 
 
 Maltravers was struck ; the intruder was not the empty bore 
 he had chosen to fancy him. He roused himself languidly to 
 reply. "Life, Mr. Ferrers 
 
 " Stop, man cher. stop ; don't call me Mister ; we are to be 
 friends ; I hate delaying that which must be, even by a super- 
 fluous dissyllable ; you are Maltravers, I am Ferrers. But you 
 were going to talk about life. Suppose we live a little while, 
 instead of talking about it. It wants an hour to dinner ; let us 
 stroll into the grounds ; I want to get an appetite; besides, I 
 like nature when there are no Swiss mountains to climb before 
 one can arrive at a prospect. Allons!" 
 
 " Excuse "again began Maltravers, half interested, half an- 
 noyed. 
 
 " I'll be shot if I do. Come." 
 
 Ferrers gave Maltravers his hat, wound his arm into that of 
 his new acquaintance, and they were on the broad terrace by 
 the lake before Ernest was aware of it. 
 
 How animated, how eccentric, how easy was Ferrers's talk (for 
 talk it was, rather than conversation, since he had the ball to 
 himself) ; books, and men, and things ; he tossed them about 
 and played with them like shuttlecocks ; and then his egotistical 
 narrative of half a hundred adventures, in which he was the 
 hero ? told so, that you laughed at him and laughed with him.
 
 ERNEST MALTKAVERS. 57 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 " Now the bright morning star, day's harbinger, 
 Comes dancing from the east." MILTON. 
 
 HITHERTO Ernest had never met with any mind that had 
 exercised a strong influence over his own. At home, at school, 
 at Gottingen, everywhere, he had been the brilliant and way- 
 ward leader of others, persuading or commanding wiser and 
 older heads than his own; even Cleveland always yielded to him, 
 though not aware of it. In fact, it seldom happens that we are 
 very strongly influenced by those much older than ourselves. It 
 is the Senior, of from two to ten years, that most seduces and 
 enthrals us. He has the same pursuits views, objects, pleasures, 
 but more art and experience in them all. He goes with us in 
 the path we are ordained to tread, but from which the elder 
 generation desires to warn us off. There is very little influence 
 where there is not great sympathy. It is now an epoch in the in- 
 tellectual life of Maltravers. He met for the first time with a 
 mind that controlled his own. Perhaps the physical state of 
 his nerves made him less able to cope with the half-bullying, 
 but thoroughly good-humored imperiousnessof Ferrers. Every 
 day this stranger became more and more potential with Mal- 
 travers. Ferrers, who was an utter egotist, never asked his new 
 friend to give him his confidence ; he never cared three straws 
 about other people's secrets, unless useful to some purpose of his 
 own. But he talked with so much zest about himself about 
 women and pleasure, and the gay, stirring life of cities that the 
 young spirit of Maltravers was roused from its dark lethargy 
 without an effort of its own. The gloomy phantoms vanished 
 gradually his sense broke from its cloud he felt once more 
 that God had given the sun to light the day, and even in the 
 midst of darkness had called up the host of stars. 
 
 Perhaps no other person could have succeeded so speedily 
 in curing Maltravers of his diseased enthusiasm: a crude or sar- 
 castic unbeliever he would not have listened to ; a moderate and 
 enlightened divine he would have disregarded, as a worldly and 
 cunning adjuster of laws celestial with customs earthly. But 
 Lumley Ferrers, who, when he argued, never admitted a senti- 
 ment or a simile in reply, who wielded his plain iron logic like 
 a hammer, which, though its metal seemed dull, kindled the 
 ethereal spark with every stroke Lumley Ferrers was just the 
 man to resist the imagination, and convince the reason, of Mal- 
 travers ; and the moment the matter came to argument, the cure
 
 $8 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 was soon completed : for, however we may darken and puzzle 
 ourselves with fancies and visions, and the ingenuities of fanatical 
 mysticism, no man can mathematically or syllogistically contend 
 that the world which a God made, and a Saviour visited, was 
 designed to be damned ! 
 
 And Ernest Maltravers one night softly stole to his room and 
 opened the New Testament, and read its heavenly moralities 
 with purged eyes; and when he had done, he fell upon his knees, 
 and prayed the Almighty to pardon the ungrateful heart that, 
 worse than the Atheist's, had confessed His Existence, hut de- 
 nied His goodness. His sleep was sweet and his dreams were 
 cheerful. Did he rise to find that the penitence which had 
 shaken his reason would henceforth suffice to save his life from 
 all error? Alas! remorse overstrained has too often reactions 
 as dangerous ; and homely Luther says well, that " the mind, 
 like the drunken peasant on horseback, when propped on one 
 side, nods and falls on the other." All that can be said is, that 
 there are certain crises in life which leave us long weaker ; from 
 which the system recovers with frequent revulsion and weary 
 relapse, but from which, looking back, after years have passed 
 on, we date the foundation of strength or the cure of dis- 
 ease. It is not to mean souls that creation is darkened by a 
 fear of the anger of Heaven. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 " There are times wlien we are diverted out of errors, but could not be 
 preached out of them There are practitioners who can cure us of one disor- 
 der, though, in ordinary cases, they be but poor physicians nay, dangerous 
 quacks." STEPHEN MONTAGUE. 
 
 LUMLEY FERRERS had one rule in life ; and it was this to 
 make all things and all persons subservient to himself. And 
 Ferrers now intended to go abroad for some years. He wanted 
 a companion, for he disliked solitude : besides, a companion 
 shared the expenses ; and a man of eight hundred a year, who 
 desires all the luxuries of life, does not despise a partner in the 
 taxes to be paid for them. Ferrers, at this period, rather liked 
 Ernest than not : it was convenient to choose friends from 
 those richer than himself, and he resolved, when he first came 
 to Temple Grove, that Ernest should be his travelling compan- 
 ion. This resolution formed, it was very easy to execute it. 
 
 Maltravers was now warmly attached to his new friend, and 
 eager for a change. Cleveland was sorry to part with him ; but 
 he dreaded a relapse, if the young man were again left upon his 
 hands. Accordingly, the guardian's consent was obtained ; a
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 59 
 
 travelling-carriage was bought, and fitted up with every imagin- 
 able imperial and inalle. A Swiss (half valet and half courier) 
 was engaged, one thousand a year was allowed to Maltravers ; 
 and one soft and lovely morning, towards the close of October, 
 Ferrers and Maltravers found themselves midway on the road 
 to Dover. 
 
 " How glad I am to get out of England," said Ferrers : "it 
 is a famous country for the rich ; but here, eight hundred a 
 year, without a profession, save that of pleasure, goes upon 
 pepper and salt ; it is a luxurious competence abroad." 
 
 "I think I have heard Cleveland say that you will be rich 
 some day or other." 
 
 " Oh yes: I have what are called expectations ! You must 
 know that I have a kind of settlement on two stools, the Well- 
 born and the Wealthy ; but between two stools you recollect 
 the proverb ! The present Lord Saxingham, once plain Frank 
 Lascelles, and my father, Mr. Ferrers, were first cousins. Two 
 or three relations good-naturedly died, and Frank Lascelles be- 
 came an earl ; the lands did not go with the coronet : he was 
 poor, and married an heiress. The lady died ; her estate was 
 settled on her only child, the handsomest little girl you ever 
 saw. Pretty Florence, I often wish I could look up to you .' 
 Her fortune will be nearly all at her own disposal, too, when she 
 comes of age; now she's in the nursery, 'eating bread and 
 honey.' My father, less lucky and less wise than his cousin, 
 thought fit to marry a Miss Templeton a nobody. The Saxing- 
 ham branch of the family politely dropped the acquaintance. 
 Now, my mother had a brother, a clever, plodding fellow, in 
 what is called 'business'; he became rich and richer: but my 
 father and mother died, and were never the better for it. And 
 I came of age, and worth (I like that expression) not a farthing 
 more or less than this oft-quoted eight hundred pounds a year. 
 My rich uncle is married, but has no children. I am, therefore, 
 heir-presumptive, but he is a saint, and close, though ostenta- 
 tious. The quarrel between Uncle Templeton and the Saxing- 
 hams still continues. Templeton is angry if I see the Saxing- 
 hams and the Saxinghams my lord, at least is by no means 
 so sure that I shall be Templeton's heir as not to feel a doubt 
 lest I should some day or other sponge upon his lordship for a 
 place. Lord Saxingham is in the administration, you know. 
 Somehow or other I have an equivocal, amphibious kind of place 
 in London society, which I don't like ; on one side I am a pa- 
 trician connection, whom the parvenu branches incline lovingly 
 to and on the other side I am a half-dependent cadet, whom
 
 6o ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 tlie noble relations look civilly shy at. Some day, when I grow 
 tired of travel and idleness, I shall come back and wrestle with 
 these little difficulties, conciliate my methodistical uncle, and 
 grapple with my noble cousin. But now I am fit for something 
 better than getting on in the world. Dry chips, not green wood, 
 are things for making a blaze ! How slow this fellow drives ! 
 Hollo, you sir ! get on ! mind, twelve miles to the hour ! You 
 shall have sixpence a mile. Give me your purse, Maltravers ; I 
 may as well be cashier, being the elder and the wiser man ; we 
 can settle accounts at the end of the journey. By Jove, what a 
 pretty girl !" 
 
 BOOK II. 
 
 QVIJTUV d'oppa rif avOof exy ^okurjparov i/fir/p, 
 KovQov %uv Qvfuiv, TTO/U,' dreAeora voel. 
 
 SIMONIDES, in Vit. Hum. 
 
 He, of wide-blooming youth's fair flower possest, 
 Owns the vain thoughts the heart that cannot rest ! " 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 " II y cut certainement quelque cho^e de singulier dans mes sentimens 
 pour cette charmante femme." * ROUSSEAU. 
 
 IT was a brilliant ball at the Palazzo of the Austrian embassy 
 at Naples ; and a crowd of those loungers, whether young or 
 old, who attach themselves to the reigning beauty, was gath- 
 ered around Madame de Ventadour. Generally speaking, there 
 is more caprice than taste in the election of a beauty to the 
 Idalian throne. Nothing disappoints a stranger more than to 
 see for the first time the woman to whom the world has given 
 the golden apple. Yet he usually falls at last into the popular 
 idolatry, and passes with inconceivable rapidity from indignant 
 scepticism into superstitious veneration. In fact, a thousand 
 things beside mere symmetry of feature go to make up the Cy- 
 therea of the hour. . . tact in society the charm of manner 
 a nameless and piquant brilliancy. Where the world find the 
 Graces they proclaim the Venus. Few persons attain pre-emi- 
 nent celebrity for anything, without some adventitious and 
 extraneous circumstances which have nothing to do with the 
 
 *There certainly was something singular in my sentiments for this charming woman.
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 6l 
 
 thing celebrated. Some qualities or some circumstances throw 
 a mysterious or personal charm about them. "Is Mr. So- 
 and-So really such a genius?" "Is Mrs. Such-a-One really 
 such a beauty ? " you ask incredulously. " Oh, yes," is the an- 
 swer. " Do you know all about him or her ? Such a thing is 
 said, or such a thing has happened." The idol is interesting 
 in itself, and therefore its leading and popular attribute is wor- 
 shipped. 
 
 Now Madame de Ventadour was at this time the beauty of Na- 
 ples : and though fifty women in the room were handsomer, no 
 one would have dared to say so. Even the women confessed her 
 pre-eminence for she was the most perfect dresser that even 
 France could exhibit. And to no pretensions do ladies ever con- 
 cede with so little demur, as those which depend upon that fem- 
 inine art which all study, and in which few excel. Women never 
 allow beauty in a face that has an odd-looking bonnet above it, nor 
 will they readily allow any one to be ugly whose caps are unexcep- 
 tionable. Madame de Ventadour had also the magic that results 
 from high breeding, polished by habit to the utmost. She looked 
 and moved \\\egrande dame, as if Nature had been employed by 
 Rank to make her so. She was descended from one of the most 
 illustrious houses of France ; had married at sixteen a man of 
 equal birth, but old, dull, and pompous a caricature rather than 
 a portrait of that great French noblesse, now almost if not wholly 
 extinct. But her virtue was without a blemish some said from 
 pride, some said from coldness. Her wit was keen and court- 
 like lively, yet subdued; for her French high breeding was very 
 different from the lethargic and taciturn imperturbability of the 
 English. All silent people can seem conventionally elegant. A 
 groom married a rich lady ; he dreaded the ridicule of the guests 
 whom his new rank assembled at his table an Oxford clergy- 
 man gave him this piece of advice, " Wear a black coat and hold 
 your tongue ! " The groom took the hint, and is always consid- 
 ered one of the most gentlemanlike fellows in the county. Con- 
 versation is the touchstone of the true delicacy and subtle grace 
 which make the ideal of the moral mannerism of a court. And 
 there sat Madame de Ventadour, a little apart from the dancers, 
 with the silent English dandy Lord Taunton, exquisitely dressed 
 and superbly tall, bolt upright behind her chair ; and the senti- 
 mental German Baron von Schomberg, covered with orders, 
 whiskered and wigged to the last hair of perfection, sighing at her 
 left hand ; and the French minister, shrewd, bland, and eloquent, 
 in the chair at her right; and round on all sides pressed, and 
 bowed, and complimented a crowd of diplomatic secretaries and
 
 62 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 Italian princes, whose bank is at the gaming table, whose estates 
 are in their galleries, and who sell a picture as English gentle- 
 men cut down a wood, whenever the cards grow gloomy. The 
 charming De Ventadour! she had attraction for them all ! smiles 
 for the silent, badinage for the gay, politics for the Frenchman, 
 poetry for the German, the eloquence of loveliness for all ! She 
 was looking her best the slightest possible tinge of rouge gave 
 a glow to her transparent complexion, and lighted up those large 
 dark sparkling eyes (with a latent softness beneath the sparkle), 
 seldom seen but in the French and widely distinct from the un- 
 intellectual languish of the Spaniard, or the full and majestic 
 fierceness of the Italian gaze. Her dress of black velvet and 
 graceful hat with its princely plume, contrasted the alabaster 
 whiteness of her arms and neck. And what with the eyes, the 
 skin, the rich coloring of the complexion, the rosy lips, and the 
 small ivory teeth, no one would have had the cold hypercriti- 
 cism to observe that the chin was too pointed, the mouth too 
 wide, and the nose, so beautiful in the front face, was far from 
 perfect in the profile. 
 
 "Pray was Madame in the Strada Nuova to-day?" asked the 
 German, with as much sweetness in his voice as if he had been 
 vowing eternal love. 
 
 " What else have we to do with our mornings, we women ? " re- 
 plied Madame de Ventadour. " Our life is a lounge from the 
 cradle to the grave ; and our afternoons are but the type of our 
 career. A promenade and a crowd, voilatout! We never see 
 the world except in an open carriage." 
 
 "It is the pleasantest way of seeing it," said the Frenchman, 
 dryly. 
 
 " I doubt it , the worst fatigue is that which comes without ex- 
 ercise." 
 
 "Will you do me the honor to waltz?" said the tall English 
 lord, who had a vague idea that Madame de Ventadour meant 
 she would rather dance than sit still. The Frenchman smiled. 
 
 "LordTaunton enforces my own philosophy," said the minister. 
 
 Lord Taunton smiled because every one else smiled ; and, be- 
 sides, he had beautiful teeth ; but he looked anxious for an answer. 
 
 " Not to-night, I seldom dance. Who is that very pretty 
 woman? What lovely complexions the English have! And who," 
 continued Madame de Ventadour, without waiting for an an- 
 swer to the first question, " who is that gentleman, the young 
 one I mean, leaning against the door ? " 
 
 "What, with the dark moustache?" said Lord Taunton "he 
 is a cousin of mine."
 
 ERNEST MAI.TRAVERS. 63 
 
 "Oh, no ; not Colonel Bellfield ; I know him how amusing 
 he is! no ; the gentleman I mean wears no moustache." 
 
 "Oh, the tall Englishman with the bright eyes and high fore- 
 head," said the French Minister. "He has just arrived from 
 the East, I believe." 
 
 "It is a striking countenance," said Madame de Ventadour, 
 "there is something chivalrous in the turn of the head. Without 
 doubt, Lord Taunton, he is ''noble.'" 
 
 " He is what you call ' noble J " replied Lord Taunton " that 
 is, what we call a' gentleman '; his name is Maltravers Mr. Mal- 
 travers he lately came of age ; and has, I believe, rather a good 
 property." 
 
 " Monsieur Maltravers; only Monsieur !" repeated Madame 
 de Ventadour. 
 
 "Why," said the French Minister, "you understand that the 
 English gentilhommc does not require a DC or a title to distinguish 
 him from the roturier" 
 
 " I know that ; but he has an air above a simple gentilhomme. 
 There is something great in his look ; but it is not, I must own, 
 the conventional greatness of rank : perhaps he would have looked 
 the same had he been born a peasant." 
 
 " You don't think him handsome ! " said Lord Taunton, almost 
 angrily (for he was one of the Beauty-men, and Beauty-men are 
 sometimes jealous). 
 
 "Handsome ! I did not say that," replied Madame de Venta- 
 dour, smiling ; " it is rather a fine head than a handsome face. Is 
 he clever, I wonder? but all you English, milord, are well edu- 
 cated." 
 
 "Yes, profound profound : we are profound, not superficial," 
 replied Lord Taunton, drawing down his wristbands. 
 
 "Will Madame de Ventadour allow me to present to her one 
 of my countrymen?" said the English Minister approaching 
 "Mr. Maltravers." 
 
 Madame de Ventadour half smiled and half blushed, as she 
 looked up, and saw bent admiringly upon her the proud and 
 earnest countenance she had remarked. 
 
 The introduction was made a few monosyllables exchanged. 
 The French diplomatist rose and walked away with the English 
 one. Maltravers succeeded to the vacant chair. 
 
 " Have you been long abroad ? " asked Madame de Ventadour. 
 
 " Only four years ; yet long enough to ask whether I should 
 not be most abroad in England." 
 
 " You have been in the East I envy you. And Greece, and 
 Egypt, all the associations ! You have travelled back into the
 
 64 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 Past ; you have escaped, as Madame d'Epinay wished, out of 
 civilization and into romance." 
 
 "Yet Madame d'Epinay passed her own life in making pretty 
 romances out of a very agreeable civilization," said Maltravers, 
 smiling. 
 
 "You know her memoirs, then," said Madame de Ventadour, 
 slightly coloring. " In the current of a more exciting literature, 
 few have had time for the second-rate writings of a past century." 
 
 " Are not those second-rate performances often themostcharm- 
 ing," said Maltravers, "when the mediocrity of the intellect 
 seems almost as if it were the effect of a touching, though too 
 feeble, delicacy of sentiment ? Madame d'Epinay's memoirs 
 are of this character. She was not a virtuous woman but she 
 felt virtue and loved it ; she was not a woman of genius but 
 she was tremblingly alive to all the influences of genius. Some 
 people seem born with the temperament and the tastes of genius 
 without its creative power ; they have its nervous system, but 
 something is wanting in the intellectual. They feel acutely, yet 
 express tamely. These persons always have in their character 
 an unspeakable kind of pathos a court civilization produces 
 many of them and the French memoirs of the last century are 
 particularly fraught with such examples. This is interesting 
 the struggle of sensitive minds against the lethargy of a society, 
 dull yet brilliant, that glares them, as it were, to sleep. It comes 
 home to us ! for," added Maltravers, with a slight change of 
 voice, "how many of us fancy we see our own image in the mirror!" 
 
 And where was the German baron ? flirting at the other end 
 of the room. And the English lord ? dropping monosyllables 
 to dandies by the doorway. And the minor satellites ? dancing, 
 whispering, making love, or sipping lemonade. And Madame 
 de Ventadour was alone with the young stranger in a crowd of 
 eight hundred persons; and their lips spoke of sentiment, and 
 their eyes involuntarily applied it. 
 
 While they were thus conversing, Maltravers was suddenly 
 startled by hearing close behind him a sharp significant voice, 
 saying in French, "Hein, hein ! I've my suspicions I've my 
 suspicions." 
 
 Madame de Ventadour looked round with a smile. " It is only 
 my husband," she said, quietly ; "let me introduce him to you." 
 
 Maltravers rose and bowed to a little thin man, most elabo- 
 rately dressed, with an immense pair of spectacles upon a long, 
 sharp nose. 
 
 "Charmed to make your acquaintance, sir!" said Monsieur 
 de Ventadour. " Have you been long in Naples ? . . . . Beau-
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 65 
 
 tiful weather won't last long hein, hein, I've my suspicions! 
 No news as to your parliament be dissolved soon ! Bad opera 
 in London this year ; hein, hein I've my suspicions." 
 
 This rapid monologue was delivered with appropriate gesture. 
 Each new sentence Mons. de Ventadour began with a sort of 
 bow, and when it dropped in the almost invariable conclusion 
 affirmative of his shrewdness and incredulity, he made a mystical 
 sign with his forefinger by passing it upward in a parallel line 
 with his nose, which at the same time performed its own part 
 in the ceremony by three convulsive twitches, that seemed to 
 shake the bridge to its base. 
 
 Maltravers looked with mute surprise upon the connubial part- 
 ner of the graceful creature by his side, and Mons. de Venta- 
 dour, who had said as much as he thought necessary, wound up 
 his eloquence by expressing the rapture it would give him to see 
 Mons. Maltravers at his hotel. Then, turning to his wife, he 
 began assuring her of the lateness of the hour, and the expedi- 
 ency of departure. Maltravers glided away, and as he regained 
 the door, was seized by our old friend, Lumley Ferrers. " Come, 
 my dear fellow," said the latter. " I've been waiting for you 
 this half-hour. Allons. But, perhaps, as I am dying to go to 
 bed, you have made up your mind to stay to supper. Some 
 people have no regard for other people's feelings." 
 
 " No, Ferrers, I'm at your service "; and the young men des- 
 cended the stairs and passed along the Chiaja towards their hotel. 
 As they gained the broad and open space on which it stood, 
 with the lovely sea before them, sleeping in the arms of the 
 curving shore, Maltravers, who had hitherto listened in silence 
 to the volubility of his companion, paused abruptly. 
 
 " Look at that sea, Ferrers. . . . What a scene ! What de- 
 licious air ! How soft this moonlight ! Can you not fancy the 
 old Greek adventurers, when they first colonized this divine 
 Parthenope the darling of the ocean gazing along those waves, 
 and pining no more for Greece ? " 
 
 " I cannot fancy anything of the sort," said Ferrers. ..." And, 
 depend upon it, the said gentlemen, at this hour of the night, un- 
 less they were on some piratical excursion for they were accursed 
 ruffians, those old Greek colonists were fast asleep in their 
 beds." 
 
 " Did you ever write poetry, Ferrers ? " 
 
 " To be sure ; all clever men have written poetry once in their 
 lives small-pox and poetry they are our two juvenile diseases. 5 * 
 
 " And did you ever feel poetry ? " 
 
 " Feel it ! "
 
 66 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 " Yes ; if you put the moon into your verses, did you first feel 
 it shining into your heart ?" 
 
 " My dear Maltravers, if I put the moon into my verses, in all 
 probability it was to rhyme to noon. ' The night was at her 
 noon' is a capital ending for the first hexameter and the 
 moon is booked for the next stage. Come in." 
 
 " No, I shall stay out." 
 
 " Don't be nonsensical." 
 
 " By moonlight, there is no nonsense like common sense." 
 
 " What ! we who have climbed the Pyramids, and sailed up 
 the Nile, and seen magic at Cairo, and been nearly murdered, 
 bagged, and Bosphorized at Constantinople, is it for us, who have 
 gone through so many adventures, looked on so many scenes, 
 and crowded into four years events that would have satisfied the 
 appetite of a cormorant in romance, if it had lived to the age of 
 a phoenix ; is it for us to be doing the pretty and sighing to the 
 moon, like a black-haired apprentice without a neckcloth, on 
 board of the Margate hoy ? Nonsense, I say we have lived 
 too much not to have lived away our green-sickness of sentiment." 
 
 " Perhaps you are right, Ferrers," said Maltravers, smiling. 
 "But I can still enjoy a beautiful night." 
 
 " Oh, if you like flies in your soup, as the man said to his guest, 
 when he carefully replaced those entomological blackamoors in 
 the tureen, after helping himself if you like flies in your soup, 
 well and good buona tioite." 
 
 Ferrers certainly was right in his theory, that when we have 
 known real adventures, we grow less morbidly sentimental. Life 
 is a sleep in which we dream most at the commencement and 
 the close the middle part absorbs us too much for dreams. 
 But still, as Maltravers said, we can enjoy a fine night, especially 
 on the shores of Naples. 
 
 Maltravers paced musingly to and fro for some time. His 
 heart was softened old rhymes rang in his ear old memories 
 passed through his brain. But the sweet, dark eyes of Madame 
 de Ventadour shone forth through every shadow of the past. 
 Delicious intoxication the draught of the rose-colored phial 
 which is fancy, but seems love !
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 67 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 " Then 'gan the Palmer thus ' Most wretched man 
 That to affections dost the bridle lend ; 
 In their beginning they are weak and wan, 
 But soon, through suffrance, growe to fearfull end ; 
 While they are weak, betimes with them contend.' " 
 
 SPENSER. 
 
 MALTRAVERS went frequently to the house of Madame de 
 Ventadour it was open twice a week to the world, and thrice a 
 week to friends. Maltravers was soon of the latter class. Mad- 
 ame de Ventadour had been in England in her childhood, for her 
 parents had been dinigrts. She spoke English well and fluently, 
 and this pleased Maltravers ; for though the French language 
 was sufficiently familiar to him, he was like most who are more 
 vain of the mind than the person, and proudly averse to hazard- 
 ing his best thoughts in the domino of a foreign language. We 
 don't care how faulty the accent, or how incorrect the idiom, in 
 which we talk nothings ; but if we utter any of the poetry within 
 us, we shudder at the risk of the most trifling solecism. 
 
 This was especially the case with Maltravers ; for, besides 
 being now somewhat ripened from his careless boyhood into a 
 proud and fastidious man, he had a natural love for the Becom- 
 ing. This love was unconsciously visible in trifles ; it is the 
 natural parent of Good Taste. And it was indeed an inborn 
 good taste which redeemed Ernest's natural carelessness in those 
 personal matters, in which young men usually take a pride. An 
 habitual and soldier-like neatness, and a love of order and sym- 
 metry, stood with him in the stead of elaborate attention to equi- 
 page and dress. 
 
 Maltravers had not thought twice in his life whether he was 
 handsome or not ; and, like most men who have a knowledge of 
 the gentler sex, he knew that beauty had little to do with engag- 
 ing the love of women. The air, the manner, the tone, the con- 
 versation, the something that interests, and the something to be 
 proud of these are the attributes of the man made to beloved. 
 And the Beauty-man is, nine cases out of ten, little more than the 
 oracle of his aunts, and the " sitch a love " of the housemaids ! 
 
 To return from this digression, Maltravers was glad that he 
 could talk in his own language to Madame de Ventadour, and 
 the conversation between them generally began in French and 
 glided away into English. Madame de Ventadour was eloquent, 
 and so was Maltravers ; yet a more complete contrast in their 
 mental views and conversational peculiarities can scarcely be con;
 
 68 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 ceived. Madame de Ventadour viewed everything as a woman 
 of the world ; she was brilliant, thoughtful, and not without 
 delicacy and tenderness of sentiment ; still all was cast in a 
 worldly mould. She had been formed by the influences of society, 
 and her mind betrayed its education. At once witty and mel- 
 ancholy (no uncommon union), she was a disciple of the sad but 
 caustic philosophy produced by Satiety. In the life she led, 
 neither her heart nor her head was engaged ; the faculties of 
 both were irritated, not satisfied or employed. She felt some- 
 what too sensitively the hollowness of the great world, and had 
 a low opinion of Human Nature. In fact, she was a woman of 
 the French Memoirs one of those charming and spirituelles 
 Aspasias of the Boudoir, who interest us by their subtlety, tact, 
 and grace, their exquisite tone of refinement, and are redeemed 
 from the superficial and frivolous, partly by a consummate knowl- 
 edge of the social system in which they move, and partly by a 
 half-concealed and touching discontent of the trifles on which 
 their talents and affections are wasted. These are the women 
 who, after a youth of false pleasure, often end by an old age of 
 false devotion. They are a class peculiar to those ranks and 
 countries in which shines and saddens that gay and unhappy 
 thing a woman without a home ! 
 
 Now this was a specimen of life this Valerie de Ventadour 
 that Maltravers had never yet contemplated, and Maltravers 
 was perhaps equally new to the Frenchwoman. They were de- 
 lighted with each other's society, although it so happened that 
 they never agreed. 
 
 Madame de Ventadour rode on horseback, and Maltravers 
 was one of her usual companions. And oh, the beautiful land- 
 scapes through which their daily excursions lay ! 
 
 Maltravers was an admirable scholar. The stores of the im- 
 mortal dead were as familiar to him as his own language. The 
 poetry, the philosophy, the manner of thought and habits of life, 
 of the graceful Greek and the luxurious Roman were a part 
 of knowledge that constituted a common and household portion 
 of his own associations and peculiarities of thought. He had 
 saturated his intellect with the Pactolus of old and the grains 
 of gold came down from the classic Tmolus with every tide. 
 This knowledge of the dead, often so useless, has an inexpressible 
 charm when it is applied to the places where the Dead lived. 
 We care nothing about the ancients on Highgate Hill but at 
 Baise, Pompeii, by the Virgilian Hades, the ancients are society 
 with vhich we thirst to be familiar. To the animated and curious 
 Frenchwoman what a cicerone was Ernest Maltravers ! How
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 69 
 
 eagerly she listened to accounts of a life more elegant than that 
 of Paris ! of a civilization which the world never can know 
 again ! So much the better ; for it was rotten at the core, 
 though most brilliant in the complexion. Those cold names and 
 unsubstantial shadows which Madame de Ventadour had been 
 accustomed to yawn over in skeleton histories, took from the 
 eloquence of Maltravers the breath of life they glowed and 
 moved they feasted and made love were wise and foolish, merry 
 and sad, like living things. On the other hand, Maltravers learned 
 a thousand new secrets of the existing and actual world from the 
 lips of the accomplished and observant Valerie. What a new 
 step in the philosophy of life does a young man of genius make, 
 when he first compares his theories and experience with the in- 
 tellect of a clever woman of the world ! Perhaps it does not 
 elevate him, but how it enlightens and refines ! what number- 
 less minute yet important mysteries in human character and 
 practical wisdom does he drink unconsciously from the spark- 
 ling persiflage of such a companion ! Our education is hardly 
 ever complete without it. 
 
 "And so you think these stately Romans, were not, after all, 
 so dissimilar to ourselves ? " said Valerie, one day, as they looked 
 over the same earth and ocean along which had roved the eyes 
 of the voluptuous but august Lucullus. 
 
 "In the last days of their republic, a coup-cT<xil of their social 
 date might convey to us a general notion of our own. Their 
 system, like ours a vast aristocracy heaved and agitated, but 
 kept ambitious and intellectual, by the great democratic ocean 
 which roared below and around it. An immense distinction be- 
 tween rich and poor a nobility sumptuous, wealthy, cultivated, 
 yet scarcely elegant or refined; a people with mighty aspirations 
 for more perfect liberty, but always liable, in a crisis, to be in- 
 fluenced and subdued by a deep-rooted veneration for the very 
 aristocracy against which they struggled ; a ready opening through 
 all the walls of custom and privilege, for every description of 
 talent and ambition; but so strong and universal a respect for 
 wealth, that the finest spirit grew avaricious, griping, and cor- 
 rupt, almost unconsciously; and the man who rose from the peo- 
 ple did not scruple to enrich himself out of the abuses he affect- 
 ed to lament; and the man who would have died for his country 
 could not help thrusting his hands into her pockets. Cassius, 
 the stubborn and thoughtful patriot, with his heart of iron, had, 
 you remember, an itching palm. Yet, what a blow to all the 
 hopes and dreams of a world was the overthrow of the free party 
 after the death of Csesar ! What generations of freemen fell at
 
 70 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 Philippi ! In England, perhaps, we may have ultimately the 
 same struggle; in France, too (perhaps a larger stage, with far more 
 inflammable actors), we already perceive the same war of elements 
 which shook Rome to her centre, which finally replaced the gen- 
 erous Julius with the hypocritical Augustus, which destroyed 
 the colossal patricians to make way for the glittering dwarfs of 
 a court, and cheated a people out of the substance with the shadow 
 of liberty. How it may end in the modern world, who shall say? 
 But while a nation has already a fair degree of constitutional 
 freedom, I believe no struggle so perilous and awful as that be- 
 tween the aristocratic and the democratic principle. A people 
 against a despot that contest requires no prophet; but the 
 change from an aristocratic to a democratic commonwealth is 
 indeed the wide, unbounded prospect upon which rest shadows, 
 clouds, and darkness. If it fail for centuries is the dial hand 
 of Time put back; if it succeed " 
 
 Maltravers paused. 
 
 " And if it succeed ? " said Valerie. 
 
 " Why, then, man will have colonized Utopia ! " replied Mal- 
 travers. 
 
 "But at least, in modern Europe," he continued, "there will 
 be fair room for the experiment. For we have not that curse of 
 slavery which, more than all else, vitiated every system of the 
 ancients, and kept the rich and the poor alternately at war; and 
 we have a press, which is not only the safety-valve of the pas- 
 sions of every party, but the great note-book of the experiments 
 of every hour the homely, the invaluable ledger of losses and 
 of gains. No; the people who keep that tablet well, never can 
 be bankrupt. And the society of those old Romans; their daily 
 passions occupations humors! why, the satire of Horace is 
 the glass of our own follies ! We may fancy his easy pages writ- 
 ten in the Chausseed'Antin, or May-fair; but there was one thing 
 that will ever keep the ancient world dissimilar from the modern." 
 
 " And what is tha f ? " 
 
 "The ancients knew not that delicacy in the affections which 
 characterizes the descendants of the Goths," said Maltravers, 
 and his voice slightly trembled; " they gave up to the monopoly 
 of the senses what ought to have had an equal share in the 
 reason and the imagination. Their love was a beautiful and 
 wanton butterfly; but not the butterfly which is the emblem of 
 the soul." 
 
 Valerie sighed. She looked timidly into the face of the young 
 philosopher, but his eyes were averted. 
 
 " Perhaps," she said, after a short pause, " we pass our lives
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 71 
 
 more happily without love than with it. And in our modern 
 social system " (she continued thoughtfully, and with profound 
 truth, though it is scarcely the conclusion to which a woman often 
 arrives), I think we have pampered Love to too great a prepon- 
 derance over the other excitements of life. As children, we are 
 taught to dream of it; in youth, our books, our conversation, 
 our plays are filled with it. We are trained to consider it the 
 essential of life; and yet, the moment we come to actual expe- 
 rience, the moment we indulge this inculcated arid stimulating 
 craving, nine times out of ten we find ourselves wretched and 
 outdone. Ah, believe me, Mr. Maltravers, this is not a world 
 in which we should preach up, too far, the philosophy of 
 love ! " 
 
 "And does Madame de Ventadour speak from experience? " 
 asked Maltravers, gazing earnestly upon the changing counte* 
 nance of his companion. 
 
 "No ; and I trust that I never may ! " said Valerie, with great 
 energy. 
 
 Ernest's lip curled slightly, for his pride was touched. 
 
 "I could give up many djeams of the future," said he, " to 
 hear Madame de Ventadour revoke that sentiment." 
 
 "We have outridden our companions, Mr. Maltravers," said 
 Valerie, coldly, and she reined in her horse. " Ah, Mr. Fer- 
 rers," she continued, as Lumley and the handsome German 
 baron now joined her, "you are too gallant; I see you imply a 
 delicate compliment to my horsemanship, when you wish me to 
 believe you cannot keep up with me: Mr. Maltravers is not so 
 polite." 
 
 " Nay," returned Ferrers, who rarely threw away a compliment 
 without a satisfactory return, "Nay, you and Maltravers ap- 
 peared lost among the old Romans; and our friend the Baron 
 took the opportunity to tell me of all the ladies who adored him." 
 
 "Ah, Monsieur Ferrare, que vous e'tes malin!" said Schom- 
 berg, looking very much confused. 
 
 "Malin! no; I spoke from no envy: / never was adored, 
 thank Heaven ! What a bore it must be ! " 
 
 " I congratulate you on the sympathy between yourself and 
 Ferrers," whispered Maltravers to Valerie. 
 
 Valerie laughed; but during the rest of the excursion she re- 
 mained thoughtful and absent, and for some days their rides were 
 discontinued. Madame de Ventadour was not welL
 
 72 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 " O Love, forsake me not; 
 Mine were a lone dark lot 
 Bereft of thec." 
 
 HEMANS: Genius singing to Love. 
 
 I FEAR that as yet Ernest Maltravers had gained little from 
 Experience, except a few current coins of worldly wisdom (and 
 not very valuable those!) while he had lost much of that nobler 
 wealth with which youthful enthusiasm sets out on the journey 
 of life. Experience is an open giver, but a stealthy thief. There 
 is, however, this to be said in her favor, that we retain her gifts; 
 and if ever we demand restitution in earnest, 'tis ten to one but 
 what we recover her thefts. Maltravers had lived in lands where 
 public opinion is neither strong in its influence, nor rigid in its 
 canons; and that does not make a man better. Moreover, thrown 
 headlong amidst the temptations that make the first ordeal of 
 youth, with ardent passions and intellectual superiority, he had 
 been led by the one into many errors, from the consequences of 
 which the other had delivered him; the necessity of roughing it 
 through the world of resisting fraud to-day, and violence to- 
 morrow, had hardened over the surface of his heart, though at 
 bottom the springs were still fresh and living. He had lost much 
 of his chivalrous veneration for women, for he had seen them 
 less often deceived than deceiving. Again, too, the last few 
 years had been spent without any high aims or fixed pursuits. 
 Maltravers had been living on the capital of his faculties and 
 affections in a wasteful, speculating spirit. It is a bad thing for 
 a clever and ardent man not to have from the onset some para- 
 mount object of life. 
 
 All this considered, we can scarcely wonder that Maltravers 
 should have fallen into an involuntary system of pursuing his 
 own amusements and pursuits, without much forethought of the 
 harm or the good they were to do to others or himself. The 
 moment we lose forethought, we lose sight of a duty; and though 
 it seems like a paradox, we can seldom be careless without being 
 selfish. 
 
 In seeking the society of Madame de Ventadour, Maltravers 
 obeyed but the mechanical impulse that leads the idler towards 
 the companionship which most pleases his leisure. He was in- 
 terested and excited ; and Valerie's manners, which to-day 
 flattered, and to-morrow piqued him, enlisted his vanity and pride 
 on the side of his fancy. But although Monsieur de Ventadour,
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 73 
 
 a frivolous and profligate Frenchman, seemed utterly indifferent 
 as to what his wife chose to do and in the society in which 
 Valerie lived, almost every lady had her cavalier, yet Maltravers 
 would have started with incredulity or dismay had any one 
 accused him of a systematic design on her affections. But he 
 was living with the world, and the world affected him as it almost 
 always does every one else. Still he had at times, in his heart, 
 the feeling that he was not fulfilling his proper destiny and duties; 
 and when he stole from the brilliant resorts of an unworthy and 
 heartless pleasure, he was ever and anon haunted by his old 
 familiar aspirations for the Beautiful, the Virtuous and the Great. 
 However, hell is paved with good intentions ; and so, in the 
 meanwhile, Ernest Maltravers surrendered himself to the de- 
 licious presence of Valerie de Ventadour. 
 
 One evening, Maltravers, Ferrers, the French minister, a pretty 
 
 Italian, and the Princess di , made the whole party collected 
 
 at Madame de Ventadour's. The conversation fell upon one of 
 the tales of scandal relative to English persons, so common on 
 the continent. 
 
 " Is it true, Monsieur," said the French minister, gravely, to 
 Lumley, " that your countrymen are much more immoral than 
 other people? It is very strange, that in every town I enter, 
 there is always some story in which les Anglais are the heroes. 
 I hear nothing of French scandal nothing of Italian toujours 
 les Anglais." 
 
 "Because we are shocked at these things, and make a noise 
 about them, while you take them quietly. Vice is our episode 
 your epic." 
 
 "I suppose it is so," said the Frenchman, with affected seri- 
 ousness. "If we cheat at play, or flirt with a fair lady, we do 
 it with decorum, and our neighbors think it no business of theirs. 
 But you treat every frailty you find in your countrymen as a 
 public concern, to be discussed and talked over, and exclaimed 
 against, and told to all the world." 
 
 "I like the system of scandal," said Madame de Ventadour, 
 abruptly, "say what you will ; the policy of fear keeps many of 
 us virtuous. Sin might not be odious, if we did not tremble 
 at the consequence even of appearances." 
 
 "Hein, hein," grunted Monsieur de Ventadour, shuffling into 
 the room. " How are you ? how are you ? Charmed to see 
 you. Dull night I suspect we shall have rain. Hein, hein. 
 Aha, Monsieur Ferrers, comment $a va-t-il? will you give me my 
 revenge at e'carte? I have my suspicions that I am in luck to- 
 night. Hein, hein."
 
 74 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 " JEearte'.' well, with pleasure," said Ferrers. 
 
 Ferrers played well. 
 
 The conversation ended in a moment. The little party gath- 
 ered round the table all, except Valerie and Maltravers. The 
 chairs that were vacated left a kind of breach between them ; 
 but still they were next to each other, and they felt embarrassed, 
 for they felt alone. 
 
 " Do you never play ? " asked Madame de Ventadour, after a 
 pause. 
 
 " I have played," said Maltravers, "and I know the temptation. 
 I dare not play now. I love the excitement, but I have been 
 humbled at the debasement; it is a moral drunkenness that is 
 worse than the physical." 
 
 " You speak warmly." 
 
 " Because I feel keenly. I once won of a man I respected, 
 who was poor. His agony was a dreadful lesson to me. I went 
 home, and was terrified to think that I had felt so much pleasure 
 in the pain of another. I have never played since that 
 night." 
 
 "So young and so resolute '."said Valerie, with admiration in 
 her voice and eyes ; "you are a strange person. Others would 
 have been cured by losing, you were cured by winning. It is 
 a fine thing to have principle at your age, Mr. Maltravers." 
 
 " I fear it was rather pride than principle," said Maltravers. 
 "Error is sometimes sweet; but there is no anguish like an error 
 of which we feel ashamed. I cannot submit to blush for myself." 
 
 "Ah !" muttered Valerie ; "this is the echo of my own heart !" 
 She rose and went to the window. Maltravers paused a moment, 
 and followed her. Perhaps he half thought there was an invita- 
 tion in the movement. 
 
 There lay before them the still street, with its feeble and 
 unfrequent lights ; beyond, a few stars struggling through an 
 atmosphere unusually clouded, brought the murmuring ocean 
 partially into sight. Valerie leaned against the wall, and the 
 draperies of the window veiled her from all the guests, save Mal- 
 travers ; and between her and himself was a large marble vase 
 rilled with flowers ; and by that uncertain light Valerie's brilliant 
 cheek looked pale, and soft, and thoughtful. Maltravers never 
 before felt so much in love with the beautiful Frenchwoman. 
 
 "Ah, madame ! " said he, softly ; "there is one error, if it be 
 so, that never can cost me shame." 
 
 "Indeed ! " said Valerie, with an unaffected start, for she was 
 not aware he was so near her. As she spoke she began pluck- 
 ing (it is a common woman's trick) the flowers from the vase
 
 ERNEST MALT RAVERS. 75 
 
 between her and Ernest. That small, delicate, almost trans- 
 parent hand ! Maltravers gazed upon the hand, then on the 
 countenance, then on the hand again. The scene swam before 
 him, and, involuntarily and as by an irresistible impulse, the next 
 moment that hand was in his own. 
 
 "Pardon me pardon me," said he, falteringly ; "but that 
 error is in the feelings that I know for you." 
 
 Valerie lifted on him her large and radiant eyes, and made 
 no answer. 
 
 Maltravers went on. " Chide me, scorn me, hate me if you 
 will. Valerie, I love you ! " 
 
 Valerie drew away her hand, and still remained silent. 
 
 "Speak to me," said Ernest, leaning forward; "one word, I 
 implore you speak to me ! " 
 
 He paused, still no reply ; he listened breathlessly he heard 
 her sob. Yes ; that proud, that wise, that lofty woman of the 
 world, in that moment, was as weak as the simplest girl that ever 
 listened to a lover. But how different the feelings that made her 
 weak ? what soft and what stern emotions were blent together! 
 
 " Mr. Maltravers," she said, recovering her voice, though it 
 sounded hollow, yet almost unnaturally firm and clear "the 
 die is cast, and I have lost forever the friend for whose happi- 
 ness I cannot live, but for whose welfare I would have died ; I 
 should have foreseen this, but I was blind. No more no more ; 
 see me to-morrow, and leave me now ! " 
 
 "But, Valerie " 
 
 " Ernest Maltravers," said she, laying her hand lightly on his 
 own ; " there is no anguish like an error of which ive feel ashamed!" 
 
 Before he could reply to this citation from his own aphorism, 
 Valerie had glided away ; and was already seated at the card- 
 table, by the side of the Italian princess. 
 
 Maltravers also joined the group. He fixed his eyes on Madame 
 de Ventadour, but her face was calm not a trace of emotion 
 was discernible. Her voice, her smile, her charming and courtly 
 manner, all were as when he first beheld her. 
 
 "These women what hypocrites they are !" muttered Mal- 
 travers, to himself ; and his lip writhed into a sneer, which 
 had of late often forced away the serene and gracious expres- 
 sion of his earlier years, ere he knew what it was to despise. 
 But Maltravers mistook the woman he had dared to scorn. 
 
 He soon withdrew from the palazzo, and sought his hotel. 
 There, while yet musing in his dressing-room, he was joined 
 by Ferrers. The time had passed when Ferrers had exercised 
 an influence over Maltravers : the boy had grown up to be the.
 
 76 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 equal of the man, in the exercise of that two-edged sword the 
 reason. And Maltravers now felt, unalloyed, the calm conscious- 
 ness of his superior genius. He could not confide to Ferrers 
 what had passed between him and Valerie. Lumley was too 
 hard for a confidant in matters where the heart was at all con- 
 cerned. In fact, in high spirits, and in the midst of frivolous 
 adventures, Ferrers was charming. But in sadness, or in the 
 moments of deep feeling, Ferrers was one whom you would wish 
 out of the way. 
 
 " You are sullen to-night, mon cher" said Lumley, yawning ; 
 "I suppose you want to go to bed some persons are so ill-bred, 
 so selfish, they never think of their friends. Nobody asks me 
 what I won at dearth. Don't be late to-morrow I hate break- 
 fasting alone, and/ am never later than a quarter before nine 
 I hate egotistical, ill-mannered people. Good-night." 
 
 With this, Ferrers sought his own room ; there, as he slowly 
 undressed, he thus soliloquized : "I think I have put this man 
 to all the use I can make of him. We don't pull well together 
 any longer; perhaps I myself am a little tired of this sort of life. 
 That is not right. I shall grow ambitious by and by ; but I 
 think it is a bad calculation not to make the most of youth. At 
 four or five-and-thirty it will be time enough to consider what 
 one ought to be at fifty." 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 " Most dangerous 
 
 Is that temptation that does goad us on 
 To sin, in loving virtue." Measure for Measure. 
 
 "SEE her to-morrow ! that morrow is come ! " thought Mal- 
 travers, as he rose the next day from a sleepless couch. Ere 
 yet he had obeyed the impatient summons of Ferrers, who had 
 thrice sent to say that "he never kept people waiting," his 
 servant entered with a packet from England, that had just 
 arrived by one of those rare couriers who sometimes honor that 
 Naples, which might be so lucrative a mart to English com- 
 merce, if Neapolitan kings cared for trade, or English senators 
 for " foreign politics." Letters from stewards and bankers were 
 soon got through ; and Maltravers reserved for the last an epistle 
 from Cleveland. There was much in it that touched him home. 
 After some dry details about the property to which Maltravers 
 had now succeeded, and some trifling comments upon trifling 
 remarks in Ejnest's former letters, Cleveland, went on thus, ;
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 77 
 
 " I confess, my dear Ernest, that I long to welcome you 
 back to England. You have been abroad long enough to see 
 other countries ; do not stay long enough to prefer them to 
 your own. You are at Naples, too I tremble for you. I know 
 well that delicious, dreaming, holiday-life of Italy, so sweet to 
 men of learning and imagination so sweet, too, to youth so 
 sweet to pleasure ! But, Ernest, do you not feel already how it 
 enervates? how the luxurious far niente unfits us for grave 
 exertion ? Men may become too refined and too fastidious for 
 useful purposes ; and nowhere can they become so more rapidly 
 than in Italy. My dear Ernest, I know you well ; you are not 
 made to sink down into a virtuoso, with a cabinet full of cameos 
 and a head full of pictures ; still less are you made to be an 
 indolent cicesbeo to some fair Italian, with one passion and two 
 ideas ; and yet I have known men as clever as you, whom that 
 bewitching Italy has sunk into one or other of these insignificant 
 beings. Don't run away with the notion that you have plenty 
 of time before you. You have no such thing. At your age, 
 and with your fortune, (I wish you were not so rich !) the holi- 
 day of one year becomes the custom of the next. In England, 
 to be a useful or a distinguished man, you must labor. Now, 
 labor itself is sweet if we take to it early. We are a hard race, 
 but we are a manly one ; and our stage is the most exciting in 
 Europe for an able and an honest ambition. Perhaps you will 
 tell me you are not ambitious now; very possibly but ambitious 
 you will be; and, believe me, there is no unhappier wretch than 
 a man who is ambitious but disappointed who has the desire 
 for fame, but has lost the power to achieve it who longs foi 
 the goal, but will not, and cannot, put away his slippers to walk 
 to it. What I most fear for you is one of these two evils an 
 enrly marriage or a fatal liaison with some married woman. The 
 first evil is certainly the least, but for you it would still be a 
 great one. With your sensitive roman'ce, with your morbid 
 cravings for the ideal, domestic happiness would soon grow trite 
 and dull. You would demand new excitement, and become a 
 restless and disgusted man. It is necessary for you to get rid 
 of all the false fever of life, before you settle down to everlasting 
 ties. You do not yet know your own mind; you would choose 
 your partner from some visionary caprice, or momentary im- 
 pulse, and not from the deep and accurate knowledge of those 
 qualities which would most harmonize with your own character. 
 People, to live happily with each other, musty?/ in, as it were 
 the proud be mated with the meek, the irritable with the gentle, 
 and so forth. No, my dear Maltravers, do not think of mar-
 
 78 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 riage yet awhile; and if there is any danger of it, come over to 
 me immediately. But if I warn you against a lawful tie, how 
 much more against an illicit one ? You are precisely of the 
 age, and of the disposition, which render the temptation so 
 strong and so deadly. With you it might not be the sin of an 
 hour, but the bondage of a life. I know your chivalric honor 
 your tender heart; I know how faithful you would be to one 
 who had sacrificed for you. But that fidelity, Maltravers, to 
 what a life of wasted talents and energies would it not compel 
 you ! Putting aside for the moment (for that needs no comment) 
 the question of the grand immorality what so fatal to a bold 
 and proud temper, as to be at war with society at the first en- 
 trance into life ? What so withering to manly aims and purposes, 
 as the giving into the keeping of a woman, who has interest in 
 your love, and interest against your career which might part you 
 at once from her side the control of your future destinies ? I 
 could say more, but I trust what I have said is superfluous; if so, 
 pray assure me of it. Depend upon this, Ernest Maltravers, that 
 vf you do not fulfil what nature intended for your fate, you will 
 be a morbid misanthrope, or an indolent voluptuary wretched 
 and listless in manhood, repining and joyless in old age. But 
 if you do fulfil your fate, you must enter soon into your appren- 
 ticeship. Let me see you labor and aspire no matter what 
 in what to. Work, work, that is all I ask of you ! 
 
 " I wish you could see your old country-house; it has a vener- 
 able and picturesque look, and during your minority they have let 
 the ivy cover three sides of it. Montaigne might have lived there. 
 
 " Adieu, dearest Ernest, 
 
 "Your anxious and affectionate guardian, 
 
 "FREDERICK CLEVELAND." 
 
 " P. S. I am writing a book it shall last me ten years it 
 occupies me, but does not fatigue. Write a book yourself." 
 
 Maltravers had just finished this letter when Ferrers entered 
 impatiently. "Will you ride out?" said he. "I have sent the 
 breakfast away; I saw that breakfast was a vain hope to-day 
 indeed, my appetite is gone." 
 
 'Pshaw !" said Maltravers. 
 
 'Pshaw ! humph ! for my part I like well-bred people." 
 
 'I have had a letter from Cleveland." 
 
 ' And what the deuce has that got to do with the chocolate ? " 
 
 ' Oh, Lumley, you are insufferable; you think of nothing but 
 yourself, and self with you means nothing that is not animal." 
 
 " Why, yes ; I believe I have some sense," replied Ferrers, 
 complacently. "I know the philosophy of life. All unfledged
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 79 
 
 bipeds are animals, I suppose. If Providence had made me 
 graminivorous, I should have eaten grass; if ruminating, I should 
 have chewed the cud; but as it has made me a carnivorous, culin- 
 ary, and cachinnatory animal, I eat a cutlet, scold about the sauce, 
 and laugh at you; and this is what_y0 call being selfish !" 
 
 It was late at noon when Maltravers found himself at the 
 palazzo of Madame de Ventadour. He was surprised, but 
 agreeably so, that he was admitted, for the first time, into that 
 private sanctum which bears the hackneyed title of boudoir, 
 but there was little enough of the fine lady's boudoir in the 
 simple morning-room of Madame de Ventadour. It was a lofty 
 apartment, stored with books, and furnished, not without claim 
 to grace, but with very small attention to luxury. 
 
 Valerie was not there; and Maltravers, left alone, after a hasty 
 glance around the chamber, leaned abstractedly against the wall, 
 and forgot, alas ! all the admonitions of Cleveland. In a few 
 moments the door opened, and Valerie entered. She was un- 
 usually pale, and Maitravers thought her eyelids betrayed the 
 traces of tears. He was touched, and his heart smote him. 
 
 "I have kept you waiting, I fear," said Valerie, motioning him 
 to a seat at a little distance from that on which she placed her- 
 self; " but you will forgive me," she added, with a slight smile. 
 Then, observing he was about to speak, she went on rapidly, 
 " Hear me, Mr. Maltravers before you speak, hear me ! You 
 uttered words last night that ought never to have been addressed 
 to me. You professed to to love me." 
 
 " Professed ! " 
 
 "Answer me," said Valerie, with abrupt energy, "not as man 
 to woman, but as one human creature to another. From the 
 bottom of your heart, from the core of your conscience, I call on 
 you to speak the honest and the simple truth. Do you love me 
 as your heart, your genius, must be capable of loving?" 
 
 " I love you truly passionately ! " said Maltravers, surprised 
 and confused, but still with enthusiasm in his musical voice 
 and earnest eyes. Valerie gazed upon him as if she sought to 
 penetrate into his soul. Maltravers went on. "Yes, Valerie, 
 when we first met, you aroused a long dormant and delicious 
 sentiment. But, since then, what deep emotions has that sen- 
 timent called forth? Your graceful intellect your lovely 
 thoughts, wise yet womanly have completed the conquest your 
 face and voice began. Valerie, I love you. And you you, 
 Valerie ah ! I do not deceive myself you also " 
 
 "Love ! " interrupted Valerie, deeply blushing, but in a calm 
 voice. " Ernest Maltravers, I do not deny it ; honestly and
 
 So ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 frankly I confess the fault. I have examined my heart during 
 the whole of the last sleepless night, and I confess that I love 
 you. Now, then, understand me; we meet no more." 
 
 "What! "said Maltravers, falling involuntarily at her feet, 
 and seeking to detain her hand, which he seized. "What! 
 now, when you have given life a new charm, will you as sud- 
 denly blast it? No, Valerie; no, I will not listen to you." 
 
 Madame de Ventadour rose and said, with a cold dignity 
 " Hear me calmly, or quit the room ; and all I would now say 
 rests forever unspoken." 
 
 Maltravers rose also, folded his arms haughtily, bit his lips, 
 and stood erect, and confronting Valerie rather in the attitude 
 of an accuser than a suppliant. 
 
 " Madame," said he gravely, " I will offend no more ; I will 
 trust tc your manner, since I may not believe your words." 
 
 "You are cruel," said Valerie, smiling mournfully ; "but so 
 are all men. Now let me make myself understood. I was betrothed 
 to Monsieur de Ventadour in my childhood. I did not see him 
 till a month before we married. I had no choice. French girls 
 have none. We were wed. I had formed no other attachment. 
 I was proud and vain ; wealth, ambition, and social rank for a 
 time satisfied my faculties and my heart. At length I grew rest- 
 less and unhappy. I felt that the something of life was wanting. 
 Monsieur de Ventadour's sister was the first to recommend to 
 me the common resource of our sex at least in France a lover. 
 I was shocked and startled, for I belong to a family in which 
 women are chaste and men brave. I began, however, to look 
 around me, and examine the truth of the philosophy of vice. I 
 found that no woman who loved honestly and deeply an illicit 
 lover, was happy. I found, too, the hideous profundity of 
 Rochefoucauld's maxim, that a woman I speak of Frencli 
 women may live without a lover ; but, a lover once admitted, 
 she never goes through life with only one. She is deserted ; she 
 cannot bear the anguish and the solitude ; she fills up the void 
 with a second idol. For her there is no. longer a fall from virtue : 
 it is a gliding and involuntary descent from sin to sin, till old 
 age comes on and leaves her without love and without respect. 
 I reasoned calmly, for my passions did not blind my reason. I 
 could not love the egotists around me. I resolved upon my career ; 
 and now, in temptation, I will adhere to it. Virtue is my lover, 
 my pride, my comfort, my life of life. Do you love me, and will 
 you rob me of this treasure? I saw you, and for the first time I 
 felt a vague and intoxicating interest in another ; but I did not 
 dream of danger. As our acquaintance advanced I formed to
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 8l 
 
 myself a romantic and delightful vision. I would be your firmest, 
 your truest friend ; your confidant, your adviser perhaps, in 
 some epochs of life, your inspiration and your guide. I repeat 
 that I foresaw no danger in your society. I felt myself a nobler 
 and a better being. I felt more benevolent, more tolerant, more 
 exalted. I saw life through the medium of purifying admiration 
 for a gifted nature, and a profound and generous soul. I fancied 
 wemightbeever thus each to each ; onestrengthened, assured, 
 supported by the other. Nay, I even contemplated with pleasure 
 the prospect of your future marriage with another of loving 
 your wife of contributing with her to your happiness my 
 imagination made me forget that we are made of clay. Suddenly 
 all these visions were dispelled the fairy palace wasoverthrown, 
 and I found myself awake, and on the brink of the abyss you 
 loved me, and in the moment of that fatal confession, the mask 
 dropped from my soul, and I felt that you had become too dear 
 to me. Be silent still, I implore you. I do not tell you of the 
 emotions, of the struggles, through which I have passed the last 
 few hours the crisis of a life. I tell you only of the resolution 
 I formed. I thought it due to you, nor unworthy of myself, to 
 speak the truth. Perhaps it might be more womanly to conceal 
 it ; but my heart has something masculine in its nature. I have 
 a great faith in your nobleness. I believe you can sympathize 
 with whatever is best in human weakness. I tell you that I love 
 you I throw myself upon your generosity. I beseech you to 
 assist my own sense of right to think well of me, to honor me 
 and to leave me." 
 
 During the last part of this strange and frank avowal, Valerie's 
 voice had grown inexpressibly touching : her tenderness forced 
 itself into her manner ; and when she ceased, her lip quivered ; 
 her tears, repressed by a violent effort, trembled in her eyes her 
 hands were clasped her attitude was that of humility, not pride. 
 
 Maltraversstood perfectly spell-bound. At'lengthheadvanced; 
 dropped on one knee, kissed her hand with an aspect and air of 
 reverential homage, and turned to quit the room in silence f 
 for he would not dare to trust himself to speak. 
 
 Valerie gazed at him in anxious alarm. "Oh no, no !" she 
 exclaimed, '' do not leave me yet ; this is our last meeting our 
 last. Tell me, at least, that you understand me ; that you see, 
 if I am no weak fool, I am also no heartless coquette ; tell me 
 that you see I am not so hard as I have seemed ; that I have 
 not knowingly trifled with your happiness ; that even now I am 
 not selfish. Your love, I ask it no more ! But your esteem 
 your good opinion. Oh, speak speak, I implore you ! "
 
 82 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 " Valerie," said Maltravers, " if I was silent, it was because 
 my heart was too full for words. You have raised all woman- 
 hood in my eyes. I did love you I now venerate and adore. 
 Your noble frankness, so unlike the irresolute frailty, the miser- 
 able wiles of your sex, has touched a chord in my heart that 
 has been mute for years. I leave you to think better of human 
 nature. Oh ! " he continued, "hasten to forget all of me that 
 will cost you a pang. Let me still, in absence and in sadness, 
 think that I retain in your friendship let it be friendship only 
 the inspiration, the guide of which you spoke; and if, hereafter, 
 men shall name me with praise and honor, feel, Valerie, feel 
 that I have comforted myself for the loss of your love by be- 
 coming worthy of your confidence your esteem. Oh that we 
 had met earlier, when no barrier was between us ! " 
 
 " Go, go, now" faltered Valerie, almost choked with her 
 emotions ; " may Heaven bless you ! Go ! " 
 
 Maltravers muttered a few inaudible and incoherent words, 
 and quitted the apartment. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 " The men of sense, those idols of the shallow, are very inferior to the 
 men of Passions. It is the strong passions which, rescuing us from sloth, 
 can alone impart to us that continuous and earnest attention necessary to 
 great intellectual efforts." HELVETIUS. 
 
 WHEN Ferrers returned that day from his customary ride, he 
 was surprised to see the lobbies and hall of the apartment 
 which he occupied in common with Maltravers littered with 
 bags and malles, boxes and books, and Ernest's valet direct- 
 ing porters and waiters in a mosaic of French, English and 
 Italian. 
 
 "Well," said Lumley, "and what is all this?" 
 
 " II signore va partir, sare, ah ! mon Dieu ! tout of a sud- 
 den." 
 
 " O h ! and where is he now ? " 
 
 " In his room, sare." 
 
 Over the chaos strode Ferrers, and opening the door of his 
 friend's dressing-room without ceremony, he saw Maltravers 
 buried in a fauteuil, with his hands dropping on his knees, his 
 head bent over his breast, and his whole attitude expressive of 
 dejection and exhaustion. 
 
 " What is the matter, my dear Ernest ? You have not killed 
 a man in a duel ? "
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 83 
 
 " No." 
 
 " What then ? Why are you going away, and whither ? " 
 
 " No matter ; leave me in peace." 
 
 "Friendly!" said Ferrers; " very friendly ! And what is to 
 become of me what companion am I to have in this cursed 
 resort of antiquarians and lazzaroni ? You have no feeling, 
 Mr. Maltravers ! " 
 
 " Will you come with me, then ? " said Maltravers, in vain 
 endeavoring to rouse himself. 
 
 " But where are you going ? " 
 
 " Anywhere ; to Paris to London." 
 
 " No ; I have arranged my plans for the summer. I am not 
 so rich as some people. I hate change ; it is so expensive." 
 
 ''But, my dear fellow " 
 
 " Is this fair dealing with me ? " continued Lumley, who, for 
 once in his life was really angry. " If I were an old coat you 
 had worn for five years, you could not throw me off with more 
 nonchalance." 
 
 " Ferrers, forgive me. My honor is concerned. I must 
 leave this place. I trust you will remain my guest here, though 
 in the absence of your host. You know that I have engaged 
 the apartments for the next three months." 
 
 " Humph !" said Ferrers ; "as that is the case, I may as 
 well stay here. But why so secret ? Have you seduced Mad- 
 dame de Ventadour, or has her wise husband his suspicions ? 
 Hein, hein ! " 
 
 Maltravers smothered his disgust at this coarseness ; and, 
 perhaps, there is no greater trial of temper than in a he friend's 
 gross remarks upon the connections of the heart. 
 
 " Ferrers," said he, " if you care for me, breathe not a word 
 disrespectful of Madame de Ventadour : she is an angel ! " 
 
 " But why leave Naples ? " 
 
 "Trouble me no more." 
 
 " Good-day, sir," said Ferrers, highly off ended, and he stalked 
 out of the chamber ; nor did Ernest see him again before his 
 departure. 
 
 It was late in the evening when Maltravers found himself 
 alone in his carriage, pursuing by starlight the ancient and 
 melancholy road to Mola di Gae'ta. 
 
 His solitude was a luxury to Maltravers ; he felt an inex- 
 pressible sense of release to be freed from Ferrers. The hard 
 sense, the unpliant, though humorous imperiousness, the animal 
 sensuality of his companion would have been a torture to him 
 in his present state of mind.
 
 84 ERNEST MALTfeAVERS. 
 
 Next morning, when he arose, the orange blossoms of Mola 
 di Gae'ta were sweet beneath the window of the inn where lie 
 rested. It was now the early spring, and the freshness of the 
 odor, the breathing health of earth and air, it is impossible to 
 describe. Italy itself boasts few spots more lovely than that 
 same Mola di Gae'ta nor does that halcyon sea wear, even at 
 Naples or Sorrento, a more bland and enchanting smile. 
 
 So, after a hasty and scarcely tasted breakfast, Maltravers 
 strolled through the orange groves, and gained the beach ; and 
 there stretched at idle length by the murmuring waves, he re- 
 signed himself to thought, and endeavored, for the first time 
 since his parting with Valerie, to collect and examine the state 
 of his mind and feelings. Maltravers, to his own surprise, did not 
 find himself so unhappy as he had expected. On the contrary, 
 a soft and almost delicious sentiment, which he could not well 
 define, floated over all his memories of the beautiful French- 
 woman. Perhaps the secret was, that while his pride was not 
 mortified, his conscience was not galled perhaps, also, he had 
 not loved Valerie so deeply as he had imagined. The confes- 
 sion and the separation had happily come before her presence 
 had grown the want of a life. As it was, he felt as if, by some 
 holy and mystic sacrifice, he had been made reconciled to him- 
 self and mankind. He woke to a juster and higher apprecia- 
 tion of human nature, and of woman's nature in especial. He 
 found honesty and truth, where he might have least expected 
 it in a woman of a court in a woman surrounded by vicious 
 and frivolous circles in a woman who had nothing in the opin- 
 ion of her friends, her country, her own husband, the social 
 system in which she moved, to keep her from the concessions 
 of frailty in a woman of the world a woman of Paris ! yes, 
 it was his very disappointment that drove away the fogs and 
 vapors that, arising from the marshes of the great world, had 
 gradually settled around his soul. Valerie de Ventadour had 
 taught him not to despise her sex, not to judge by appearances, 
 not to sicken of a low and hypocritical world. He looked in 
 his heart for the love of Valerie, and he found there the love 
 of Virtue. 
 
 Thus, as he turned his eyes inward, did he gradually awaken 
 to a sense of the true impressions engraved there. And he felt the 
 bitterest drop of the deep fountains was not sorrow for himself, 
 but for her. What pangs must that high spirit have endured 
 ere it could have submitted to the avowal it had made ! Yet, 
 even in this affliction, he found at last a solace. A mind so 
 strong could support and heal the weakness of the heart. He
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 85 
 
 felt that Valerie de Ventadour was not a woman to pine away 
 in the unresisted indulgence of morbid and unholy emotions, 
 lie could not flatter himself that she would not seek to eradi- 
 cate a love she repented ; and he sighed with a natural selfish- 
 ness, when he owned also that sooner or later she would succeed. 
 " But be it so," said he, half aloud "I will prepare my heart 
 to rejoice when I learn that she remembers me only as a friend. 
 Next to the bliss of her love is the pride of her esteem." 
 
 Such was the sentiment with which his reveries closed and 
 with every league that bore him further from the south, the 
 sentiment grew strengthened and confirmed. 
 
 Ernest Maltravers felt that there is in the Affections them- 
 selves so much to purify and exalt, that even an erring love, 
 conceived without a cold design, and (when his nature is fairly 
 understood) wrestled against with a noble spirit, leaves the 
 heart more tolerant and tender, and the mind more settled and 
 enlarged. The philosophy limited to the reason puts into 
 motion the automata of the closet but to those who have the 
 world for a stage, and who find their hearts are the great actors, 
 experience and wisdom must be wrought from the Philosophy 
 of the Passions. 
 
 BOOK III. 
 
 *Q 'i 
 
 "Of fuv bdri, ///af oi>rof . 
 
 CALLIM. Ex. Hymno in Apollinum, 
 
 " Not to all men Apollo shows himself 
 Who sees him he is great." 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 " Here will we sit, and let the sound of music 
 Creep in our ears soft stillness and the night 
 Become the touches of sweet harmony." 
 
 SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 BOAT SONG ON THE LAKE OF COMO. 
 
 i. 
 THE Beautiful Clime ! the Clime of Love ! 
 
 Thou beautiful Italy ! 
 Like a mother's eyes, the earnest skies 
 
 Ever have smiles for thee !
 
 86 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 Not a flower that blows, not a beam that glows, 
 
 But what is in love with thee ! 
 
 II. 
 The beautiful lake, the Larian lake ! 
 
 Soft lake like a silver sea. 
 The Huntress Queen, with her nymphs of sheen, 
 
 Never had bath like thee. 
 See, the Lady of Night and her maids of light, 
 
 Even now are mid-deep in thee. 
 
 in. 
 Beautiful child of the lonely hills, 
 
 Ever blest may thy slumbers be! 
 No mourner should tread by thy dreamy bed, 
 
 No life bring a care to thee 
 Nay, soft to thy bed, let the mourner tread 
 
 And life be a dream like thee! 
 
 Such, though uttered in the soft Italian tone, and now imper- 
 fectly translated such were the notes that floated one lovely 
 evening in summer along the lake of Como. The boat, from 
 which came the song, drifted gently down the sparkling waters, 
 toward the mossy banks of a lawn, whence on a little eminence 
 gleamed the white walls of a villa, backed by vineyards. On 
 that lawn stood a young and handsome woman, leaning on the 
 arm of her husband, and listening to the song. But her delight 
 was soon deepened into one of more personal interest, as the 
 boatmen, nearing the banks, changed their measure, and she 
 felt that the minstrelsy was in honor of herself. 
 
 SERENADE TO THE SONGSTRESS. 
 
 i. 
 
 CHORUS. 
 
 Softly oh, soft! let us rest on the oar, 
 And vex not a billow that sighs to the shore: 
 For sacred the spot where the starry waves meet 
 With the beach, where the breath of the citron is sweet. 
 There's a spell on the waves that now waft us along 
 To the last of our Muses, the Spirit of Song. 
 RECITATIVE. 
 
 The Engle of old renown, 
 
 And the Lombard's iron crown, 
 And Milan's mighty name are ours no morej 
 
 But by this glassy water, 
 
 Harmonia's youngest daughter, 
 Still from the lightning saves one laurel to our shore. 
 
 II. 
 
 CHORUS. 
 
 They heat j thee, Teresa, the Teuton, the Gaul, 
 Who have raised the rude thrones of the North on our fall;
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 87 
 
 Thvjy heard thee, and bow'd to the might of thy song, 
 Like love went thy steps o'er the hearts of the strong, 
 As the moon to the air, as the soul to the clay, 
 To the void of this earth was the breath of thy lay. 
 
 RECITATIVE. 
 
 Honor for aye to her 
 
 The bright interpreter 
 Of Art's great mysteries to the enchanted throng; 
 
 While tyrants heard thy strains, 
 
 Sad Rome forgot her chains; 
 The world the sword had lost was conquer'd back by song! 
 
 "Thou repentest, my Teresa, that thou hast renounced thy 
 dazzling career for a dull home, and a husband old enough to 
 be thy father," said the husband to the wife, with a smile that 
 spoke confidence in the answer. 
 
 "Ah, no! even this homage would have no music for me if 
 thou didst not hear it." 
 
 She was a celebrated personage in Italy the Signorina Ce- 
 sarini, now Madame de Montaigne! Her earlier youth had been 
 spent upon the stage, and her promise of vocal excellence had 
 been most brilliant. But after a brief, though splendid career, 
 she married a French gentleman of good birth and fortune, re- 
 tired from the stage, and spent her life alternately in the gay 
 salons of Paris, and upon the banks of the dreamy Como, on 
 which her husband had purchased a small, but beautiful villa. 
 She still, however, exercised in private her fascinating art; to 
 which for she was a woman of singular accomplishment and 
 talent she added the gift of the improvvisatrice. She had just 
 returned for the summer to this lovely retreat, and a party of 
 enthusiastic youths from Milan had sought the lake of Como to 
 welcome her arrival with the suitable homage of song and music. 
 It is a charming relic, that custom of the brighter days of Italy; 
 and I myself have listened, on the still waters of the same lake, 
 to a similar greeting to a greater genius the queen-like and 
 unrivalled Pasta the Semiramis of song! And while my boat 
 paused, and I caught something of the enthusiasm of the sere- 
 naders, the boatman touched me, and, pointing to a part of the 
 lake on which the setting sun shed its rosiest smile, he said, 
 " There, Signor, was drowned one of your countrymen 'bellis- 
 simo nomo! che fu bello ! '" yes, there in the pride of his prom- 
 ising youth, of his noble and almost god-like beauty, before the 
 very windows the very eyes of his bride the waves without 
 a frown had swept over the idol of many hearts the graceful
 
 88 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 and gallant Locke.* And above his grave was the voluptuous 
 sky, and over it floated the triumphant music. It was as the 
 moral of the Roman poets calling the living to a holiday over 
 the oblivion of the dead. 
 
 As the boat now touched the bank, Madame de Montaigne 
 accosted the musicians, thanked them with a sweet and unaf- 
 fected earnestness for the compliment so delicately offered, and 
 invited them ashore. The Milanese, who were six in number, 
 accepted the invitation, and moored their boat to the jutting 
 shore. It was then that Monsieur - de Montaigne pointed out to 
 the notice of his wife a boat, that had lingered under the shadow 
 of a bank, tenanted by a young man, who had seemed to listen 
 with rapt attention to the music, and who once had joined in 
 the chorus (as it was twice repeated), with a voice so exquisitely 
 attuned, and so rich in its deep power, that it had awakened the 
 admiration even of the serenaders themselves. 
 
 " Dost not that gentleman belong to your party ? " De Mon- 
 taigne asked of the Milanese. 
 
 " No, Signor, we know him not," was the answer; " his boat 
 came unawares upon us as we were singing." 
 
 While this question and answer were going on, the young man 
 had quitted his station, and his oars cut the glassy surface of 
 the lake, just before the place where De Montaigne stood. With 
 the courtesy of his country, the Frenchman lifted his hat; and 
 by his gesture, arrested the eye and oar of the solitary rower. 
 "Will you honor us," he said, "by joining our party?" 
 
 " It is a pleasure I covet too much to refuse," replied the boat- 
 man, with a slight foreign accent, and another moment he was 
 on shore. He was one of remarkable appearance. His longhair 
 floated with a careless grace over a brow more calm and thought- 
 ful than became his years; his manner was unusually quiet and 
 self-collected, and not without a certain stateliness, rendered 
 more striking by the height of his stature, a lordly contour of 
 feature, and a serene but settled expression of melancholy in his 
 eyes and smile. "You will easily believe," said he, " that, cold 
 as my countrymen are esteemed (for you must have discovered, 
 already, that I am an Englishman), I could not but share in the 
 enthusiasm of those about me, when loitering near the very 
 ground sacred to the inspiration. For the rest, I am residing for 
 
 * Captain William Locke, of the Life Guards (the only son of the accomplished Mr. 
 Locke of Norbury Park), distinguished by a character the most amiable, and by a personal 
 beauty that certainly equalled, perhaps surpassed, the highest masterpiece of Grecian 
 Sculpture. He was then returning, in a boat, from the town of Como, to his villa on the 
 banks of the lake, when the boat was upset by one of the mysterious undercurrents to which 
 the lake is dangerously subjected, and he was drowned in sight of his bride, who was watch- 
 ing his return from the terrace pr balcony of their home-
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 89 
 
 the present in yonder villa, opposite to your own; my name is 
 Maltravers, and I am enchanted to think that I am no longer a 
 personal stranger to one whose fame has already reached me." 
 
 Madame de Montaigne was flattered by something in the man- 
 ner and tone of the Englishman, which said a great deal more 
 than his words; and in a few minutes, beneath the influence of 
 the happy continental ease, the whole party seemed as if they 
 had known each other for years. Wines and fruits, and other 
 simple and unpretending refreshments, were brought out and 
 arranged on a rude table upon the grass, round which the guests 
 seated themselves with their host and hostess, and the clear 
 moon shone over them, and the lake slept below in silver. It 
 was a scene for a Boccaccio or a Claude. 
 
 The conversation naturally fell upon music; it is almost the 
 only thing which Italians in general can be said to know and 
 even that knowledge comes to them, like Dogberry's reading and 
 writing, by nature for of music, as an art, the unprofessional 
 amateurs know but little. As vain and arrogant of the last wreck 
 of their national genius as the Romans of old were of the em- 
 pire of all arts and arms, they look upon the harmonies of other 
 lands as barbarous; nor can they appreciate or understand ap- 
 preciation of the mighty German music, which is the proper 
 minstrelsy of a nation of men a music of philosophy, of heroism, 
 of the intellect and the imagination; beside which, the strains 
 of modern Italy are indeed effeminate, fantastic, and artificially 
 feeble. Rossini is theCanova of music, with much of the pretty, 
 with nothing of the grand! 
 
 The little party talked, however, of music, with an animation 
 and gusto that charmed the melancholy Maltravers, who for 
 weeks had known no companion save his own thoughts, and with 
 whom, at all times, enthusiasm for any art found a ready sym- 
 pathy. He listened attentively, but said little ; and from time 
 to time, whenever the conversation flagged, amused himself by 
 examining his companions. The six Milanese had nothing re- 
 markable in their countenances or in their talk ; they possessed 
 the characteristic energy and volubility of their countrymen, 
 with something of the masculine dignity which distinguishes the 
 Lombard from the Southern, and a little of the French polish, 
 which the inhabitants of Milan seldom fail to contract. Their 
 rank was evidently that of the middle class ; for Milan has a 
 middle class, and one which promises great results hereafter. 
 But they were noways distinguished from a thousand other Mil- 
 anese whom Maltravers had met in the walks and cafe's of their 
 noble city. The host was somewhat more interesting. He was
 
 90 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 a tall, handsome man, of about eight-and-forty, with a high fore- 
 head, and features strongly impressed with the sober character 
 of thought. He had but little of the French vivacity in his man- 
 ner ; and without looking at his countenance, you would still 
 have felt insensibly that he was the eldest of the party. His 
 wife was at least twenty years younger than himself, mirthful 
 and playful as a child, but with a certain feminine and fascinat- 
 ing softness in her unrestrained gestures and sparkling gaiety, 
 which seemed to subdue her natural joyousness into the form 
 and method of conventional elegance. Dark hair carelessly ar- 
 ranged, an open forehead, large black laughing eyes, a small 
 straight nose, a complexion just relieved from the olive by an 
 evanescent, yet perpetually recurring blush ; a round dimpled 
 cheek, an exquisitely shaped mouth with small pearly teeth, and 
 a light and delicate figure a little below the ordinary standard, 
 completed the picture of Madame de Montaigne. 
 
 "Well," said Signor Tirabaloschi, the most loquacious and 
 sentimental of the guests, filling his glass; "these are hours to 
 think of for the rest of life. But we can not hope the Signora will 
 long remember what we can never forget. Paris, says the French 
 proverb, est le pare its des fe mines : and, in paradise, I take it for 
 granted, we recollect very little of what happened on earth." 
 
 " Oh," said Madame de Montaigne, with a pretty musical 
 laugh ; " in Paris it is the rage to despise the frivolous life of 
 cities, and to affect des sentimens romanesques. This is precisely 
 the scene which our fine ladies and fine writers would die to 
 talk of and to describe. Is it not so, mon ami? " and she turned 
 affectionately to De Montaigne. 
 
 " True," replied he ; " but you are not worthy of such a 
 scene you laugh at sentiment and romance." 
 
 " Only at French sentiment and the romance of the Chaus- 
 se*e d'Antin. You English," she continued, shaking her head 
 at Maltravers, "have spoiled and corrupted us ; we are not con- 
 tent to imitate you, we must excel you ; we out-horror horror, 
 and rush from the extravagant into the frantic ! " 
 
 " The ferment of the new school is, perhaps, better than the 
 stagnation of the old," said Maltravers. "Yet even you," ad- 
 dressing himself to the Italians, "who first in Petrarch, in Tasso, 
 and in Ariosto, set to Europe the example of the Sentimental 
 and the Romantic ; who built among the very ruins of the classic 
 school, amidst its Corinthian columns and sweeping arches, the 
 spires and battlements of the Gothic even you are deserting your 
 old models and guiding literature into newer and wilder paths. 
 'Tis the way of the world eternal progress is eternal change. '''
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. $1 
 
 " Very possibly," said Signor Tirabaloschi, who understood 
 nothing of what was said. "Nay, it is extremely profound ; on 
 reflection, it is beautiful superb ; you French are so so in 
 short, it is admirable. Ugo Foscolo is a great genius so is Monti ; 
 and as for Rossini, you know his last opera cosa stupenda!" 
 
 Madame de Montaigne glanced at Maltravers, clapped her 
 little hands, and laughed outright. Maltravers caught the con- 
 tagion, and laughed also. But he hastened to repair the pedan- 
 tic error he had committed of talking over the heads of the 
 company. He took up the guitar, which, among their musical 
 instruments, the serenaders had brought, and after touching its 
 chords for a few moments, said ; "After all, madame, in your 
 society, and with this moonlit lake before us, we feel as if music 
 were our best medium of conversation. Let us prevail upon 
 these gentlemen to delight us once more." 
 
 " You forestall what I was going to ask," said the ex-singer, 
 and Maltravers offered the guitar to Tirabaloschi, who was in 
 fact dying to exhibit his powers again. He took the instrument 
 with a slight grimace of modesty, and then saying to Madame 
 de Montaigne, "There is a song composed by a young friend 
 of mine, which is much admired by the ladies ; though to me, it 
 seems a little too sentimental," sang the following stanzas (as 
 good singers are wont) with as much feeling as if he could un- 
 derstand them ! 
 
 NIGHT AND LOVE. 
 
 When stars are in the quiet skies, 
 
 Then most I pine for thee ; 
 Bend on me, then, thy tender eyes, 
 
 As stars look on the sea ! 
 
 For thoughts, like waves that glide by night, 
 
 Are stillest where they shine ; 
 Mine earthly love lies hushed in light, 
 
 Beneath the heaven of thine. 
 
 There is an hour when angels keep 
 
 Familiar watch on men ; 
 When coarser souls are wrapt in sleep, 
 
 Sweet spirit, meet me then. 
 
 There is an hour when holy dreams, 
 
 Through slumber, fairest glide ; 
 And in that mystic hour, it seems 
 
 Thou shouldst be by my side. 
 
 The thoughts of thee too sacred are 
 
 For daylight's common beam ; 
 I can but know thee as my star, 
 
 My angel, and my dream !
 
 92 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 And now, the example set, and the phrases of the fair hostess 
 exciting general emulation, the guitar circled from hand to 
 hand, and each of the Italians performed his part ; you might 
 have fancied yourself at one of the old Greek feasts, with the 
 lyre and the myrtle-branch going the round. 
 
 But both the Italians and the Englishman felt the entertain- 
 ment would be incomplete without hearing the celebrated vocal- 
 ist and improvvisatrice who presided over the little banquet; and 
 Madame de Montaigne, with a woman's tact, divined the gen- 
 eral wish, and anticipated the request that was sure to be made. 
 So she took the guitar from the last singer, and turning to Mal- 
 travers,said, "You have heard, of course,some of our more eminent 
 improvvisatori, and therefore if I ask for a subject it will be only to 
 prove to you that the talent is not general amongst the Italians." 
 
 "Ah," said Maltravers, "I have heard, indeed, some ugly old 
 gentlemen with immense whiskers,and gestures of the most alarm- 
 ing ferocity, pour out their vehement impromptus ; but I have 
 never yet listened to a young and a handsome lady. I shall only 
 believe the inspiration when I hear it direct from the Muse." 
 
 " Well, I will do my best to deserve your compliments you 
 must give me the theme." 
 
 Maltravers paused a moment, and suggested the Influence of 
 Praise on Genius. 
 
 The improvvisatrice nodded assent, and after a short prelude 
 broke forth into a wild and varied strain of verse, in a voice so 
 exquisitely sweet, with a taste so accurate, and a feeling so deep, 
 that the poetry sounded to the enchanted listeners like the lan- 
 guage that Armida might have uttered. Yet the verses them- 
 selves, like all extemporaneous effusions, were of a nature both 
 to pass from the memory and to defy transcription. 
 
 When Madame de Montaigne's song ceased, no rapturous plau- 
 dits followed the Italians were too affected by the science, Mal- 
 travers by the feeling, for the coarseness of ready praise ; and 
 ere that delighted silence which made the first impulse was 
 broken, a new-comer, descending from the groves that clothed 
 the ascent behind the house, was in the midst of the party. 
 
 " Ah, my dear brother," cried Madame de Montaigne, starting 
 up, and hanging fondly on the arm of the stranger, "why have 
 you lingered so long in the wood ? You, so delicate ! And how 
 are you ? How pale you seem ! " 
 
 " It is but the reflection of the moonlight, Teresa," said the 
 intruder ; "I feel well." So saying, he scowled on the merry 
 party, and turned as if to slink away. 
 
 "No, no," whispered Teresa, "you must stay a moment and
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 93 
 
 be presented to my guests : there is an Englishman here whom 
 you will like who will interest you." 
 
 With that she almost dragged him forward, and introduced 
 him to her guests. Signor Cesarini returned their salutations 
 with a mixture of bashfulness and hauteur, half-awkward and 
 half-graceful, and muttering some inaudible greeting, sank into a 
 seat and appeared instantly lost in reverie. Maltravers gazed 
 upon him, and was pleased with his aspect which, if not hand- 
 some, was strange and peculiar. He was extremely slight and 
 thin his cheeks hollow and colorless, with a profusion of black 
 silken ringlets that almost descended to his shoulders. His 
 eyes, deeply sunk into his head, were large and intensely bril- 
 liant ; and a thin moustache, curling downward, gave an addi- 
 tional austerity to his mouth, which was closed with gloomy and 
 half-sarcastic firmness. He was not dressed as people dress in 
 general, but wore a frock of dark camlet, with a large shirt-collar 
 turned down, and a narrow strip of black silk twisted rather 
 than tied round his throat ; his nether garments fitted tight to 
 his limbs, and a pair of half-hessians completed his costume. 
 It was evident that the young man (and he was very young 
 perhaps about nineteen or twenty) indulged that coxcombry of 
 the Picturesque which is the sign of a vainer mind than is the 
 commoner coxcombry of the Mode. 
 
 It is astonishing how frequently it happens, that the intro- 
 duction of a single intruder upon a social party is sufficient to 
 destroy all the familiar harmony that existed there before. We 
 see it even when the intruder is agreeable and communicative 
 but in the present instance a ghost could scarcely have been a 
 more unwelcoming or unwelcome visitor. The presence of this 
 shy, speechless, supercilious-looking man, threw a damp over 
 the whole group. The gay Tirabaloschi immediately discovered 
 that it -was time to depart it had not struck any one before, 
 but it certainly was late. The Italians began to bustle about, to 
 collect their music, to make fine speeches and fine professions 
 to bow and to smile to scramble into their boat, and to push 
 off toward the inn at Como, where they had engaged their 
 quarters for the night. As the boat glided away, and while 
 two of them were employed at the oar, the remaining four took 
 up their instruments and sang a parting glee. It was quite 
 midnight the hush of all things round had grown more in- 
 tense and profound there was a wonderful might of silence 
 in the shining air and amidst the shadows thrown by the near 
 banks and the distant hills over the water. So that as the 
 music chiming in with the oars grew fainter and fainter,
 
 94 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 it is impossible to describe the thrilling and magical effect 
 it produced. 
 
 The party ashore did not speak ; there was a moisture, a 
 grateful one, in the bright eyes of Teresa, as she leant upon the 
 manly form of De Montaigne, for whom her attachment was, 
 perhaps, yet more deep and pure for the difference of their 
 ages. A girl who once loves a man, not indeed old, but much 
 older than herself, loves him with such a looking up and ven- 
 erating love ! Maltravers stood a little apart from the couple, 
 on the edge of the shelving bank, with folded arms and thought- 
 ful countenance. " How is it," said he, unconscious that he was 
 speaking half aloud, "that the commonest beings of the world 
 should be able to give us a pleasure so unworldly ? What a 
 contrast between those musicians and this music ! At this dis- 
 tance their forms are dimly seen, one might almost fancy the 
 creators of those sweet sounds to be of another mould from us. 
 Perhaps even thus the poetry of the Past rings on our ears 
 the deeper and the diviner, because removed from the clay 
 which made the poets. O Art, Art ! how dost thou beautify 
 and exalt us ; what is nature without thee ! " 
 
 " You are a poet, Signer," said a soft clear voice beside the 
 soliloquist; and Maltravers started to find that he had unknow- 
 ingly a listener in the young Cesarini. 
 
 "No," said Maltravers, "I cull the flowers, I do not cultivate 
 the soil." 
 
 "And why not?" said Cesarini, with abrupt energy; "you 
 are an Englishman you have a public you have a country 
 you have a living stage, a breathing audience; we, Italians, 
 have nothing but the dead." 
 
 As he looked on the young man, Maltravers was surprised to 
 see the sudden animation which glowed upon his pale features. 
 
 "You asked me a question I fain would put to you," said 
 the Englishman, after a pause. " You, methinks, are a poet ?" 
 
 " I have fancied that I might be one. But poetry with us is 
 a bird in the wilderness it sings from an impulse the song 
 dies without a listener. Oh that ^belonged to a living country, 
 France, England, Germany, America, and not to the corrup- 
 tion of a dead giantess for such is now the land of the ancient 
 lyre." 
 
 "Let us meet again, and soon," said Maltravers, holding out 
 his hand. 
 
 Cesarini hesitated a moment, and then accepted and returned 
 the proffered salutation. Reserved as he was, something in 
 Maltravers attracted him; and, indeed, there was that in Ernest
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 95 
 
 which fascinated most of those unhappy eccentrics who do not 
 move in the common orbit of the world. 
 
 In a few moments more the Englishman had said farewell to 
 the owners of the villa, and his light boat skimmed rapidly over 
 the tide. 
 
 " What do you think of the Inglese?" said Madame de Mon- 
 taigne to her husband, as they turned toward the house. (They 
 said not a word about the Milanese.) 
 
 "He has a noble bearing for one so young," said the French- 
 man, "and seems to have seen the world, and both to have 
 profited and to have suffered by it." 
 
 " He will prove an acquisition to our society here," returned 
 Teresa; "he interests me; and you, Castruccio?" turning to 
 seek her brother; but Cesarini had already, with his usual noise- 
 less step, disappeared within the house. 
 
 "Alas, my poor brother!" she replied, "I cannot compre- 
 hend him. What does he desire?" 
 
 " Fame ! " replied De Montaigne, calmly. " It is a vain 
 shadow ; no wonder that he disquiets himself in vain." 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 " Alas ! what boots it with incessant care 
 To strictly meditate the thankless Muse ; 
 Were it not better done as others use, 
 To sport with Amaryllis in the shade, 
 Or with the tangles of Nesera's hair ? " 
 
 MILTON'S Lycidas. 
 
 THERE is nothing more salutary to active men than occasional 
 interviews of repose, when we look within, instead of without, 
 and examine almost insensibly (for I hold strict and conscious 
 self-scrutiny a thing much rarer than we suspect) what we 
 have done what we are capable of doing. It is settling, as it 
 were, a debtor and creditor account with the Past, before we 
 plunge into new speculations. Such an interval of repose did 
 Maltravers now enjoy. In utter solitude, so far as familiar 
 companionship is concerned, he had for several weeks been 
 making himself acquainted with his own character and mind. 
 He read and thought much, but without any exact or defined 
 object. I think it is Montaigne who says somewhere " People 
 talk about thinking but for my part I never think, except when 
 I sit down to write." I believe this is not a very common case, 
 for people who don't write think as well as people who do; but
 
 96 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 connected, severe, well-developed thought, in contradistinction 
 to vague meditation, must be connected with some tangible 
 plan or object; and therefore we must be either writing men or 
 acting men, if we desire to test the logic, and unfold into sym- 
 metrical design the fused colors of our reasoning faculty. 
 Maltravers did not yet feel this, but he was sensible of some 
 intellectual want. His ideas, his memories, his dreams, crowded 
 thick and confused upon him; he wished to arrange them in 
 order, and he could not. He was overpowered by the unorgan- 
 ized affluence of his own imagination and intellect. He had 
 often, even as a child, fancied that he was formed to do some- 
 thing in the world, but he had never steadily considered what 
 it was to be, whether he was to become a man of books or a 
 man of deeds. He had written poetry when it poured irresistibly 
 from the fount of emotion within, but looked at his effusions 
 with a cold and neglectful eye when the enthusiasm had passed 
 away. 
 
 Maltravers was not much gnawed by the desire of fame 
 perhaps few men of real genius are, until artificially worked up 
 to it. There is in a sound and correct intellect, with all its 
 gifts fairly balanced, a calm consciousness of power, a certainty 
 that when its strength is fairly put out, it must be to realize the 
 usual result of strength. Men of second-rate faculties, on the 
 contrary, are fretful and nervous, fidgeting after a celebrity 
 which they do not estimate by their own talents, but by the 
 talents of some one else. They see a tower, but are occupied 
 only with measuring its shadow, and think their own height 
 (which they never calculate) is to cast as broad a one over the 
 earth. It is the short man who is always throwing up his chin, 
 and is as erect as a dart. The tall man stoops, and the strong 
 man is not always using the dumb-bells. 
 
 Maltravers had not yet, then, the keen and sharp yearning 
 for reputation; he had not, as yet, tasted its sweets and bitters 
 fatal draught, which once tasted, begets too often an insatiable 
 thirst ! neither had he enemies and decriers whom he was de- 
 sirous of abashing by merit. And that is a very ordinary cause 
 for exertion in proud minds. He was, it is true, generally 
 reputed clever, and fools were afraid of him: but as- he actively 
 interfered with no man's pretensions, so no man thought it 
 necessary to call him a blockhead. At present, therefore, it 
 was quietly and naturally that his mind was working its legit- 
 imate way to its destiny of exertion. He began idly and care- 
 lessly to note down his thoughts and impressions ; what was 
 once put on the paper, begot new matter; his ideas became
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 97 
 
 more lucid to himself ; and the page grew a looking-glass, 
 which presented the likeness of his own features. He began 
 by writing with rapidity, and without method. He had no 
 object but to please himself, and to find a vent for an over- 
 charged spirit; and, like most writings of the young, the matter 
 was egotistical. We commence with the small nucleus of pas- 
 sion and experience, to widen the circle afterwards ; and, per- 
 haps, the most extensive and universal masters of life and 
 character have begun by being egotists. For there is, in a man 
 who has much in him, a wonderfully acute and sensitive per- 
 ception of his own existence. An imaginative and susceptible 
 person has, indeed, ten times as much life as a dull fellow, "an* 
 he be Hercules." He multiplies himself in a thousand objects, 
 associates each with his own identity, lives in each, and almost 
 looks upon the world with its infinite objects as a part of his 
 individual being. Afterwards, as he tames down, he withdraws 
 his forces into the citadel, but he still has a knowledge of, and 
 an interest in, the land they once covered. He understands 
 other people, for he has lived in other people the dead and 
 the living; fancied himself now Brutus and now Caesar, and 
 thought how he should act in almost every imaginable circum- 
 stance of life. 
 
 Thus, when he begins to paint human characters, essentially 
 different from his own, his knowledge comes to him almost in- 
 tuitively. It is as if he were describing the mansions in which 
 he himself has formerly lodged, though for a short time. Hence, 
 in great writers of History of Romance of the Drama the 
 gusto with which they paint their personages ; their creations are 
 flesh and blood, not shadows or machines. 
 
 Maltravers was at first, then, an egotist, in the matter of his 
 rude and desultory sketches in the manner, as I said before, 
 he was careless and negligent, as men will be who have not yet 
 found that expression is an art. Still those wild and valueless 
 essays those rapt and secret confessions of his own heart 
 were a delight to him. He began to taste the transport, the 
 intoxication of an author. And oh, what a luxury is there in that 
 first love of the Muse! that process by which we give a pal- 
 pable form to the long-intangible visions which have flitted across 
 us ; the beautiful ghost of the Ideal within us, which we in- 
 voke in the Gadara of our still closets, with the wand of the 
 simple pen ! 
 
 It was early noon, the day after he had formed his acquain- 
 tance with the De Montaignes, that Maltravers sat in his favorite 
 room ; the one he had selected for his study, from the many
 
 98 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 chambersqf his largq .and solitary habitation. He sat in a recess 
 by the open window, which looked on the lake ; and books were 
 scattered on his table, and Maltravers was jotting down his 
 criticisms on what he read, mingled with his impressions on 
 what he saw. It is the pleasantest kind of composition the 
 note-book of a man who studies in retirement, who observes in 
 society, who in all things can admire and feel. He was yet en- 
 gaged in this easy task, when Cesarini was announced, and the 
 young brother of the fair Teresa entered his apartment. 
 
 " I have availed myself s9on of your invitation," said the Italian. 
 
 " I acknowledge the compliment," replied Maltravers, pressing 
 the hand shyly held out to him. 
 
 " I see you have been writing I thought you were attached 
 to literature. I read it in your countenance, I heard it in your 
 voice," said Cesarini, seatjmg himself. 
 
 "I have been idly beguiling a very idle leisure, it is true," 
 said Maltravers. 
 
 " But you do not write for yourself alone you have an eye 
 to the great tribunals Time and the Public." 
 
 " Not .so, I assure you honestly," said Maltravers, shilling. 
 ". If you look at the books on my table, you will see that they are 
 the great masterpieces of ancient and modern lore these are 
 stfldires that .discourage tyros " 
 
 ;| But inspire. them." 
 
 I do not think so. Models may form our tnste as critics, 
 but not excite us to be authors. I fancy that our own emotions, 
 our own sense of our destiny, make the great lever of the inert 
 matter we accumulate. ' Look in thy heart and write/ said an 
 old English writer,* who did not, however, practice what he 
 preached. And you, Signer " 
 
 "Am nothing, and would be something," said the young man 
 shortly and bitterly. 
 
 "And how does not that wish realize its object ?" 
 
 "Merely because I am an Italian," said Cesarini. " With us 
 there is no literary public no -vast reading class we have 
 dilettanti and literati, and students, and. even authors; but 
 these make only a coterie, not a public. I have written, I have 
 published ; but no one listened to me. I am an author without 
 jreaders." 
 
 "It is no uncommon case in England," said Maltravers. 
 
 The Italian continued " I thought to live in the moyths of 
 men to stir up thoughts long dumb to awaken the strings of 
 the oldJyre ! In vain. Like the nightingale, I sing only to break 
 
 * Sir Philip Sidney.
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 99 
 
 my heart with a false and melancholy emulation of other 
 notes. 1 ' 
 
 " There are epochs in all countries," said Maltravers, gently, 
 " when peculiar veins of literature are out of vogue, and when 
 no genius, can bring them into public notice. But you wisely 
 said there were two tribunals the Public and Time. Your 
 great Italian historians wrote for the unborn their works not 
 even .published, till their death. That indifference to living 
 reputation has in it, to me, something of the sublime." 
 
 " I cannot imitate them and they were not poets," said Cesa- 
 rini, sharply. " To poets, praise is a necessary aliment ; neglect 
 is death." 
 
 " My dear Signor Cesarini," said the Englishman, feelingly, 
 "do not give .way to these thoughts. There ought to be in a 
 healthful ambition the stubborn stuff of persevering longevity; 
 it must live on, and hope, for the day which comes slow or fast 
 tq.all whose labors deserve the goal." 
 
 " But perhaps mine do not. I sometimes fear so it is a hor- 
 rid thought." 
 
 "You a,re very young yet," said Maltravers, " how few at your 
 age ever sicken for fame ! That first step is, perhaps, the half 
 way to the prize.'V 
 
 I am not sure that Ernest thought exactly as he spoke ; but 
 it was the most delicate consolation to offer to a man whose 
 abrupt frankness embarrassed and distressed him. The young 
 man shook his head despondingly. Maltravers tried to change 
 the subject he arose and moved to the balcony, which over- 
 hung the lake he talked of the weather he dwelt on the ex- 
 quisite scenery he pointed to the minute and more latent 
 beauties around, with the eye and taste of one who had looked 
 at Nature. in her details. The poet grew more animated and 
 cheerful ; he became even eloquent ; he quoted poetry and he 
 talked it. Maltravers was more and more interested in him. He 
 felt a curiosity to know if his talents equalled his aspirations: 
 he hinted to Cesarini his wish to see his compositions it was 
 just what the young man desired. Poor Cesarini ! It was much 
 to him to get a new listener, and he fondly imagined every 
 honest listener must be a warm admirer. But with the coyness 
 of his caste, he affected reluctance and hesitation ; he dallied 
 with his own impatient yearnings. And Maltravers, to smooth 
 his way, proposed, an excursion on the lake. 
 
 " One of my men shall row," said he ; " you shall recite to me, 
 and I will be to you what the old housekeeper was to Moliere." 
 
 Maltravers had deep good nature where he was touched,
 
 100 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 : 
 
 though he had not a superfluity of what is called good-humor, 
 which floats on the surface and smiles on all alike. He had 
 much of the milk of human kintfness, but little of its oil. 
 
 The poet assented, and they were soon upon the lake. It was 
 a sultry day, and it was noon ; so the boat crept slowly along 
 by the shadow of the shore, and Cesarini drew from his breast- 
 pocket some manuscripts of sm'all and beautiful writing. Who 
 does not kno\v the pains a young poet takes to bestow a fair 
 dress on his darling rhymes ! 
 
 Cesarini read well and feelingly. Everything was in favor of 
 the reader. His own poetical countenance his voice, his en- 
 thusiasm, half-suppressed the pre-engaged interest of the 
 auditor the dreamy loveliness of the hour and scene (for there 
 is a great deal as to time in. these things ! ) Maltravers listened 
 intently. It is very difficult to judge of the exact merit of poetry 
 in another language, even when we know that language well- 
 so much is there in the untranslatable magic of expression, the 
 little subtleties of style. But Maltravers, ''fresh, as he himself 
 had said, from the study of great and original writers, could not 
 but feel that he' was listening to feeble though melodious medi- 
 ocrity. It was the poetry of words, not things. He thought it 
 '.ruel, however, to be hypercritical, and he uttered all the com- 
 monplaces of eulogium that occurred to him. The young man 
 was enchanted : "And yet, ".said he with a sigh, '" I have no 
 Public. In England they would appreciate me." Alas, in Eng- 
 land, at that moment, there were five hundred poets as young, as 
 ardent, and yet more gifted, whose hearts beat with the same 
 desire whose nerves were broken by the sarne disappointment. 
 
 Maltravers found that his young friend would not listen to any 
 judgment not purely favorable. The archbishop in "Gil Bias" 
 was, not more touchy upon any criticism that was not panegyric. 
 Maltravers thought it a bad sign, but he recollected Gil Bias, - 
 and prudently refrained from bringing tin himself the benevolent 
 wish of "beaucoup de bonheur et un peu plus.de bon gout." 
 When Cesarini had finished his MS., he was anxious to con- 
 clude the excursion he longed to be at home, and think over 
 the admiration he had excited. But he left his poems with 
 Maltravers, and getting on shore by the remains of Pliny's villa, 
 was soon out of sight. 
 
 Maltravers that evening read the poems with 'attention. His 
 first opinion was confirmed. The young man wrote without 
 knowledge. He had never felt the passions he painted, never 
 been in the situations he described. There was no originality in 
 him, for there was no experience ; it was exquisite mechanism,
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. lot 
 
 his verse nothing more ! It might well deceive him, for it could 
 not but flatter his ear and Tasso's silver march rang out not more 
 musically than did the chiming stanzas of Castruccio Cesarini. 
 The perusal of this poetry and his conversation with the poet 
 threw Maltravers into a fit of deep musing. "This poor Cesa- 
 rini may warn me against myself! " thought he. "Better hew 
 wood and draw water, than attach ourselves devotedly to an art 
 in which we have not the capacity to excel. ... It is to throw 
 away the healthful objects of life for a diseased dream, worse 
 than the Rosicrucians, it is to make a sacrifice of all human 
 beauty for the smile of a sylphid, that never visits us but in vis- 
 ions." Maltravers looked over hisbwn compositions, and thrust 
 them into the fire. He slept ill that night. His pride was a little de- 
 jected. He was like a beauty who has seen a caricature of herself. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 " Still follow SENSE, of every art the Soul." 
 
 POPE : Moral Essays Essay iv. 
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS spent much of his time with the family 
 of De Montaigne. There is no period of life in which we are 
 more accessible to the sentiment of friendship, than in the inter- 
 vals of moral exhaustion which succeed to the disappointments of 
 the passions. There is, then, something inviting in those gentler 
 feelings which keep alive, but do not fever, the circulation of 
 the affections. Maltravers looked with the benevolence of a 
 brother upon the brilliant, versatile, and restless Teresa. She 
 was the last person in the world he could have been in love with 
 for his nature, ardent, excitable, yet fastidious, required some- 
 thing of repo'se in the manners and temperament of the woman 
 he could love, and Teresa scarcely knew what repose was. 
 Whether playing with her children (and she had two lovely ones 
 the eldest six years old), or teasing her calm and meditative 
 husband, or pouring out extempore verses, or rattling over airs 
 which she never finished, on the guitar or piano or making ex- 
 cursions on the lake or, in short, in whatever occupation she 
 appeared as the Cynthia of the minute,she was always gay and mo- 
 bile never out of humor, never acknowledging a single career 
 cross in life never susceptible of grief, save when her brother's 
 delicate healthor morbid tempersaddened her atmosphere of sun- 
 shine. Even then, the sanguine elasticity of her mind and con- 
 stitution quickly recovered from the depression ; and she per-
 
 102 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 suaded herself that Castruccio would grow stronger every year, 
 and ripen into a celebrated and happy man. Castruccio him- 
 self lived what romantic poetasters call the ll life of a poet." He 
 loved to see the sun rise over the distant Alps or the midnight 
 moon sleeping on the lake. He spent half the day, and often 
 half the night, in solitary rambles, weaving his airy rhymes, or 
 indulging his gloomy reveries, and he thought loneliness made 
 the element of a poet. Alas. ! Dante, Alfieri, even Petrarch might 
 have taught him, that a poet must have intimate knowledge of 
 men as well as mountains, if he desire to become the CREATOR. 
 When Shelley, in one of his prefaces, boasts of being familiar 
 with Alps and glaciers, and Heaven, knows what, the critical 
 artist cannot help wishing that he had been rather familiar with 
 Fleet Street or the Strand. Perhaps, then, that remarkable geni- 
 us might have been more capable of realizing characters of flesh 
 and blood, and have composed corporeal and consummate wholes, 
 not confused and glittering fragments. 
 
 Though Ernest was attached to Teresa and deeply interested 
 in Castruccio, it was De Montaigne for whom he experienced 
 the higher and graver sentiment of esteem. This Frenchman 
 was one Acquainted with a much larger world than that of the 
 Coteries. He had served in the army, been employed with dis- 
 tinction in civic affairs, and was of that robust and healthful 
 moral constitution which can bear with every variety of social 
 life, and estimate calmly .the balance of our moral fortunes. 
 Trial and experience had left, him that, true philosopher who is 
 too wise to be an optimist, too just to be a misanthrope. He 
 enjoyed life with sober judgment, and pursued, the path most 
 suited to himself, without declaring it to be the best for others. 
 He was a little hard, perhaps, upon the errors that belong to 
 weakness and conceit not to those that have their source in 
 great natures or generous thoughts. Among his characteristics 
 was a profound admiration for England. His own country he 
 half loved, yet half disdained. The impetuosity and levity of 
 his compatriots displeased his sober and dignified notions. He 
 could not forgive, them (he was wont to say) for having made 
 the two grand experiments of popular revolution and military 
 despotism in vain. He sympathized neither with the young en- 
 thusiasts who desired a republic, without well knowing the nu- 
 merous strata of habits and customs upon which that fabric, if 
 designed for permanence, should be built nor with the unedu- 
 cated and fierce chivalry that longed for a restoration of the 
 warrior empire nor with the dull and arragant bigots who con- 
 nected all ideas of order and government with the iit-starred and
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. IOJ 
 
 worn-out dynasty of the Bourbons. In fact, GOOD SENSE was 
 with him \\\Q p/inciptum et fons of all theories and all practice. 
 And it was this quality that attached him to the English. His 
 philosophy on this head was rather curious. 
 
 "Good sense," said he one day to Maltravers, as they were 
 walking. to and fro at De Montaigne's villa, by the margin of the 
 lake, "is 'riot a merely intellectual attribute. It is rather the re- 
 suit of a just equilibrium of all our faculties, spiritual and moral. 
 The dishonest, or the toys of their own passions, may have geni- 
 us ; but they rarely if ever, have good sense in the conduct of 
 life. They may often win large prizes, but it is by a game of 
 chance, not skill. But the man whom I perceive walking an 
 honorable and upright career^ just to others, and also to him- 
 self (for we owe justice to ourselves to the care of our fortunes, 
 our character : to the management of our passions) is a more 
 dignified representative of his Maker than the mere child of ge- 
 nius. Of such a man, we say, he has GOOD SENSE ; yes, but he 
 has also integrity, self-respect, and self-denial. A thousand 
 trials which his sense braves and conquers, are temptations also 
 to his probity his temper -in a word, to all the many sides of 
 his complicated nature. Now, I do not think he will have this 
 good sei^se any more than a drunkard will have strong nerves, 
 unless he be in the constant habit of keeping his mind clear from 
 the intoxication of envy, vanity, and the various emotions that 
 dupe and mislead us. Good sense is not, therefore, an abstract 
 quality or a solitary talent ; but it is the natural result of the 
 habit of thinking justly, and therefore seeing clearly, and is as 
 different from the sagacity that belongs to a diplomatist or at- 
 torney, as the philosophy of Socrates differed from the rhetoric 
 of Gorgias. As a mass of individual excellencies make up this 
 attribute in a man, so a mass of such men thus characterized 
 give a character to a nation. Your England is, therefore, re- 
 nowned for its good sense ; but it is renowned also for the ex- 
 cellencies which accompany strong sense in an individual, high 
 honesty and faith in its dealings, a warm love of justice and fair 
 play, a general freedom from the violent crimes common on the 
 Continent, and the energetic perseverance in enterprise once cqm- 
 menced, which results from a bold and healthful disposition." 
 
 "Our Wars, our Debt " began Maltravers. 
 
 " Pardon me," interrupted De Montaigne, " I am speaking of 
 your People, not of your Government. A government is often 
 a very unfair representative of a nation. But even in the wars 
 you allude to, if you examine, you will generally find them origi- 
 nate in the love of justice (which is the basis of good sense)j
 
 104 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 not from any insane desire of conquest or glory. A man, how- 
 ever sensible, must have a heart in his bosom, and a great nation 
 cannot be a piece of selfish clockwork. Suppose you and I are 
 sensible, prudent men, and we see in a crowd one violent fellow 
 unjustly knocking another on the head, we should be brutes, 
 not men, if we did not interfere with the savage ; but if we 
 thrust ourselves into a crowd with a large bludgeon, and belabor 
 our neighbors, with the hope that the spectators would cry/ See 
 what a bold, strong fellow that is ! ' then we should be only 
 playing the madman from the motive of the coxcomb. I fear 
 you will find, in the military history of the French and English, 
 the application of my parable." 
 
 "Yet still, I confess, there is a gallantry and a nobleman-like 
 and Norman spirit in the whole French nation, which make me 
 forgive many of their excesses, and think they are destined for 
 great purposes, when experience shall have sobered their hot 
 blood. Some nations, as some men, are slow in arriving at ma- 
 turity ; others seem men in their cradle. The English, thanks 
 to their sturdy Saxon origin elevated, not depressed, by the Nor- 
 man infusion, never were children. The difference is striking, 
 when you regard the representatives of both in their great men- 
 whether writers or active citizens." 
 
 "Yes," said De Montaigne, "in Milton and Cromwell there 
 is nothing of the brilliant child. I cannot say as much for Vol- 
 taire or Napoleon. Even Richelieu, the manliest of our states- 
 men, had so much of the French infant in him as to fancy him- 
 self a beau gar(0n, a gallant, a wit, and a poet. As for the Ra- 
 cine school of writers, they were not out of the leading-strings 
 of imitation cold copyists of a pseudo-classic in which they 
 saw the form, and never caught the spirit. What so little Ro- 
 man, Greek, Hebrew, as their Roman, Greek,and Hebrew dramas? 
 Your rude Shakespeare's Julius Caesar even his Troilus and 
 Cressida have the ancient spirit, precisely as they are imitations 
 of nothing ancient. But our Frenchmen copied the giant ima- 
 ges of old, just as the school-girl copies a drawing, by holding 
 it up to the window, and tracing the lines on silver paper." 
 
 "But your new writers De Stael Chateaubriand?"* 
 
 " I find no other fault with the sentimentalists, "answered the 
 severe critic, "than that of exceeding feebleness -they have no 
 bone and muscle in their genius all is flaccid and rotund in 
 its feminine symmetry. They seem to think that vigor consists 
 in florid phrases and little aphorisms, and delineate all the 
 
 * At the time of this conversation, the later school, adorned by Victor Hugo, who, with 
 notions of art elaborately wrong, is still a man of extraordinary genius, had not risen into it* 
 present equivocal reputation.
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 10$ 
 
 mighty tempests of the human heart with the polished pretti- 
 ness of a miniature-painter on ivory. No ! these two are chil- 
 dren of another kind affected, tricked out, well-dressed chil- 
 dren very clever, very precocious but children still. Their 
 whinings, and their sentimentalities, and their egotism, and 
 their vanity, cannot interest masculine beings who know what 
 life and its stern objects are." 
 
 " Your brother-in-law," said Maltravers with a slight smile, 
 " must find in you a discouraging censor." 
 
 "My poor Castruccio," replied De Montaigne, with a half- 
 sigh ; " he is one of those victims whom I believe to be more 
 common than we dream of men whose aspirations are above 
 their powers. I agree with a great German writer, that in the 
 first walks of Art no man has a right to enter, unless he is con- 
 vinced that he has strength and speed for the goal. Castruccio 
 might be an amiable member of society, nay, an able and use- 
 ful man, if he would apply the powers he possesses to the re- 
 wards they may obtain. He has talent enough to win him 
 reputation in any profession but that of a poet." 
 
 "But authors who obtain immortality are not always first rate." 
 
 " First-rate in their way, I suspect ; even if that way be false 
 or trivial. They must be connected with the history of their 
 literature ; you must be able to say of them, ' In this school, be 
 it bad or good, they exerted such and such an influence'; in a 
 word, they must form a link in the great chain of a nation's 
 authors, which may be afterwards forgotten by the superficial, 
 but without which the chain would be incomplete. And thus, 
 if not first-rate for all time, they have been first-rate in their 
 own day. But Castruccio is only the echo of others he can 
 neither found a school nor ruin one. Yet this " (again added 
 De Montaigne after a pause) " this melancholy malady in my 
 brother-in-law would cure itself, perhaps, if he were not Italian. 
 In your animated and bustling country, after sufficient disap- 
 pointment as a poet, he would glide into some other calling, 
 and his vanity and craving for effect would find a rational and 
 manly outlet. But in Italy, what can a clever man do, if he is 
 not a poet, or a robber ? If he love his country, that crime is 
 enough to unfit him for civil employment, and his mind cannot 
 stir a step in the bold channels of speculation without falling 
 foul of the Austrian or the Pope. No ; the best I can hope for 
 Castruccio is, that he will end in an antiquary, and dispute about 
 ruins with the Romans. Better that than mediocre poetry." 
 
 Maltravers was silent, and thoughtful. Strange to say, De 
 Montaigne's views did not discourse his own new and secret
 
 106 ERNEST ,MALTRAVERS. 
 
 ardor for intellectual triumphs ; not because he felt that he was 
 now able to achieve them, but because he felt the iron of his 
 own nature, and knew that a man who has iron in his nature 
 must ultimately hit upon some way of shaping the metal into use. 
 
 The. host and guest were now joined by Castruccio himself 
 silent and gloomy as indeed he usually was, especially in the 
 presence of De Montaigne, with whom he felt his "self-love" 
 wounded ; for though he longed to despise his hard brother-in- 
 law, the young poet was compelled to acknowledge that DC 
 Montaigne was not a man to be despised. 
 
 Maltravers dined with the De Montaignes, and spent tiie 
 evening with them. He could not but observe that Castruc- 
 cio, who affected in his verses the softest sentiments who was, 
 indeed, by original nature, tender and gentle had become so 
 completely warped by that worst of all mental vices the eter- 
 nal pondering on his own excellencies, talents, mortifications, 
 and ill-usage, that he ne-ver contributed to the gratification of 
 those around him ; he had none of the little arts of social be- 
 nevolence, none of. the playful youth of disposition which usu- 
 ally belongs to the good-hearted, and for which men of a master- 
 genius, however elevated their studies, however stern or reserved 
 to the vulgar world, are commpnly noticeable amidst the friends 
 they love, or in the home they adorn. Occupied with one dream, 
 centred in self, the young Italian was sullen and morose to all 
 who did not sympathize with his own morbid fancies. From 
 the children the sister the friend the whole living earth, he 
 fled to a poem on Solitude, or stanzas upon Fame. Maltravers 
 said to himself, " I will never be an author I will never sigh 
 for renown if I am to purchase shadows at such a price !" 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 " It cannot be too deeply impressed on the mind, that application is the 
 price to be paid for mental acquisitions, and it is as absurd to expect them 
 without it as to hope for a harvest where we have sown no seed." 
 
 " In everything we do, we may be possibly laying a train of consequences, 
 the operation of which may terminate only with our existence." 
 
 BAILEY : Essays on' the Formation and Publication of Opinions. 
 
 
 
 . TIME passed and autumn was far advanced toward winter ; 
 still Maltravers lingered at Como. He saw little of any other 
 family than that of the De Montaignes ; and the greater part 
 of his time was necessarily spent alone. His occupation con- 
 tinued tp be that Qf making experiments of his own powers,
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 107 
 
 these gradually became bolder and more comprehensive. He 
 took care, however, not to show his "Diversions of Como " to 
 his new friends : he wanted no audience he dreamt of no 
 Public ; he desired merely to practise his own mind. He be- 
 came aware, of his own accord, as he proceeded, that a man 
 can neither study with much depth, nor compose with much 
 art, unless he has some definite object before him ; in the first, 
 some one branch of knowledge to master : in the last, some one 
 conception to work out. Maltravers fell back upon his boyish 
 passion for metaphysical, speculation ; but with what different 
 results did he now wrestle with the' subtle schoolmen, now 
 that he had practically known mankind ! How insensibly new 
 lights broke in upon him, as he threaded the labyrinth of cause 
 and effect, by which we seek to arrive at that curious and bi- 
 form monster our own natr.re. His mind became saturated, 
 as it were, with these profound studies and meditations ; and 
 when at length he paused from them, he felt as if he had not 
 been living in solitude, but had gone through a process of action 
 in the busy world: so much juster, so much clearer, had become 
 his knowledge of himself and others. But though these re- 
 searches colored, they did not limit his intellectual pursuits. 
 Poetry and the lighter letters became to him, not merely a re- 
 laxation, but a critical and thoughtful study. He delighted to 
 penetrate into the causes that have made the airy webs spun by 
 men's fancies so permanent and powerful in their influence over 
 the hard, work-day world. And what a lovely scene what a 
 sky what an air wherein to commence the projects of that 
 ambition which seeks to establish an empire in the hearts and 
 memories of mankind ! I believe it has a great effect on the 
 future labors of a writer, the place where he first dreams that 
 it is his destiny to write ! 
 
 From these pursuits Ernest was aroused by another letter 
 from Cleveland. His kind friend had been disappointed and 
 vexed that Maltravers did not follow his advice, and retutn to 
 England. He had shown his displeasure by hot answering 
 Ernest's letter of excuses, but lately he had been seized with a 
 dangerous illness which reduced him to the brink of the grave ; 
 and with a heart softened by the exhaustion of the frame, he 
 now wrote in the first moments of convalescence to Maltravers, 
 informing him of his attack and danger, and once more urging 
 him to return. The 'thought 'that Cleveland the dear, kind, 
 gentle- guardian of his youth had been near unto death, that 
 he might never more have hung upon that fostering hand, nor 
 replied to that paternal voice, smote Ernest with terror and re-
 
 I08 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 morse. He resolved instantly to return to England, and made 
 his preparations accordingly. 
 
 He went to take leave of the De Montaignes. Teresa was 
 trying to teach her first-born to read ; and, seated by the open- 
 window of the villa in her heat, not precise, dishabille with the 
 little boy's delicate, yet bold and healthy countenance look- 
 ing up fearlessly at hers, while she was endeavoring to initiate 
 him half gravely, half laughingly into the mysteries of mono- 
 syllables, the pretty boy and the fair young mother made a de- 
 lightful picture. De Montaigne was reading the Essays of his 
 celebrated namesake, in whom he boasted, I know not with 
 what justice, to claim an ancestor. From time to time he looked 
 from the page to take a glance at the progress of his heir, and 
 keep up with the march of intellect. But h? did not interfere 
 with the maternal lecture ; he was wise enough to know that 
 there is a kind of sympathy between a child and a mother, 
 which is worth all the grave superiority of a father in making 
 learning palatable to young years. He was far too clever a man 
 not to despise all the systems of forcing infants Under knowl- 
 edge-frames, which are the present fashion. He knew that 
 philosophers never made a greater mistake than in insisting so 
 much upon beginning abstract education from the cradle. It 
 is quite enough to attend to an infant's temper, and correct 
 that cursed predilection for telling fibs which falsifies all Dr. 
 Reid's absurd theory about innate propensities to truth, and 
 makes the prevailing epidemic of the nursery. Above all, what 
 advantage ever compensates for hurting a child's health or break- 
 ing his spirit ? Never let him learn, more than you can help it, the 
 crushing bitterness of fear. A bold child who looks you in the 
 face, speaks the truth, and shames the devil ; that is the stuff 
 of which to make good and brave ay, and wise men ! 
 
 Maltravers entered, unannounced, into this charming family 
 party, and stood unobserved for a few moments, by the open 
 door. The little pupil was the first to perceive him, and, for- 
 getful of monosyllables, ran to greet him; for Maltravers, though 
 gentle rather than gay, was a favorite with children, and his fair, 
 calm, gracious countenance did more for him with therri than if, 
 like Goldsmith's Burchell, his pockets had been filled with gin- 
 gerbread and apples. "Ah, fie on you, Mr. Maltravers," cried 
 Teresa, rising; "you have blown away all the characters I have 
 been endeavoring this last hour to imprint upon sand." 
 
 " Not so, Sjgnora," said Maltravers, seating himself, and plac- 
 ing the child on his knee; "my young friend will set to work 
 again with a greater gusto after this little break in upon his labors,"
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 109 
 
 "You will stay with us all day, I hope?" said De Mon- 
 taigne. 
 
 " Indeed," said Maltravers, " I am come to ask permission to 
 do so, for to-morrow I depart for England." 
 
 " Is it possible ?" cried Teresa. "How sudden! How we 
 shall miss you! Oh! don't go. But perhaps you have bad news 
 from England." 
 
 " I have news that summon me hence," replied Maltravers; "my 
 guardian and second father has been dangerously ill. I am 
 uneasy about him, and reproach myself for having forgotten him 
 so long in your seductive society." 
 
 "I am really sorry to lose you," said De Montaigne, with 
 greater warmth in his tones than in his words. " I hope heartily 
 we shall meet again soon; you will come, perhaps, to Paris?" 
 
 "Probably," said Maltravers; "and you, perhaps, to Eng- 
 land?" 
 
 " Ah, how I should like it! " exclaimed Teresa. 
 
 " No, you would not," said her husband; "you would not like 
 England at all; you would call it triste beyond measure. It is 
 one of those countries of which a native should be proud, but 
 which has no amusement for a stranger, precisely because full of 
 such serious and stirring occupations to the citizens. Thepleas- 
 antest countries for strangers are the worst countries for natives 
 (witness Italy), and vice versa." 
 
 Teresa shook her dark curls, and would not be convinced. 
 
 " And where is Castruccio ?" asked Maltravers. 
 
 " In his boat on the lake," replied Teresa. " He will be in- 
 consolable at your departure; you are the only person he can 
 understand, or who understands him; the only person in Italy 
 I had almost said in the whole world.' 
 
 "Well, we shall meet at dinner," said Ernest; "meanwhile, 
 let me prevail on you to accompany me to the Pliniana. I wish 
 to say farewell to that crystal spring." 
 
 Teresa^ delighted at any excursion, readily consented. 
 
 "And I too, mamma," cried the child; "and my little sister?" 
 
 "Oh, certainly," said Maltravers, speaking for the parents. 
 
 So the party was soon ready, and they pushed off in the clear 
 genial noon-tide (for November in, Italy is as early as September 
 in the North), across the sparkling and dimpled waters. The 
 children prattled, and the grown-up people talked on a thousand 
 matters. It was a pleasant day, that, last day atComo! For the 
 farewells of friendship have indeed something of the melancholy, 
 but not the anguish, of those of love. Perhaps it would be bet- 
 ter if we could get rid of love altogether. Life would go on
 
 110 ERNEST MALTR AVERS. 
 
 smoother and happier without it. Friendship is the wirie of ex- 
 istence, but love is the dram-drinking. 
 
 When they returned, they found Castruccio seated on the 
 lawn. He did not appear so much dejected at the prospect of 
 Ernest's departure as Teresa had anticipated; for Castntccio 
 Cesarini was a very jealous man, and he had lately been chagrined 
 and discontented with seeing the delight that the DeMontaignes 
 took in Ernest's society. 
 
 "Why is this?" he often asked himself; "why are they more 
 pleased with this stranger's society than mine? My ideas. are as 
 fresh, as original; I have as much genius, yet even my dry brother* 
 in-law allows his talents, and' predicts that he will be an eminent 
 man! while/ No! one is not a prophet in one's own country!" 
 
 Unhappy young man! his mind bore all the rank weeds of 
 the morbid poetical character, and the weeds choked up the 
 flowers that the soil, properly cultivated, should alone bear. Yet 
 that crisis in life awaited Castruccio, in which a sensitive and 
 poetical man is made or marred; the crisis in which a sentiment 
 is replaced by the passions- in which love for some real object 
 gathers the scattered rays of the heart into a focus: out of that 
 ordeal he might pass a purer and manlier being so Maltravers 
 often hoped. Maltravers then little thought how closaly con- 
 nected with his own fate was to be that passage in the history of 
 the Italian! Castruccio contrived to take, Maltravers aside, and 
 as He led the Englishman through the wood that backed the 
 mansion, he said, with some embarrassment, " You go, I sup- 
 pose, to London ?" 
 
 " I shall pas,s through it can I execute any commission for 
 you ? " 
 
 " Why, yes; my poems! Tithmk of publishing them in Eng- 
 land: your aristocrafiy cultivate the Italian letters; and perhaps 
 1 may be read by the fair and noble ~//w/ is the proper audience 
 of poets. For the vulgar herd^ I disdain it!" 
 
 " My .dear Castruccio, I will undertake to seeyour poems pub- 
 lished in London, if you wish it; but do not be sanguine. In 
 EngLand we read little poetry, even in our own language, *ahd 
 we are shamefully indifferent to foreign literature." 
 
 "Yes, foreign literature generally,, and 'you are; right;, but my 
 poems are of another kind.. They must command attention in 
 a polished and intelligent circle." 
 
 'Well, let the experiment be tried; you can let mfc have'the 
 poems when we part." !o - 
 
 " I thank you," said Castruccio, in a joyous tone, pressing his 
 friend's hand; and for the rest of thd evening, he seemed an
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. lit 
 
 altered being; he even caressed the children, and did not sneer 
 at the grave conversation of his- brother-in-law. 
 
 When Maltravers rose to depart, Custruccio gave him the 
 packet; : and then, utterly engrossed with his own imagined futur- 
 ity of fame, vanished from the room to indulge his reveries. He 
 cared nO'longer for Maltravers he had put him to use he could 
 not be sorry for his departure, for that departure was the Avatar 
 of His appearance to a new world! 
 
 A small dull rain was falling, though, at intervals, the stars 
 broke through the unsettled clouds, and Teresa did not there- 
 fore venture from the house ; she presented her smooth 
 cheek to the young guest to salute, pressed him by the hand, 
 and bade him adieu with tears in her eyes.. " Ah! " said she, 
 "when we meet again, I hope you will .be married I shall love 
 your wife dearly. There is no happiness like ^marriage and home!" 
 and she looked with ingenuous tenderness at De Montaigne. 
 
 Maltravers sighed his thoughts flew back to Alice. Where 
 now was that lone and friendless girl r twhose innocent love had 
 once brightened a home for him? He answered by a vague 
 and mechanical commonplace, and quitted the room with De 
 Montaigne, who insisted on seeing him depart. As they neared 
 the lake y De Montaigne broke the silence. 
 
 "My dear Maltravers," he said, with a serious and thoughtful 
 affection in his voice, " we may. not meet again for years. I have 
 a warm interest, in your happiness and career yes, career I 
 repeat the word. I do not habitually seek to inspire young men 
 with ambition. Enough for most of them to be good and hon- 
 orable citizens. But in your case it is different. I see in you 
 the earnest and meditative, not rash and overweening youth, 
 winch is usually productive of a distinguished manhood. Your 
 mind is>not yet settled, it is true; but it is fast becoming clear 
 and mellow from the. first ferment of boyish dreanl sand passions. 
 You. ha've everything in your favor, competence, birth, connec- 
 tion; and, above all, you are an Englishman! You have a mighty 
 stage, on which, it is true, you cannot establish a;footing? with- 
 out merit and without labor so much the better; in which strong 
 and resolute rivals will: urge you on to emulation, and then com- 
 petition) will task your keenest powers. Think what a glorious 
 fate it is>. to have an influence on the vast, but ever-growing mind 
 of such a country, to, feel,, when yoU retire from the busy scene, 
 that you' have played an unforgotten part that you have, been 
 the medium, under God's great'will, of circulating : new ideas 
 throughout the world of upholding the glorious priesthood fif 
 the Honest and the Beautiful. This is the true ambition ; the
 
 112 ERNEST MALTR AVERS. 
 
 desire of mere personal notoriety is vanity, not ambition. Do 
 not then be lukewarm or supine. The trait I have observed in 
 you," added the Frenchman, with a smile, " most prejudicial to 
 your chances of distinction is, that you are too philosophical, too 
 apt to cui bono all the exertions that interfere with the indolence 
 of cultivated leisure. And you must not suppose, Maltravers, 
 than an active career will be a path of roses. At present you 
 have no enemies; but the moment you attempt distinction, you 
 will be abused, calumniated, reviled. You will be shocked at 
 the wrath you excite, and sigh for your old obscurity, and con- 
 sider, as Franklin has it, that 'you have paid too dear for your 
 whistle.' But, in return for individual enemies, what a noble 
 recompense to have made the Public itself your friend; perhaps 
 even Prosperity your familiar! Besides," added De Montaigne, 
 with almost a religious solemnity in his voice, "there is a con- 
 science of the head as well as of the heart, and in old age we feel 
 as much remorse, if we have wasted our natural talents, as if we 
 have perverted our natural virtues. The profound and exultant 
 satisfaction with which a man who knows that he has not lived 
 in vain that he has entailed on the world an heir-loom of in- 
 struction or delight looks back upon departed struggles, is one 
 of the happiest emotions of which the conscience can be capa- 
 ble. What, indeed, are the petty faults we commit as individu- 
 als, affecting but a narrow circle, ceasing with our own lives, to 
 the incalculable and everlasting good we may produce as public 
 men by one book or by one law ? Depend upon it that the Al- 
 mighty, who sums up all the good and all the evil done by his 
 creatures in a just balance, will not judge the august benefac- 
 tors of the world with the same severity as those drones of so- 
 ciety, who have no great services to show in the eternal ledger, 
 as a set-off to the indulgence of their small vices. These things 
 rightly considered, Maltravers, you will have every inducement 
 that can tempt a lofty mind and a pure ambition to awaken from 
 the voluptuous indolence of the literary Sybarite, and contend 
 worthily in the world's wide Altis for a great prize." 
 
 Maltravers never before felt so flattered so stirred into high 
 resolves. The stately eloquence, the fervid encouragement of 
 this man, usually so cold and fastidious, roused him like the 
 sound of a trumpet. He stopped short, his breath heaved thick, 
 his cheek flushed. "De Montaigne," said he, "your words have 
 cleared away a thousand doubts and scruples they have gone 
 right to my heart. For the first time I understand what fame is 
 what the object, and what the reward of labor ! Visions, hopes, 
 aspirations, I may have had before for months a new spirit has
 
 fckNEST MALTRAVERS. 113 
 
 been fluttering within me. I have felt the wings breaking from 
 the shell, but all was confused, dim, uncertain. I doubted the 
 wisdom of effort, with life so short, and the pleasures of youth 
 so sweet. I now look no longer on life but as a part of the eternity 
 to which I feel we were born ; and I recognize the solemn truth 
 that our objects, to be worthy life, should be worthy of creatures 
 in whom the living principle is never extinct. Farewell ! come 
 joy or sorrow, failure or success, I will struggle to deserve your 
 friendship." 
 
 Maltravers sprang into his boat, and the shades of night soon 
 snatched him from the lingering gaze of De Montaigne. 
 
 BOOK IV. 
 
 iirt 6e grvu 
 
 w, raf avdvSpov 
 Kotraf oMaaaa%t:K.T(}Oi> 
 Tdfauva. EURIP. Med. 441. 
 
 " Strange is the land that holds thee, and thy couch 
 Is widow'd of the loved one." 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 " I, alas ! 
 
 .Have lived but on this earth a few sad years ; 
 And so my lot was ordered, that a father 
 First turned the moments of awakening life 
 To drops, each poisoning youth's sweet hope." 
 
 CENCI. 
 
 FROM accompanying Maltravers along the noiseless progress 
 of mental education, we are now called awhile to cast our glances 
 back at the ruder and harsher ordeal which Alice Darvil was 
 ordained to pass. Along her path poetry, shed no flowers, nor 
 were her lonely steps toward the distant shrine at which her 
 pilgrimage found its rest lighted by the mystic lamp of science, 
 or guided by the thousand stars which are never dim in the 
 heavens for those favored eyes from which genius and fancy have 
 removed many of the films of clay. Not along the aerial and 
 exalted ways that wind far above the homes and business of com- 
 mon men the solitary Alps of Spiritual Philosophy wandered
 
 .1*4 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 the desolate steps of the child of poverty and sorrow. On the 
 beaten and rugged highways of common life, with a weary heart, 
 and with bleeding feet, she went her melancholy course. But the 
 goal which is the great secret of life, the summuni arcanum of all 
 philosophy, whether the Practical or the Ideal, was, perhaps, no 
 less attainable for that humble girl than for the elastic step and 
 aspiring heart of him who thirsted after the Great, and almost 
 believed in the Impossible. 
 
 We return to that dismal night in which Alice was torn from 
 the roof of her lover. It was long before she recovered her con- 
 sciousness of what had passed, and gained a full perception of 
 the fearful revolution which had taken place in her destinies. 
 It was then a gray and dreary morning twilight ; and the rude 
 but covered vehicle which bore her was rolling along the deep 
 ruts of an unfrequented road, winding among the unenclosed 
 and mountainous wastes that, in England, usually betoken the 
 neighborhood of the sea. With a shudder Alice looked around ; 
 Walters, her father's accomplice, lay extended at her feet, and 
 his heavy breathing showed that he was fast asleep. Darvil him- 
 self was urging on the jaded and sorry horse, and his broad back 
 was turned toward Alice ; the rain, from which, in his position, 
 he was but ill protected by the awning, dripped dismally from 
 his slouched hat ; and now, as he turned around, aYid his sinister 
 and gloomy gaze rested upon the face of Alice, his bad coun- 
 tenance, rendered more haggard by the cold raw light of the 
 cheerless dawn, completed the hideous picture of unveiled and 
 ruffianly wretchedness. 
 
 " Ho, ho ! Alley, so you are come to your senses," said he, 
 with a kind of joyless grin. "I am glad of it, for '-I can have no 
 fainting fine ladies with me. You have had a long holiday, Alley ; 
 you must now learn once more to work for your poor father. 
 Ah, you have been d d sly; but never mind the past I for- 
 give it. You must not run away again without my leave ; if you 
 are fond of sweethearts, I won't balk you but your old father 
 must go shares, Alley." 
 
 Alice could hear no more ; she covered her face with the cloak 
 that had been thrown about her, and though she did not faint, 
 her senses seemed to belocked and paralyzed. By-and-by Walters 
 w6ke, and the two men, heedless of her presence, conversed 
 upon their plans. By degrees she recovered sufficient self-pos- 
 session to listen, in the instinctive hope that some plan of escape 
 might be suggested to her. But from what she could gather of 
 the incoherent and various projects they discussed, one after 
 another disputing upon each with frightful oaths and scarce
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 115 
 
 intelligible slang, she could only learn that it was resolved at all 
 events to leave the district in which they were but whither, 
 seemed yet all undecided. The cart halted at last at a miserable- 
 looking hut, which the sign-post announced to be an inn that 
 afforded good accommodation to travellers ; to which announce- 
 ment was annexed the following epigrammatic distich : 
 
 " Old Tom, he is the best of gin ; 
 Drink him once and you'll drink him agin ! " 
 
 The hovel stood. so remote from all other habitations, and the 
 waste around was so bare of trees, and even shrubs, that Alice 
 saw with despair that all hope of flight in such a place would 
 be indeed a chimera. But to make assurance doubly sure, Darvil 
 himself, lifting her from the cart, conducted her up a broken 
 and unlighted staircase, into a sort of loft rather than a room, 
 andpushingher rudely in, turned the key upon her-anddescended. 
 The weather was cold, the livid damps hung upon the distairfed 
 walls, and there was neither fire nor hearth ; but'thinly clad as 
 she was her cloak and shawl her principal covering she did 
 not feel the cold, for her heart was more chilly than the airs of 
 heaven. At noon an old woman brought her some food, which, 
 consisting of fish and poached game, was better than might have 
 been expected in such a place, and what would have been deemed 
 a feast under her father's roof. With an inviting leer, the crone 
 pointed to a pewter measure of raw spirits that accompanied 
 the viands, .and assured her, in a cracked and maudlin voice, 
 that "'Old Tom' was a kinder friend than any of the: young 
 fellers !" This intrusion ended, Alice was again left alone till 
 dusk, when Darvil entered with a bundle of clothes, sueh.-as-.are 
 wosn by the peasants of, that primitive district of England. 
 
 "There, Alley," said he, "put on this warm toggery, finery 
 won'fc do now. We must leave no scent in the track ; the hounds 
 are after us, my little blowen. Here's a nice stuff gown for you, 
 and a red cloak that -would frighten a turkeycock. As to the 
 other cloak and shawl, don't be afraid; they shan't go to the pop- 
 shop, but we will take care of them against we get to some large 
 town where there are young fellows with -blunt in their pockets-; 
 for you seem to have already found out that yourface is your 
 fortune, Alley. Come, make haste, we must be starting. I shall 
 come up for you in ten minutes. Pish! don't be faint-hearted ; 
 here, take ' Old Tom ' take it ; I say. What, you won't? Well, 
 here's to your health, and a better taste to you ! " 
 
 And now, as the door once more closed upon Darvil, tears for 
 the first time came to the relief of Alice.' It was a woman's weak-
 
 Il6 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 ness that procured for her that woman's luxury. Those gar- 
 mentsthey were Ernest's gift Ernest's taste ; they were like 
 the last relic of that delicious life which now seemed to have fled 
 for ever. All traces of that life of him, the loving, the protected, 
 the adored ; all trace of herself, as she had been re-created by 
 love, was to be lost to her for ever. It was (as she had read some- 
 where, in the little elementary volumes that bounded her his- 
 toric lore) like that last fatal ceremony in which those condemned 
 for life to the mines of Siberia are clothed with the slave's liv- 
 ery, their past name and record eternally blotted out, and thrust 
 into the vast wastes, from which even the mercy of despotism, 
 should it ever re-awaken, cannot recall them ; for all evidence 
 of them all individuality all mark to distinguish them from 
 the universal herd, is expunged from the world's calendar. She 
 was still sobbing in vehement and unrestrained passion, when 
 Darvil re-entered. "What, not dressed yet?" he exclaimed, in 
 a voice of impatient rage ; " harkye, this won't do. If in two min- 
 utes you are not ready, I'll send up John Walters to help you ; 
 and he is a rough hand, I can tell you." 
 
 This threat recalled Alice to herself. " I will do as you wish," 
 said she, meekly. 
 
 "Well, then, be quick!" said Darvil; "they are now put- 
 ting the horse to. And mark me, girl, your father is running 
 away from the gallows, and that thought does not make a man 
 stand upon scruples. If you once attempt to give me the slip, 
 or do or say anything that can bring the bulkies upon us by the 
 devil in hell if, indeed, there be hell or devil my knife shall 
 become better acquainted with that throat -so look to it ! " 
 
 And this was the father this the condition of her whose ear 
 had for months drunk no other sound than the whispers of flat- 
 tering love the murmurs of Passion fifom the lips of Poetry.. 
 
 They continued their journey till midnight ; they then arrived 
 at an inn, little different from the last ; -but here Alice was no 
 longer consigned to solitude. In a long room, reeking with 
 smoke, sat from twenty to thirty ruffians before a table on which 
 mugs and vessels of stron g potations were formidably interspersed 
 with sabres and pistols. They received Walters and Darvil with 
 a shout of welcome, and would have crowded somewhat uncer- 
 emoniously round Alice, if her father, whose well-known desper- 
 ate and brutal ferocity made him a man to be respected in such 
 an assembly, had not said, sternly, "Hands off, messmates, and 
 make way by the fire for my little girl she is meat for your 
 masters." 
 
 So saying, he pushed Alice down into a huge chair in the chim-
 
 ERNEST MALTR AVERS. 117 
 
 ney nook, and, seating himself near her, at the end of the table, 
 hastened to turn the conversation. 
 
 "Well, captain," said he, addressing a small, thin man at the 
 head of the table. "I and Walters have fairly cut and run the 
 land has a bad air for us, and we now want the sea breeze to 
 cure the rope fever. So, knowing this was your night, we have 
 crowded sail, and here we are. You must give the girl there a 
 lift, though I know you don't like such lumber, and we'll run 
 ashore as soon as we can." 
 
 " She seems a quiet little body," replied the captain ; " and we 
 would do more than that to oblige an old friend like you. In half 
 an hour Oliver* puts on his nightcap, and we must then be off." 
 
 "The sooner the better." 
 
 The men now appeared to forget the presence of Alice, who 
 sat faint with fatigue and exhaustion, for she had been too sick 
 at heart to touch the food brought to her at their previous halt- 
 ing-place, gazing abstractedly upon the fire. Her father, before 
 their departure, had made her swallow some morsels of sea-bis- 
 cuit, though each seemed to choke her ; and then, wrapped in a 
 thick boat-cloak, she was placed in a small, well-built cutter j and 
 as the sea-winds whistled round her, the present cold and the 
 past fatigues lulled her miserable heart into the arms of the char- 
 itable Sleep. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 " You are once more a free woman; 
 Here I discharge your bonds." 
 
 The Custom of the Country. 
 
 AND many were thy trials, poor child ; many that, were this 
 book to germinate into volumes, more numerous than fnonk ever 
 composed upon the lives of saint or martyr (though a hundred 
 volumes contained the record of two years only in the life of St. 
 Anthony), it would be impossible to describe ! We may talk of 
 the fidelity of books, but no man ever wrote even his own biog- 
 raphy, without being compelled to omit at least nine-tenths of 
 the most important materials. What are three what are six vol- 
 umes ? We live six volumes in a day ! Thought, emotion, joy, 
 sorrow, hope, fear, how prolix they would be, if they might each 
 tell their hourly tale ! But man's -life itself is a brief epitome of 
 that which is infinite and everlasting ; and his most accurate con,- 
 
 *T
 
 Il8 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 fessions are a miserable abridgment of a hurried and confused 
 compendium ! 
 
 It was about three months, or more, from the night in which 
 Alice wept herself to sleep amongst those wild companions, when 
 she contrived to escape from her father's vigilant eye. They 
 were then on the coast of Ireland. Darvil had separated him- 
 self from Walters from his sea-faring companions; he had run 
 through the greater part of the money his crimes had got to- 
 gether ; he began seriously to attempt putting into execution his 
 horrible design of depending for support upon the sale of his 
 daughter. 
 
 Now, Alice might. have been moulded into sinful purposes, be- 
 fore she knew Maltravers; but from that hour her very error made 
 her virtuous she had comprehended, the moment she loved, 
 what was meant by female honor ; and, by a sudden revelation she 
 had purchased modesty, delicacy of thought and soul, in the sacri- 
 fice of herself. Much of our morality (prudent and right upon 
 system), with respect to the first false step of woman, leads us, 
 as we all know, into barbarous errors, as, to individual excep- 
 tions. Where, from pure and confiding love, that first false step 
 has been taken, many a woman has been saved, in after life, from 
 a thousand temptations. The poor unfortunates, who crowd our 
 streets and theatres, have rarely, in the first instance, been cor- 
 rupted by love ; but by poverty, and the contagion of circum- 
 stance and example. It is a miserable cant phrase to call them 
 the victims of seduction ; they have .been the victims of hunger, 
 of vanity, of curiosity, of evil female counsels; but the seduc- 
 tion of love hardly ever conducts to a life of vice. If a woman 
 has once really loved, the beloved object makes an impenetra- 
 ble barrier between her and other men ; their advances terrify 
 and revolt she would rather die than be unfaithful to a mem- 
 ory. Though man loves the sex, woman loves only the individ- 
 ual ; and the more .she. loves him, the more cold she is to the 
 species. For the passion of woman is in- the sentiment the fan- 
 cy the heart. It rarely has much to do with the coarse images 
 with which boys and old men -the inexperienced and the worn- 
 out connect it. 
 
 But Alice, though her blood tan cold at her terrible father's 
 language, saw. in his very designs the prospect of escape. In an 
 hour of drunkenness he thrust her from the house, and stationed 
 himself to watch her it was in the. city of Cork. She formed 
 her resolution instantly turned up a narrow street, and fledat 
 full speed. Daryil endeavored in vain to keep pace with her 
 his eyes dizzy, his steps reeling with intoxication. She heard his
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. lig 
 
 last curse dying from a distance on the air, and her fear winged 
 her steps : she paused at last, and found herself on the outskirts 
 of the town : She paused, overcome, and deadly faint ; and 
 then, for the first time, she felt that a strange and new life was 
 stirring within her own. She had long since known that she bore 
 in her womb the unborn offspring of Maltravers, and that knowl- 
 edge had made her struggle and live on. But now, the embryo 
 had quickened into being it moved it appealed to her a thing 
 unseen, unknown ; but still it was a living creature appealing to 
 a mother ! Oh, the thrill, half of ineffable tenderness, half of 
 mysterious terror, at that moment ! -What a new chapter in the 
 life of woman did it not announce ! Now, then, she must be 
 watchful over herself must guard against fatigue must wres- 
 tle with despair. Solemn was the trust committed to her the 
 life of another the child of the Adored. It was a summer 
 night she sat on a rude stone, the city on one side, with its 
 lights and lamps ; the whitened fields beyond, with the moon 
 and stars above; and above she raised her streaming eyes, and 
 she thought that God the Protector smiled upon her from the 
 face of the sweet skies. So, after a pause and a silent prayer, 
 she rose and resumed her way. When she was wearied she crept 
 into a shed in a farmyard and slept, for the first time for weeks, 
 the calm sleep of security and hope. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 * How like a prodigal doth she return 
 With over- weathered ribs and ragged sails." 
 
 Merchant of Venice. 
 
 " Mer. What are these ! 
 Uncle. The tenants." 
 
 BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER. Wit without Money. 
 
 IT was just two years from the night in which Alice had been 
 torn from the cottage : and, at that time, Maltravers was wan- 
 dering amongst the ruins of ancient Egypt, when, upon the very 
 lawn where Alice and her lover had so often loitered hand in 
 hand, a gay party of children and young people were assembled. 
 The cottage had been purchased by an opulent and retired manu- 
 facturer. He had raised the low thatched roof another story 
 high and blue slate had replaced the thatch and the pretty 
 verandahs overgrown with creepers had been taken down, because 
 Mrs. Hobbs thought they gave the rooms a dull look ; and, the
 
 120 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 little rustic doorway had been replaced by four Ionic pillars in 
 stucco; and a new dining-room, twenty-two feet by eighteen, 
 had been built out at one wing, and a new drawing-room had 
 been built over the new dining-room. And the poor little cottage 
 looked quite grand and villa-like. The fountain had been taken 
 away, because it made the house damp ; and there was such a 
 broad carriage-drive from the gate totheliouse! The gate was 
 no longer the modest green wooden gate, ever ajar with its easy 
 latch; but a tall, cast-iron, well-locked gate, between two pillars 
 to match the porch. And on one of the gates was a brass plate, 
 on which was graven " Hobbs' Lodge Ring the bell." The 
 lesser Hobbses and the bigger Hobbses were all on the lawn 
 many of them fresh from school for it was the half-holiday of 
 a Saturday afternoon. There was mirth, and noise, and shout- 
 ing, and whooping, and the respectable old couple looked calmly 
 on. Hobbs the father smoking his pipe (alas, it was not the dear 
 meerschaum !) ; Hobbs the mother talking to her eldest daughter 
 (a fine young woman, three months married, for love, to a poor 
 man), upon the proper number of days that a leg of mutton 
 (weight ten pounds) should be made to last. " Always, my dear, 
 have large joints, they are much the most saving. Let me see 
 what a noise the boys do make ! No,my love, the ball's not here." 
 
 "Mamma, it is under your petticoats." 
 
 " La, child, how naughty you are ! " 
 
 " Holla, you sir ! it's my turn to go in now. Biddy, wait, 
 girls have no innings girls only fag out." 
 
 "Bob, you cheat." 
 
 " Pa, Ned says I cheat." 
 
 " Very likely, my dear, you are to be a lawyer." 
 
 " Where was I, my dear ? " resumed Mrs Hobbs, resettling 
 herself, and readjusting the invaded petticoats. " Oh, about the 
 leg of mutton ! yes, large joints are the best the second day 
 a nice hash, with dumplings; the third, broil the bone your hus- 
 band is sure to like broiled bones ! and then keep the scraps 
 for Saturday's pie ; you know, my dear, your father and I were 
 worse off than you when we began. But now we have everything 
 that is handsome about us 1 nothing like management. Satur- 
 day pies are very nice things, and then you start clear with your 
 joint on Sunday. A good wife like you should never neglect 
 the Saturday pie ! " 
 
 "Yes," said the bride, mournfully, " but Mr. Tiddy does not 
 like pies." 
 
 " Not like pies ! that's very odd Mr. Hobbs likes pies per- 
 haps you don't have the crust made thick eno*. Hpwsomever,
 
 ERNEST MALTR AVERS. 121 
 
 you can make it up to him with a pudding. A wife should always 
 study her husband's tastes what is a man's home without love? 
 Still a husband ought not to be aggravating, and dislike pie on 
 a Saturday ! " 
 
 " Hollo ! I say, ma, do you see that ere gipsy ! I shall go 
 and have my fortune told." 
 
 "And I- -and It" 
 
 " Lor, if there ben't a tramper ! " cried Mr. Hobbs, rising in- 
 dignantly ; "what can the parish be about?" 
 
 The object of these latter remarks, filial and paternal, was a 
 young woman in a worn, threadbare cloak, with her face pressed 
 to the open-wo/k of the gate, and looking wistfully oh, how wist- 
 fully ! within. The children eagerly ran to her, but they 
 involuntarily slackened their steps when they drew near, for she 
 was evidently not what they had taken her for. No gipsy hues 
 darkened that pale, thin, delicate cheek no gipsy leer lurked in 
 those large blue and streaming eyes no gipsy effrontery bronzed 
 that candid and childish brow. As she thus pressed her coun- 
 tenance with convulsive eagerness against the cold bars, the young 
 people caught the contagion of inexpressible and half- fearful sad- 
 nessthey approached almost respectfully " Do you want any- 
 thing here?" said the eldest and boldest of the boys. 
 
 " I I surel/ this is Dale Cottage ?" 
 
 "It was Dale Cottage, it is Hobbs' Lodge now; can't you 
 read?" said the heir of the Hobbs' honors, losing, in contempt 
 at the girl's ignorance, his first impression of "sympathy. 
 
 "And and -Mr. Butler, is he gone too?"' 
 
 Poorchild! shespokeasif the cottage was gone, not improved; 
 the Ionic portico had no charm for her ! 
 
 " Butler ! no such person lives here. Pa, do you know where 
 
 HT T> 1 I' -. J 
 
 Mr. Butler lives? 
 
 n ii i r e 11 
 
 Pa was now moving up to the place of conference the slow 
 artillery of his fair round belly and portly calves. " Butler, 
 no I know nothing of such a name no Mr. Butler lives here. 
 Go along with you- -ain't you ashamed to beg?" 
 
 " No Mr. Butl 2r ! " said the girl, gasping for breath, and clinging 
 to the gate for support. "Are you sure, sir?" 
 
 " Sure, yes !--what do you want with him ? " 
 
 "Oh, papa, she looks faint!" said one of the girls, depre- 
 catingly; "do letherhavesomething toeat,I'm sureshe'shungry." 
 
 Mr. Hobbs looked angry ; he had often been taken in, and 
 no rich man likes beggars. Generally speaking, the rich man 
 is in the right. But then Mr. Hobbs turned to the suspected 
 tramper's sorrowful face and then to his fair pretty child and
 
 122 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 his good angel whispered something to Mr. Hobbs' heart and 
 lie said, after a pause, "Heaven forbid that we should not feel 
 for a poor fellow-creature not so well to do as ourselves. Come 
 in, my lass, and have a morsel to eat." 
 
 The girl did not seem to hear him, and he repeated the invita- 
 tion, approaching to unlock the gate. 
 
 "No, sir," said she, then ; " no, I thank you. I could not come 
 in now. ! I could not eat here. But tell me, sir, I implore you, 
 can you not even guess where I may find Mr. Butler?" 
 
 "Butler ! " said Mrs. Hobbs, whom curiosity had now drawn 
 to the spot. "I remember that was the name of the gentleman 
 who hired the place and was robbed/' 
 
 " Robbed !" said Mr. Hobbs, falling back and relocking the 
 gate "and the new tea-pot just come home," he muttered 
 
 inly, " Come, be off, child be off ; we know nothing of your 
 
 Mr. Butlers." 
 
 The young woman looked wildly in his face, cast a hurried 
 glance over the altered spot, and then, with a kind of shiver, as 
 it the wind had smitten her delicate form too rudely, she drew 
 her cloak more closely around her shoulders, and without say- 
 ing another word, ; moved away. The party looked after her, as 
 with trembling steps she passed down the road, and all felt that 
 pang of shame which is common to the human heart at the sight 
 of a distress it has not sought to soothe. But this feeling vanished 
 at once fiom the breasts of Mrs. and Mr. Hobbs, when they saw 
 the girl stop where a turn of the road brought the gate before 
 her eyes; and for the first time they perceived, what the worn 
 cloak had hitherto concealed, that the poor thing bore an infant 
 in her arms. She halted, she gazed fondly back. Even at that 
 distance the despair of her eyes was visible ; and then as she 
 pressed her lips to the infant's brow, they heard a convulsive 
 sob" they saw her turn away, and she was gone ! 
 
 "Well I declare !" said Mrs. Hobbs. 
 
 " News for the parish," said Mr. Hobbs ; " and she is so young 
 too ! what a shame ! " 
 
 "The girls about here are very bad now-a-days, Jenny," said 
 the mother to the bride. 
 
 "I see now why she wanted Mr. Butler," quoth Hobbs, with 
 a knowing wink " the slut has come to swear ! " 
 
 And it was for this that Alice had supported her strength 
 her courage during the sharp pains of childbirth ; during a 
 severe and crushing illness, which for months after her confine- 
 ment had stretched her upon a peasant's bed (the object of a 
 rude but kindly charity of an Irish shealing), for this, day after
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 123 
 
 daj', she had whispered to herself, "I shall get well, and I will 
 beg my way to the cottarge, and find him there still, and put my 
 little one in his arms, and all will be bright again "; for this, as 
 soon as she could walk without aid, had she set out on foot from 
 the distant land ; for this, almost with a dog's instinct (for she 
 knew not which way to turn what county the cottage was placed 
 in ; she only knew the name of the neighboring town ; and that, 
 populous as it was, sounded strange to the ears of those she 
 asked ; and she had often and often been directed wrong), for 
 this, I say, almost 'with a dog's faithful instinct, she had, in cold 
 and heat, in hunger and thirst, tracked to her old master's home 
 her desolate and'lonely way ! And thrice had she over-fatigued 
 herself and thrice agafn been indebted to humble pity for a bed 
 whereon to lay a feverish and broken frame; ' And once, too, her 
 baby^ her darling, her life of life, had been ill had been near 
 unto death, and she could not stir until the infant (it was a girl) 
 was well again, and could smile in her face and crow. And thus, 
 many, many months had el'apsed, since the day she set but on her 
 pilgrimage, to that on whidhshe found its goal. But never, save 
 when the child' was ill, had she desponded or abated heart and 
 hope. She should see him again and he would kiss her child. 
 And now no- 1 I cannot paint the might -of that stunning blow! 
 She knew not, she dreamed not, of the kind precautions Mal- 
 travers had taken ; and he had not sufficiently calculated on her 
 thorough 'ignorance of the world. How could she divine that 
 the magistrate, not a mile distant from her, could have told her 
 all she sought to know ? Could she have but met the gardener- 
 or the old woman-servant all would have been well ! These 
 last, indeed, she had the forethought to ask for. But the woman 
 was dead, and the gardener had taken a strange service in some 
 distant county. And so died her last gleam of hope. If one 
 person who remembered the search of Maltravers had but met 
 and recognized her! But she had been seen by so few and 
 now the bright, fresh girl was so sadly altered ! Her race was 
 not yet run, arid many a sharp wind upon the mournful sea had 
 the bark to brave, before its haven was found at last. 
 
 :
 
 124 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 " Patience and sorrow strove 
 Which should express her goodliest." SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 " Je la plains, Je la blame, et je suis son appui."* VOLTAIRE. 
 
 AND now Alice felt that she was on the wide world alone 
 with her child no longer to be protected, but to, protect ; and 
 after the first days of agony, a new spirit, not indeed of hope, 
 but of endurance, passed within her. Her solitary wanderings, 
 with God her only guide, had tended greatly to elevate and con- 
 firm her character. She felt a strong reliance on His mysterious 
 mercy she felt, too, the responsibility of a mother. Thrown 
 for so many months upon her own resources even for the bread 
 of life, her intellect was unconsciously sharpened, and a habit 
 of patient fortitude had strengthened a nature originally clinging 
 and femininely soft. She resolved to pass into some other coun- 
 try, for she could neither bear the thoughts that haunted the 
 neighborhood around, nor think without a loathing horror of the 
 possibility of her father's return. Accordingly, one day, she 
 renewed her wanderings and after a week's travel, arrived at 
 a small village. Charity is so common in England, it so spon- 
 taneously springs up everywhere, like the good seed by the road- 
 side, that she had rarely wanted the bare necessaries of existence. 
 And her humble manner, and sweet, well-tuned voice, so free 
 from the professional whine of mendicancy, had usually its charm 
 for the sternest. So she generally obtained enough to buy bread 
 and a night's lodging, and, if sometimes she failed, she could 
 bear hunger and was not afraid to creep into some shed, or, 
 when by the sea-shore, even into some sheltering cavern. Her 
 child throve too for God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb! 
 But now, so far as physical privation went, the worst was over. 
 
 It so happened that as Alice was drawing herself wearily along 
 to the entrance of the village which was to bound her day's jour- 
 ney, she was met by a lady, past middle age, in whose countenance 
 compassion was so visible, that Alice would not beg, for she had 
 a strange delicacy or pride, or whatever it may be called, and 
 rather begged of the stern than of those who looked kindly at 
 her she did not like to lower herself in the eyes of the last. 
 
 The lady stopped. 
 
 " My poor girl, where are you going? " 
 
 " Where God pleases, madam," said Alice. 
 
 * I pity her, I blame her, and am her support.
 
 ERNEST MALTR AVERS. 125 
 
 " Humph ! and is that your own child ? you are almost a 
 
 i -i i if 
 
 child yourself. 
 
 " It is mine, madam," said Alice, gazing fondly at the in- 
 fant ; " it is my all ! " 
 
 The lady's voice faltered. "Are you married?" she asked. 
 
 "Married! oh, no, madam!" replied Alice, innocently, 
 yet without blushing, for she never knew that she had done 
 wrong in loving Maltravers. 
 
 The lady drew gently back, but not in horror no, in still 
 deeper compassion ; for that lady had true virtue, and she knew 
 that the faults of her sex are sufficiently punished to permit 
 Virtue to pity them without a sin. 
 
 " I am sorry for it," she said, however, with greater gravity. 
 " Are you travelling to seek the father ? " 
 
 "Ah, madam ! I shall never see him again ! " And Alice wept. 
 
 " What ! has he abandoned you so young, so beautiful ! " 
 added the lady to herself. 
 
 "Abandoned me ! no, madam ; but it is a long tale. Good- 
 evening I thank you kindly for your pity." 
 
 The lady's eyes ran over. 
 
 " Stay," she said ; "tell me frankly where you are going, and 
 what is your object." 
 
 " Alas, madam, I am going anywhere, for I have no home ; 
 but I wish to live and work for my living, in order that my 
 child may not want for anything. I wish I could maintain my- 
 
 i r 7 1. T 1i*> 
 
 self he used to say I could. 
 
 "He ! your language and manners are not those of a peas- 
 ant. What can you do ? What do you know?" 
 
 ." Music, and work, and and " 
 
 " Music? this is strange ! What were your parents ?" 
 
 Alice shuddered, ; and hid her face in her hands. 
 
 The lady's interest was now fairly warmed in her behalf. 
 
 "She has sinned," said she. to herself ; "but at that age^ how 
 Can one be harsh ? she must not be thrown upon the world to 
 make sin. a habit. Follow me,". she said, after a little pause: 
 " and think you have found a friend." 
 
 The lady turned from the high-road down a green lane which 
 led to a park lodge. This lodge she entered ; and after a short 
 conversation with the inmate, beckoned to Alice to join her. 
 
 "Janet," said Alice's new protector to a comely and pleas- 
 ant-eyed woman, " This is the young person you will show 
 her and the infant every attention. I shall send down proper 
 clothing for her to-morrow, and I shall then have thought what 
 will be best for her future welfare."
 
 126 ERNEST MALTR AVERS. 
 
 With that, the lady .smiled benignly upon Alice, whose .heat 
 was too full to speak ; and the door of the cottage closed upoi 
 her, and Alice thougkt the day had grown darker. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 " Believe me, she has won me much to pity her. 
 Alas ! her gentle nature was not made 
 To buffet wilh adversity." ROWE. 
 
 " Sober he was, and grave from early youth, 
 
 Mindful of forms, but more intent on truth ; 
 
 In a light drab he uniformly dress'd, . " 
 
 And look serene th' unruffled mind express'd. 
 ***** 
 * * * * # 
 
 Yet might observers in his sparkling eye 
 
 Some observation, some acuteness spy ; 
 
 The friendly thought it keen, the treacherous deem'd it sly ; 
 
 Yet not a crime could foe or friend detect, 
 
 His actions all were like his speech correct 
 
 Chaste, sober, solemn, and devout they named 
 
 Him who was this, and not of this ashamed." CRABBE. 
 
 "I'll on and sound this secret." BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER. 
 
 MRS. LESUE, the lady introduced to the reader in the last 
 chapter, was a woman of the firmest intellect combined (no 
 unusual combination) with the softest heart. She learned 
 Alice's history with admiration and pity. The natural inno- 
 cence and honesty of the young mother spoke so eloquently in 
 her words and looks, that Mrs. Leslie, on hearing her tale, found 
 much less to forgive than she had anticipated. Still she deemed 
 it necessary to 'enlighten Alice as 'to the criminality of the con- 
 nection she had formed. But here Alice was singularly dull 
 she listened in meek patience to Mrs. Leslie's lecture; but it 
 evidently made but slight impression on her. She had not yet 
 seen enough of the Social state, to correct the first impressions 
 of the Natural : and all she could, say in answer to Mrs. Leslie 
 was " ft may be all very true, madam, but I have been so 
 much better since I knew him ! " 
 
 But though Alice took humbly any censure upon herself, .she 
 would not 'hear a syllable insinuated against Maltravers. When, 
 in a_very natural indignation, Mrs. Leslie denounced him as a 
 destroyer of innocence for Mrs. Leslie could not learn all that 
 extenuated his offence Alice started up with flashing eyes and
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVKRS. 127 
 
 heaving heart, and would have hurried from the only shelter she 
 had in the wide world she would sooner have died she would 
 sooner even have seen her child die, than done that idol of her 
 soul, who, in her eyes, stood alone on some pinnacle between 
 earth and heaven, the wrong of hearing him reviled. With diffi- 
 culty Mrs. Leslie could restrain, with still more difficulty could 
 she pacify and soothe her; and for the girl's petulance, which 
 others might have deemed insolent or ungrateful, the woman- 
 heart of Mrs. Leslie loved her all the better. Themoreshesaw 
 of Alice, the more she comprehended her story and character, 
 the more was she lost in wonder at the romance of w'hich this 
 beautiful child had been the heroine, and the more perplexed 
 she was as to Alice's future prospects. 
 
 At length, however, when she became acquainted with Alice's 
 musical acquirements, which were, indeed, of no common order, 
 a light broke in upon her. Here was the source of her future 
 independence. Maltravers, it will be remembered, was a musi- 
 cian of Consummate skill as well as taste, and Alice's natural 
 talent for the art had advanced her, in" the space of months, to 
 a degree of perfection which it costs others which it had cost 
 even the quick Maltravers years to obtain. But we learn so 
 rapidly when our teachers are those we love, and it may be ob- 
 served that the less our knowledge, the less perhaps our genius 
 in other things, the more facile are our attainments in music, 
 which is a very jealous mistress of the mind. Mrs. Leslie re- 
 solved to have her perfected in this art, and so enable her to 
 
 become a teacher toothers. In the town of C , about thirty 
 
 miles from Mrs. Leslie's house though in the same county, 
 there was no inconsiderable circle of wealthy and intelligent per- 
 sons ; for it was a cathedral town, and the resident clergy drew 
 around them a kind of provincial aristocracy. 'Here, as in'most 
 rural towns in England, music was much cultivated, both among 
 the higher and middle classes. There were amateur concerts, 
 and glee-clubs, and subscriptions for sacred music ; and once 
 
 every five years there was the great C ; Festival. In this 
 
 town, Mrs. Leslie established Alice: she placed her under the 
 roof of a ci-devant music-master, who, having retired 'from his 
 profession, was no longer jealous of rivals, but who, by hand- 
 some terms, was induced to complete the education of Alice. It 
 was an eligible and comfortable abode, and the music-master and 
 his wife were a good-natured, easy old Couple. 
 
 Three months of resolute and unceasing perseverance, com- 
 bined with the singular ductility and native gifts of Alice, suf- 
 ficed to render her the most promising pupil the good musician
 
 I2S ERNEST MALTRAVERS, 
 
 had ever accomplished ; and in three months more, introduced 
 by Mrs. Leslie in many of the families in the place, Alice was 
 established in a home of her own ; and, what with regular lessons, 
 and occasional assistance at musical parties, she was fairly earn- 
 ing what her tutor reasonably pronounced to be "a very genteel 
 independence." 
 
 Now, in these arrangements (for we must here go back a little), 
 there had been one gigantic difficulty of conscience in one party, 
 of feeling in another, to surmount Mrs. Leslie saw at once that 
 unless Alice's misfortune was concealed, all the virtues and all 
 the talents in the world could not enable her to retrace the one 
 false step. Mrs. Leslie was a woman of habitual truth and strict 
 rectitude, and she was sorely perplexed between the propriety 
 of candor and its cruelty. She felt unequal to take the respon- 
 sibility of action on herself ; and, after much meditation, she re- 
 solved to confide her scruples to one who, of all whom she knew, 
 possessed the highest character for moral worth and religious 
 sanctity. This gentleman, lately a widower, lived at the out- 
 skirts of the town selected for Alice's future residence, and at 
 that time happened to be on a visit in Mrs. Leslie's neighbor- 
 hood. He was an opulent man, a banker ; he had once repre- 
 sented the town in Parliament, and retiring, rrom disinclination 
 to the late hours and onerous fatigues even of an unreformed 
 House of Commons, he still possessed an influence to return one, 
 if .not both, of the members for the city of C . And that in- 
 fluence was always exerted so as best to secure his own interest 
 with the powers that be, and advance certain objects of ambition 
 (for he was both an ostentatious and ambitious man in his way), 
 which he felt he might more easily obtain by proxy than by his 
 own votes and voice in Parliament an atmosphere in which his 
 light did not shine. And it was with a wonderful address that 
 the banker contrived at once to support the government, and 
 yet, by the frequent expressions of liberal opinions, to conciliate 
 the Whigs and Dissenters of his neighborhood. Parties, politi- 
 cal and sectarian, were not then so irreconcilable as they are 
 now. In the whole county there was no one so respected as 
 this eminent person, and yet he possessed no shining talents, 
 though a laborious and energetic man of business. It was solely 
 and wholly the force of moral charactej which gave him his 
 position in society. He felt this ; he was sensitively proud of it; 
 he was painfully anxious not to lose an atom of a distinction 
 that required to be vigilantly secured. He was a very remark- 
 able, yet not (perhaps could we penetrate all hearts) a very un- 
 common, character this banker ! He had risen from, compara-
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 129 
 
 tively speaking, a low origin and humble fortunes, and entirely 
 by the scrupulous and sedate propriety of his outward conduct. 
 With such a propriety he, therefore, inseparably connected every 
 notion of worldly prosperity and honor. Thus, though far from 
 a bad man, he was forced into being something of a hypocrite. 
 Every year he had grown more starch and more saintly. He 
 was conscience-keeper to the whole town ; and it is astonishing 
 how many persons hardly dared to make a will or subscribe to 
 a charity without his advice. As he was a shrewd man of this 
 world, as well as an accredited guide to the next, his advice 
 was precisely of a nature to reconcile the Conscience and the 
 Interest ; and he was a kind of negotiator in the reciprocal 
 diplomacy of earth and heaven. But our banker was really a 
 charitable man, and a benevolent man, and a sincere believer. 
 How, then, was he a hypocrite ? Simply because he professed 
 to be far more charitable, more benevolent, and more pious than 
 he really was. His reputation had now arrived to that degree 
 of immaculate polish that the smallest breath, which would not 
 have tarnished the character of another man, would have fixed 
 an indelible stain upon his. As he affected to be more strict 
 than the churchmen, and was a great oracle with all who re- 
 garded churchmen as lukewarm, so his conduct was narrowly 
 Avatched by all the clergy of the orthodox cathedral, good men 
 doubtless, but not affecting to be saints, who were jealous at 
 being so luminously outshone by a layman and an authority of 
 the sectarians. On the other hand, the intense homage and 
 almost worship he received from his followers kept his goodness 
 upon a stretch, if not beyond all human power, certainly beyond 
 his own. For" admiration " (as it is well said somewhere) " is 
 a kind of superstition which expects miracles." From nature 
 this gentleman had received an inordinate share of animal pro- 
 pensities ; he had strong passions, he was by temperament a sen- 
 sualist. He loved good eating and good wine he loved woman. 
 The two former blessings of the carnal life are not incompati- 
 ble with canonization ; but St. Anthony has shown that women, 
 however angelic, are not precisely that order of angels that 
 saints may safely commune with. If, therefore, he ever yielded 
 to temptations of a sexual nature, it was with profound secrecy 
 and caution ; nor did his right hand know what his left 
 hand did. 
 
 This gentleman had married a woman much older than 
 himself, but her fortune had been one of the necessary step- 
 ping-stones in his career. His exemplary conduct towards 
 this lady, ugly as well as old, had done much towards increas-
 
 130 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 ing the odor of his sanctity. She died of an ague, and the wid- 
 ower did not shock probabilities by affecting too severe a grief. 
 
 "The Lord's will be done!" said he; "she was a good 
 woman, but we should not set our affections too much upon 
 His perishable creatures!" 
 
 This was all he was ever heard to say on the matter. He 
 took an elderly gentlewoman, distantly related to him, to man- 
 age his house, and sit at the head of the table ; and it was 
 thought not impossible, though the widower was past fifty, that 
 he might marry again. 
 
 Such was the gentleman called in by Mrs. Leslie, who, of the 
 same religious opinions, had long known and revered him, to 
 decide the affairs of Alice and of Conscience. 
 
 As this man exercised no slight or fugitive influence over 
 Alice Darvil's destinies, his counsels on the point in discussion 
 ought to be fairly related. 
 
 " And now," said Mrs. Leslie, concluding the history, " you 
 will perceive, my dear sir, that this poor young creature has been 
 less culpable than she appears. From the extraordinary pro- 
 ficiency she has made in music, in a time that, by her own 
 account, seems incredibly short, I should suspect her unprin- 
 cipled betrayer must have been an artist a professional man. 
 It is just possible that they may meet again, and (as the ranks 
 between them cannot be so very disproportionate) that he may 
 marry her. I am sure that he could not do a better or a wiser 
 thing, for she loves him too fondly, despite her wrongs. Under 
 these ciecumstances, would it be a a a culpable disguise of 
 truth to represent her as a married woman separated from her 
 husband and give her the name of her seducer ? Without 
 such a precaution you will see, sir, that all hope of settling her 
 reputably for life all chance of procuring her any creditable 
 independence, is out of the question. Such is my dilemma. 
 What is your advice ? palatable or not, I shall abide by it." 
 
 The banker's grave and saturnine countenance exhibited a 
 slight degree of embarrassment at the case submitted to him. 
 He began brushing away, with the cuff of his black coat, some 
 atoms of dust that had settled on his drab small-clothes; and, 
 after a slight pause, he replied, "Why, really, dear madam, the 
 question is one of much delicacy I doubt if men could be good 
 judges upon it; your sex's tact and instinct on these matters are 
 better much better than our sagacity. There is much in the 
 dictates of your own heart; for to those who are in the grace of 
 the Lord, He vouchsafes to communicate his pleasure, by spirit- 
 ual hints and inward suggestions ! "
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 131 
 
 " If so, my dear sir, the matter is decided; for my heart whis- 
 pers me that this slight deviation from truth would be a less 
 culpable offence than turning so young and, I had almost said, 
 so innocent a creature adrift upon the world. I may take your 
 opinion as my sanction." 
 
 " Why really, I can scarcely say so much as that," said the 
 banker with a slight smile. " A deviation from truth cannot be 
 incurred without some forfeiture of strict duty." 
 
 " Not in any case. Alas, I was afraid so ! " said Mrs. Leslie, 
 despondingly. 
 
 "In any case! Oh, there may be cases! But had I not better 
 see the young woman, and ascertain that your benevolent heart 
 has not deceived you ? " 
 
 " I wish you would," said Mrs. Leslie ; "she is now in the 
 house. I will ring for her." 
 
 " Should we not be alone ? " 
 
 " Certainly; I will leave you together." 
 
 Alice was sent for, and appeared. 
 
 " This pious gentleman," said Mrs. Leslie, " will confer with 
 you for a few moments, my child. Do not be afraid; he is the 
 best of men." With these words of encouragement the good 
 lady vanished, and Alice saw before her a tall dark man, with 
 a head bald in front, yet larger behind than before, with spec- 
 tacles upon a pair of shrewd, penetrating eyes, and an outline 
 of countenance that showed he must have been handsome in 
 earlier manhood. 
 
 " My young friend," said the banker, seating himself, after a 
 deliberate survey of the fair countenance that blushed beneath 
 his gaze, "Mrs. Leslie and myself have been conferring upon 
 your temporal welfare. You have been unfortunate, my child?" 
 
 " Ah yes." 
 
 "Well, well, you are very young; we must not be too severe 
 upon youth. You will never do so again ? " 
 
 " Do what, please you, sir ? " 
 
 " What! Humph! I mean that you will be more rigid, more 
 circumspect. Men are deceitful; you must be on your guard 
 against them. You are handsome, child, very handsome 
 more's the pity." And the banker took Alice's hand and pressed 
 it with great unction. Alice looked at him gravely, and drew 
 the hand away instinctively. 
 
 The banker lowered his spectacles, and gazed at her without 
 their aid; his eyes were still fine and expressive. "What is, 
 your name?" he asked. 
 
 " Alice Alice Darvil, sir,"
 
 132 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 " Well, Alice, we have been considering what is best for you. 
 You wish to earn your own livelihood, and perhaps marry some 
 honest man hereafter." 
 
 "Marry, sir never!" said Alice, with great earnestness, her 
 eyes filling with tears. 
 
 "And why ?" 
 
 " Because I shall never see him on earth, and they do not 
 marry in heaven, sir." 
 
 The banker was moved, for he was not worse than his neigh- 
 bors, though trying to make them believe he was so much better. 
 
 " Well, time enough to talk of that; but in the meanwhile 
 you would support yourself?" 
 
 " Yes, sir. His child ought to be a burden to none nor I 
 either. I once wished to die, but then who would love my 
 little one ? Now I wish to live." 
 
 " But what mode of livelihood would you prefer? Would you 
 go into a family, in some capacity? not that of a servant you 
 are too delicate for that." 
 
 "Oh, no! no!" 
 
 " But, again, why?" asked the banker, soothingly, yet sur- 
 prised. 
 
 " Because," said Alice, almost solemnly, "there are sopie hours 
 when I feel I must be alone. I sometimes think I am not all 
 right here" and she touched her forehead. " They caljed me 
 an idiot before I knew him! No, I could not live with others, 
 for I can only cry when nobody but my child is with me." 
 
 This was said with such unconscious, and therefore with such 
 pathetic, simplicity, that the banker was sensibly affected. He 
 rose, stirred the fire, resettled himself, and, after a pause, said 
 emphatically " Alice, I will be your friend. Let me believe 
 you will deserve it." 
 
 Alice bent her graceful head, and seeing that he had sunk into 
 an abstracted silence, she thought it time for her to withdraw. 
 
 " She is, indeed, beautiful," said the banker, almost aloud, when 
 he was alone; "and the old lady is right she is as innocent as 
 if she had not fallen. I wonder " Here he stopped short, 
 and walked to the glass over the mantel-piece, where he was still 
 gazing on his own features, when Mrs. Leslie returned. 
 
 "Well, sir," said she, a little surprised at this seeming vanity 
 in so pious a man. 
 
 The banker started. " Madam, I honor your penetration as 
 much as your charity; I think that there is so much to be feared in 
 letting all the world know this young female's past error, that, 
 though I dare not advise, I cannot blame, your concealment of it."
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 133 
 
 " But, sir, your words have sunk deep into my thoughts; you 
 said every deviation from truth was a forfeiture of duty." 
 
 "Certainly; but there are some exceptions. The world is a 
 bad world, we are born in sin, and the children of wrath. We 
 do not tell infants all the truth, when they ask us questions, the 
 proper answers of which would mislead, not enlighten, them. In 
 some things the world are infants. The very science of govern- 
 ment is the science of concealing truth so is the system of 
 trade. We could not blame the tradesman for not telling the 
 public that if all his debts were called in he would be a bankrupt." 
 
 "And he may marry her after all this Mr. Butler." 
 
 "Heaven forbid the villain! Well, madam, I will see to 
 this poor young thing she shall not want a guide." 
 
 " Heaven reward you ! How wicked some people are to call 
 you severe ! " 
 
 "I can bear///0/ blame with a meek temper,madam. Good-day." 
 
 "Good-day. You will remember how strictly confidential 
 has been our conversation." 
 
 " Not a breath shall transpire. I will send you some tracts 
 to-morrow so comforting. Heaven bless you ! " 
 
 This difficulty smoothed, Mrs. Leslie, to her astonishment, 
 found that she had another to contend with in Alice herself. 
 For, first, Alice conceived that to change her name and keep her 
 secret, was to confess that she ought to be ashamed, rather than 
 proud, of her love to Ernest, and she thought that so ungrate- 
 ful to him! and secondly, to take his name, to pass for his 
 wife what presumption he would certainly have a right to be 
 offended! At these scruples, Mrs. Leslie well-nigh lost all pa- 
 tience: and the banker, to his own surprise, was again called in. 
 We have said that he was an experienced and skilful adviser, 
 which implies the faculty of persuasion. He soon saw the handle 
 by which Alice's obstinacy might always be moved her little 
 girl's welfare. He put this so forcibly before her eyes; he repre- 
 sented the child's future fate as resting so much, not only on 
 her own good conduct, but on her outward respectability, that 
 he prevailed upon her at last; and, perhaps, one argument that 
 he incidentally used had as much effect on her as the rest. 
 " This Mr. Butler, if yet in England, may pass through our town 
 may visit amongst us, may hear you spoken of, by a name 
 similar to his own, and curiosity would thus induce him to seek 
 you. Take his name, and you will always bear an honorable in- 
 dex to your mutual discovery and recognition. Besides, when 
 you are respectable, honored, and earning an independence, he 
 may not be too proud to marry you. But take your own name,
 
 134 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 avow your own history, and not only will your cliild be an out- 
 cast, yourself a beggar, or, at best a menial dependant, but you 
 lose every hope of recovering the object of your too devoted 
 attachment." 
 
 Thus Alice was convinced. From that time she became close 
 and reserved in her communications. Mrs. Leslie had wisely 
 selected a town sufficiently remote from her own abode to pre- 
 clude any revelations of her domestics; and, as Mrs. Butler, 
 Alice attracted universal sympathy and respect from the exer- 
 cise of her talents, the modest sweetness of her manners, the 
 unblemished propriety of her conduct. Somehow or other, no 
 sooner did she learn the philosophy of concealment, than she 
 made a great leap in knowledge of the world. And, though 
 
 flattered and courted by the young loungers of C , she steered 
 
 her course with so much address, that she was never persecuted. 
 For there are few men in the world who make advances where 
 there is no encouragement. 
 
 The banker observed her conduct with silent vigilance. He 
 met her often, he visited her often. He was intimate at houses 
 where she attended to teach or perform. He lent her good 
 books he advised her he preached to her. Alice began to 
 look up to him to like him to consider him, as a village girl 
 in Catholic countries may consider a benevolent and kindly 
 priest. And he what was his object? at that time it is im- 
 possible to guess: he became thoughtful and abstracted. 
 
 One day an old maid and an old clergyman met in the High 
 Street of C . 
 
 "And how do you do, ma'am? " said the clergyman ; " how 
 is the rheumatism ? " 
 
 "Better, thank you, sir. Any news?" 
 
 The clergyman smiled, and something hovered on his lips, 
 which he suppressed. 
 
 " Were you," the old maid resumed, " at Mrs. Macnab's last 
 night ? Charming music ? " 
 
 "Charming! How pretty that Mrs. Butler is! And how 
 humble ! Knows her station so unlike professional people." 
 
 "Yes, indeed ! What attention a certain banker paid her !" 
 
 " He ! he ! he ! yes ; he is very fatherly very ! " 
 
 " Perhaps he will marry again; he is always talking of the holy 
 state of matrimony a holy state it may be but Heaven knows, 
 his wife, poor woman, did not make it a pleasant one." 
 
 " There may be more causes for that than we guess of," said the 
 clergyman, mysteriously. " I would not be uncharitable, but " 
 
 " But what ? "
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 135 
 
 " Oh, when he was young, our great man was not so correct, 
 I fancy, as he is now." 
 
 " So I have heard it whispered : but nothing against him was 
 ever known." 
 
 " Hem it is very odd ! " 
 
 "What's very odd?" 
 
 "Why, but it's a secret I dare say it's all very right." 
 
 " Oh, I shan't say a word. Are you going to the cathedral? 
 don't let me keep you standing. Now, pray proceed ! " 
 
 " Well, then, yesterday I was doing duty in a village more 
 than twenty miles hence, and I loitered in the village to take an 
 early dinner; and afterward, while my horse was feeding, I 
 strolled down the green." 
 
 " Well well ? " 
 
 " And I saw a gentleman muffled carefully up, with his hat 
 slouched over his face, at the door of a cottage, with a little 
 child in his arms, and he kissed it more fondly than, be we ever 
 so good, we generally kiss other people's children ; and then he 
 gave it to a peasant woman standing near him, and mounted 
 his horse, which was tied to the gate, and trotted past me ; and 
 who do you think this was?" 
 
 "Patience me I can't guess ! " 
 
 "Why, our saintly banker. I bowed to him, and I assure 
 you he turned as red, ma'am, as your waistband." 
 
 " My ! " 
 
 " I just turned into the cottage when he was out of sight, for 
 I was thirsty, and asked for a glass of water, and I saw the 
 child. I declare, I would not be uncharitable, but I thought it 
 monstrous like you know whom ! " 
 
 " Gracious, you don't say " 
 
 "I asked the woman ' if it was hers?' and she said 'No,' but 
 was very short." 
 
 " Dear me, I must find this out ! What is the name of the 
 village ? " 
 
 " Covedale." 
 
 " Oh, I know I know." 
 
 " Not a word of this ; I dare say there's nothing in it. But 
 I am not much in favor of your new lights." 
 
 " Nor I either. What better than the good old Church of 
 England ?" 
 
 " Madam, your sentiments do you honor ; you will be sure 
 not to say anything of our little mystery." 
 
 " Not a syllable." 
 
 Two days after this, three old maids made an excursion to
 
 136 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 the village of Covedale, and lo ! the cottage .n question was 
 shut up the woman and the child were gone. The people in 
 the village knew nothing about them had seen nothing par- 
 ticular in the woman or child had always supposed them 
 mother and daughter ; and the gentleman identified by the 
 clerical inquisitor with the banker, had never but once been 
 observed in the place. 
 
 " The vile old parson," said the eldest of the old maids, " to 
 take away so good a man's character ! and the fly will cost one 
 pound two, with the baiting ! " 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 " In this disposition was I, when looking out of my window one day to 
 take the air, I perceived a kind of peasant who looked at me very attent- 
 ively." GIL BLAS. 
 
 A SUMMER'S evening in a retired country town has something 
 melancholy in it. You have the streets of a metropolis without 
 their animated bustle you have the stillness of the country 
 without its birds and flowers. The reader will please to bring 
 
 before him a quiet street, in the quiet country town of C , 
 
 in a quiet evening in quiet June ; the picture is not mirthful 
 two young dogs are playing in the street, one old dog is watch- 
 ing by a newly painted door. A few ladies of middle age move 
 noiselessly along the pavement, returning home to tea ; they 
 wear white muslin dresses, green spencers a little faded, straw 
 poke bonnets, with green or coffee-colored gauze veils. By 
 twos and threes they have disappeared within the thresholds of 
 small, neat houses, with little railings, enclosing- little green 
 plots. Threshold, house, railing and plot, each as like to the 
 other as are those small commodities called "nest tables," which, 
 "even as a broken mirror multiplies," summon to the bewildered 
 eye countless iterations of one four-legged individual. Paradise 
 Place was a set of nest houses. 
 
 A cow had passed through the streets with a milk-woman 
 behind; two young and gay shopmen, "looking after the 
 gals," had reconnoitred the street, and vanished in despair. 
 The twilight advanced, but gently ; and though a star or two 
 were up, the air was still clear. At the open windows of one 
 of the tenements in this street sat Alice Darvil. She had been 
 working (that pretty excuse to women for thinking), and as the 
 thoughts grew upon her, and the evening waned, the work
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 137 
 
 had fallen upon her knee, and her hands dropped mechanically 
 on her lap. Her profile was turned towards the street ; but 
 without moving her head or changing her attitude, her eyes 
 glanced from time to time to her little girl, who nestled on the 
 ground beside her, tired with her play ; and wondering, per- 
 haps, why she was not already in bed, seemed as tranquil as the 
 young mother herself. And sometimes Alice's eyes filled with 
 tears and then she sighed, as if to sigh the tears away. But, poor 
 Alice, if she grieved, hers was now a silent and a patient grief! 
 The street was deserted of all other passengers, when a man 
 passed along the pavement on the side opposite to Alice's house. 
 His garb was rude and homely, between that of a laborer and a 
 farmer ; but still there was an affectation of tawdry show about 
 the bright scarlet silk handkerchief, tied, in a sailor or smuggler 
 fashion, round the sinewy throat; the hat was set jauntily on one 
 side, and, dangling many an inch from the gaily striped waist- 
 coat, glittered a watch-chain and seals, which appeared suspi- 
 ciously out of character with the rest of the attire. The passen- 
 ger was covered with dust ; and as the street was in a suburb 
 communicating with the high-road, and formed one of the 
 entrances into the town, he had probably, after a long day's 
 journey, reached his evening's destination. The looks of this 
 stranger were anxious, restless, and perturbed. In his gait and 
 swagger there was the recklessness of the professional black- 
 guard ; but in his vigilant, prying and suspicious eyes, there was 
 a hang-dog expression of apprehension and fear. He seemed 
 a man upon whom Crime had set its significant mark and who 
 saw a purse with one eye and a gibbet with the other. Alice did 
 not note the stranger, till she herself had attracted and centred 
 all his attention. He halted abruptly as he caught a view of 
 her face shaded his eyes with his hand as if to gaze more in- 
 tently and at length burst into an exclamation of surprise and 
 pleasure. At that instant Alice turned, and her eyes met those 
 of the stranger. The fascination of the basilisk can scarcely 
 more stun and paralyze its victim than the look of this stranger 
 charmed, with the appalling glamory of horror, the eye and soul 
 of Alice Darvil. Her face became suddenly locked and rigid, 
 her lips as white as marble, her eyes almost started from their 
 sockets she pressed her hands convulsively together, and shud- 
 dered, but still she did not move. The man nodded and grinned, 
 and then, deliberately crossing the street, gained the door, and 
 knocked loudly. Still Alice did not stir her senses seemed 
 to have forsaken her presently the stranger's loud, rough voice 
 was heard below, in answer to the accents of the solitary woman-
 
 138 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 servant whom Alice kept in her employ; and his strong, heavy 
 tread made the slight staircase creak and tremble. Then Alice 
 rose as by an instinct, caught her child in her arms, and stood 
 erect and motionless, facing the door. It opened and the 
 FATHER and DAUGHTER were once more face to face within 
 the same walls. 
 
 " Well, Alley, how are you, my blowen ? glad to see your 
 old dad again, I'll be sworn. No ceremony, sit down. Ha, ha, 
 snug here very snug we shall live together charmingly. Trade 
 on your own account eh ? sly ; well, can't desert your poor 
 old father. Let's have something to eat and drink." 
 
 So saying, Darvil threw himself at length upon the neat, prim, 
 little chintz sofa, with the air of a man resolved to make him- 
 self perfectly at home. 
 
 Alice gazed and trembled violently, but still said nothing 
 the power of voice had indeed left her. 
 
 " Come, why don't you stir your stumps ? I suppose I must 
 wait on myself fine manners ! But, ho, ho a bell, by gosh 
 mighty grand never mind I am used to call for my own wants." 
 
 A hearty tug at the frail bell-rope sent a thrill of alarm half 
 way through the long lath-and-plaster row of Paradise Place, 
 and left the instrument of sound in the hand of its creator. 
 
 Up came the maid servant, a formal old woman, most 
 respectable. 
 
 " Harkye, old girl !" said Darvil; "bring up the best you 
 have to eat not particular let there be plenty. And I say 
 a bottle of brandy. Come, don't stand there staring like a stuck 
 pig. Budge ! Hell and furies, don't you hear me ?" 
 
 The servant retreated, as if a pistol had been put to her head, 
 and Darvil, laughing loud, threw himself again upon the sofa. 
 Alice looked at him, and still, without saying a word, glided 
 from the room her child in her arms. She hurried down-stairs, 
 and in the hall met her servant. The latter, who was much at- 
 tached to her mistress, was alarmed to see her about to leave the 
 house. 
 
 "Why, marm, where be you going ? Dear heart, you have 
 no bonnet on ! What is the matter ? Who is this ?" 
 
 " Oh ! " cried Alice, in agony ; " what shall I do ? where shall 
 I fly ?" The door above opened. Alice heard, started, and the 
 next moment was in the street. She ran on breathlessly, and 
 like one insane. Her mind, was, indeed, for the time, gone, 
 and had a river flowed before her way, she would have plunged 
 into an escape from a world that seemed too narrow to hold a 
 father and his child.
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 139 
 
 But just as she turned a corner of the street that led into the 
 more public thoroughfares, she felt her arm grasped, and a voice 
 called out her name in surprised and startled accents. 
 
 " Heavens, Mrs. Butler ! Alice ! What do I see ? What is 
 the matter ?" 
 
 " Oh, sir, save me ! you are a good man a great man save 
 me he is returned ! " 
 
 " He ! who ? Mr. Butler ? " said the banker (for that gentle- 
 man it was), in a changed and trembling voice. 
 
 " No, no ah, not he! I did not say he I said my father 
 my, my ah look behind look behind is he coming ?" 
 
 "Calm yourself, my dear young friend no one is near. I 
 will go and reason with your father. No one shall harm you 
 I will protect you. Go back go back, I will follow we must 
 not be seen together." And the tall banker seemed trying to 
 shrink into a nutshell. 
 
 " No, no," said Alice, growing yet paler, " I cannot go back." 
 
 "Well, then, just follow me to the door your servant shall 
 get you your bonnet and accompany you to my house, where 
 you can wait till I return. Meanwhile, I will see your father, 
 and rid you, I trust, of his presence." 
 
 The banker, who spoke in a very hurried and even impatient 
 voice, waited for no reply, but took his way to Alice's house. 
 Alice herself did not follow, but remained in the very place 
 where she was left, till joined by her servant, who then con- 
 ducted her to the rich man's residence. . . . But Alice's mind 
 had not recovered its shock, and her thoughts wandered 
 ingly. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 " Miramont. Do they chafe roundly? 
 
 Andrew. As they were rubbed with soap, sir. 
 And now they swear aloud, now cairn again 
 Like a ring of bells, whose sound the wind still utters, 
 And then they sit in council what to do, 
 And then they jar again what shall be done ! " 
 
 BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER. 
 
 OH! what a picture of human nature it was when the banker 
 and the vagabond sat together in that little drawing-room, facing 
 each other, one in the rm-chair, one on the sofa ! Darvil was 
 still employed on some cold meat, and was making wry faces at 
 the very indifferent brandy which he had frightened the formal 
 old servant into buying at the nearest public-house ; and oppo-
 
 140 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 site sat the respectable highly respectable man of forms and 
 ceremonies, of decencies and quackeries, gazing gravely upon 
 this low, dare-devil ruffian : the well-to-do hypocrite the pen- 
 niless villain ; the man who had everything to lose the man 
 who had nothing in the wide world but his own mischievous, 
 rascally life, a gold watch, chain, and seals, which he had stolen 
 the day before, and thirteen shillings and threepence halfpenny 
 in his left breeches pocket ! 
 
 The man of wealth was by no means well acquainted with 
 the nature of the beast before him. He had heard from Mrs. 
 Leslie (as we remember) the outline of Alice's history, and 
 ascertained that their joint protegee s father was a great black- 
 guard ; but he expected to find Mr. Darvil a mere dull, brutish 
 villain, a peasant-ruffian a blunt serf, without brains, or their 
 substitute, effrontery. But Luke Darvil was a clever, half-edu- 
 cated fellow : he did not sin from ignorance, but had wit enough 
 to have bad principles, and he was as impudent as if he had 
 lived all his life in the best society. He was not frightened at 
 the banker's drab breeches and imposing air not he ! The 
 Duke of Wellington would not have frightened Luke Darvil, 
 unless his grace had had the constables for his aides-de-camp. 
 
 The banker, to use a homely phrase, was "taken aback." 
 
 " Look you here, Mr. What's- your-name !" said Darvil, swal- 
 lowing a glass of the raw alcohol as if it had been water 
 "look you now you can't humbug me. What the devil do you 
 care about my daughter's respectability, or comfort, or anything 
 else, grave old dog as you are ! It is my daughter herself you 
 are licking your brown old chaps at ! and 'faith, my Alley is 
 a very pretty girl very but queer as moonshine. You'll drive 
 a, much better bargain with me than with her." 
 
 The banker colored scarlet he bit his lips and measured his 
 companion from head to foot (while the latter lolled on the sofa), 
 as if he were meditating the possibility of kicking him down- 
 stairs. But Luke Darvil would have thrashed the banker, and 
 all his clerks into the bargain. His frame was like a trunk of 
 thews and muscles, packed up by that careful dame, Nature, as 
 tightly as possible ; and a prize-fighter would have thought twice 
 before he would have entered the ring against so awkward a 
 customer. The banker was a man prudent to a fault, and he 
 pushed his chair six inches back, as he concluded his survey. 
 
 " Sir," then said he, very quietly, " do not let us misunderstand 
 each other. Your daughter is safe from your control if you 
 molest her, the law will protect " 
 
 is not of age," said. Darvil. " Your health, old boy,"
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 14t 
 
 "Whether she is of age or not," returned the banker, unheed- 
 ing the courtesy conveyed in the last sentence, " I do not care 
 three straws I know enough of the law to know, that if she 
 have rich friends in this town, and you have none, she will be 
 protected, and you will go to the treadmill." 
 
 " That is spoken like a sensible man," said Darvil, for the first 
 time with a show of respect in his manner; "you now take a prac- 
 tical view of matters, as we used to say at the spouting-club." 
 
 "If I were in your situation, Mr. Darvil, I tell you what I 
 would do. I would leave my daughter and this town to-morrow 
 morning, and I would promise never to return, and never to 
 molest her, on condition she allowed me a certain sum from her 
 earnings, paid quarterly." 
 
 " And if I preferred living with her ?" 
 
 " In that case, I, as a magistrate of this town, would have you 
 sent away as a vagrant, or apprehended " 
 
 "Ha!" 
 
 " Apprehended on suspicion of stealing that gold chain and 
 seals which you wear so ostensibly." 
 
 " By goles, but you're a clever fellow," said Darvil, involun- 
 tarily; "you know human natur'." 
 
 The banker smiled : strange to say, he was pleased with the 
 compliment. 
 
 " But," resumed Darvil, helping himself to another slice of 
 beef, " you are in the wrong box planted in Queer Street, as 
 we say in London ; for if you care a d n about my daughter's 
 respectability, you will never muzzle her father on suspicion of 
 theft and so there's tit for tat, old gentleman ! " 
 
 " I shall deny that you are her father, Mr. Darvil, and I think 
 you will find it hard to prove the fact in any town where I am 
 a magistrate." 
 
 " By. goles, what a good prig you would have made ! You 
 are as sharp as a gimlet. Surely you were brought up at the 
 Old Bailey ! " 
 
 " Mr. Darvil, be ruled. You seem a man not deaf to reason, 
 and I ask you whether, in any town in this country, a poor man 
 in suspicious cirumstances can do anything against a rich man 
 whose character is established ? Perhaps you are right in the 
 main : I have nothing to do with that. But I tell you that you 
 shall quit this house in half an hour that you shall never enter 
 it again but at your peril ; and if you do within ten minutes 
 from that time you shall be in the town gaol. It is no longer 
 a contest between you and your defenceless daughter ; it is a 
 contest between "
 
 142 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 " A tramp in fustian, and a gemman as drives a coach," in- 
 terrupted Darvil, laughing bitterly, yet heartily. "Good good!" 
 
 The banker rose. " I think you have made a very clever defi- 
 nition," said he. " Half an hour you recollect good-evening." 
 
 "Stay," said Darvil; "you are the first man I have seen for 
 many a year that I can take a fancy to. Sit down sit down, 
 I say, and talk a bit, and we shall come to terms soon, I dare 
 say : that's right. Lord ! how I should like to have you on the 
 roadside instead of within these four gimcrack walls. Ha ! ha ! 
 the argufying would be all in my favor then." 
 
 The banker was not a brave man, and his color changed 
 slightly at the intimation of this obliging wish. Darvil eyed him 
 grimly and chucklingly. 
 
 The rich man resumed : " That may or may not be, Mr. Dar- 
 vil, according as I might happen or not to have pistols about 
 me. But to the point. Quit this house without further debate, 
 without noise, without mentioning to any one else your claim 
 upon its owner " 
 
 "Well, and the return?" 
 
 " Ten guineas now, and the same sum quarterly, as long as 
 the young lady lives in this town, and you never persecute her 
 by word or letter." 
 
 "That is forty guineas a year. I can't live upon it." 
 
 "You will cost less in the House of Correction, Mr. Darvil." 
 
 "Come, make it a hundred : Alley is cheap at that." 
 
 "Not a farthing more," said the banker, buttoning up his 
 breeches-pockets with a determined air. 
 
 "Well, out with the shiners." 
 
 "Do you promise or not?" 
 
 "I promise." 
 
 " There are your ten guineas. If in half an hour you are not 
 gone why then " 
 
 "Then?" 
 
 " Why then you have robbed me often guineas, and must take 
 the usual consequences of robbery." 
 
 Darvil started to his feet his eyes glared he grasped the 
 carving-knife before him. 
 
 "You are a bold fellow," said the banker quietly; "but it won't 
 do. It is not worth your while to murder me ; and I am a man 
 sure to be missed." 
 
 Darvil sunk down, sullen and foiled. The respectable man 
 was more than a match for the villain. 
 
 " Had you been as poor as I, Gad ! what a rogue you would 
 have been ! "
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 143 
 
 "I think not," said the banker; "I believe roguery to be a 
 very bad policy. Perhaps once I was almost as poor as you are, 
 but I never turned rogue." 
 
 "You never were in my circumstances/'returned Darvil, gloom- 
 ily. " I was a gentleman's son. Come, you shall hear my story. 
 My father was well-born, but married a maid-servant when he 
 was at college ; his family disowned him, and left him to starve. 
 He died in the struggle against a poverty he was not brought up 
 to, and my dame went into service again ; became housekeeper 
 to an old bachelor sent me to school but mother had a family 
 by the old bachelor, and I was taken from school and put to trade. 
 All hated me for I was ugly ; damn them ! Mother cut me 
 I wanted money robbed the old bachelor was sent to gaol, 
 and learned there a lesson or two how to rob better in the fu- 
 ture. Mother died, I was adrift in the world. The world was 
 my foe could not make it up with the world, so we went to 
 war ; you understand, old boy ? Married a poor woman and 
 pretty ; wife made me jealous had learned to suspect every 
 one. Alice born did not believe her mine ; not like me per- 
 haps a gentleman's child. I hate I loathe gentlemen. Got 
 drunk one night kicked my wife in the stomach three weeks 
 after her confinement. Wife died tried for my life got off. 
 Went to another county having had a sort of education, and 
 being sharp eno', got work as a mechanic. Hated work just as 
 I hated gentlemen for was I not by blood a gentleman ? There 
 was the curse. Alice grew up ; never looked on her as my flesh 
 
 and blood. Her mother was a w ! Why should not she be 
 
 one? There, that's enough. Plenty of excuse, I think, for all 
 I have ever done. Curse the world curse the rich curse the 
 handsome curse curse all ! " 
 
 "You have been a very foolish man," said the banker; "and seem 
 to me to have had very good cards, if you had known how to play 
 them. However, that is your look-out. It is not yet too late to 
 repent ; age is creeping on you. Man, there is another world." 
 
 The banker said the last words with a tone of solemn and even 
 dignified adjuration. 
 
 "You think so do you?" said Darvil, staring at him. 
 
 "From my soul I do." 
 
 "Then you are not the sensible man I took you for," replied 
 Darvil dryly ; "and I should like to talk to you on that subject." 
 
 But our Dives, however sincere a believer, was by no means one 
 
 " At whose control 
 Despair and Anguish fled the struggling soul." 
 
 He had words of comfort for the pious, but he had none for the
 
 144 ERNEST MALTR AVERS. 
 
 sceptic he could soothe, but he could not convert. It was not 
 in his way; besides, he saw no credit in making a convert of Luke 
 Darvil. Accordingly, he again rose with some quickness, and 
 said 
 
 " No, sir ; that is useless, I fear, and I have no time to spare ; 
 and so once more, good-night to you." 
 
 " But you have not arranged where my allowance is to be sent." 
 
 "Ah ! true ; I will guarantee it. You will find my name suf- 
 ficient security." 
 
 "At least, it is the best I can get," returned Darvil, carelessly; 
 "and, after all, it is not a bad chance day's work. But I'm sure 
 I can't say where the money shall be sent. I don't know a man 
 who would not grab it." 
 
 "Very well, then the best thing (I speak as a man of busi- 
 ness) will be to draw on me for ten guineas, quarterly. Wher- 
 ever you are staying, any banker can effect this for you. But 
 mind, if ever you overdraw, the account stops." 
 
 "I understand," said Darvil ; "and when I have finished the 
 bottle I shall be off." 
 
 "You had better," replied the banker, as he opened the 
 door. 
 
 The rich man returned home hurriedly. " So Alice, after all, 
 has some gentle blood in her veins," thought he. "But that 
 father no, it will never do. I wish he were hanged and no- 
 body the wiser. I should very much like to arrange the matter 
 without marrying ; but then scandal scandal scandal. After 
 all, I had better give up all thoughts of her. She is monstrous 
 handsome, and so humph ! I shall never grow an old man." 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 " Began to bend down his admiring eyes 
 
 On all her touching looks and qualities, 
 
 Turning their shapely sweetness every way 
 
 Till 'twas his food and habit day by day." LEIGH HUNT. 
 
 THERE must have been a secret something about Alice Darvil 
 singularly captivating, that (associated as she was with images 
 of the most sordid and the vilest crimes) left her still pure and 
 lovely alike in the eyes of a man as fastidious as Ernest Mal- 
 travers, and of a man as influenced by all the thoughts and the- 
 ories of the world, as the shrewd banker of C . Amidst things 
 
 foul and hateful had sprung up this beautiful flower, as if to pre- 
 serve the inherent heavenliness and grace of human nature, and
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. t4$ 
 
 proclaim the handiwork of God in scenes where human nature 
 had been most debased by the abuses of social art ; and where 
 the light of God himself was most darkened and obscured. That 
 such contrasts, though rarely and as by chance, are found, every 
 one who has carefully examined the wastes and deserts of life 
 must own. I have drawn Alice Darvil scrupulously from life, 
 and I can declare that I have not exaggerated hue nor lineament 
 in the portrait. I do not suppose, with our good banker, that she 
 owed anything, unless it might be a greater delicacy of form and 
 feature, to whatever mixture of gentle blood was in her veins. 
 But, somehow or other, in her original conformation there was 
 the happy bias of the plants towards th'e Pure and the Bright. 
 For, despite Helvetius, a common experience teaches us tfhat 
 though education and circumstances may mould the mass, Na- 
 ture herself sometimes forms the individual, and throws into the 
 clay, or its spirit, so much of beauty or deformity, that nothing 
 can utterly subdue the original elements of character. From 
 sweets one draws poison from poisons another extracts but 
 sweets. But I, often deeply pondering over the psychological his- 
 tory of Alice Darvil, think that one principal cause why she es- 
 caped the early contaminations around her, was in the slow and 
 protracted development of her intellectual faculties. Whether 
 or not the brutal violence of her father had in childhood acted 
 through her nerves upon the brain, certain it is that until she knew 
 Maltravers until she loved till she was cherished her mind 
 had seemed torpid and locked up. True, Darvil had taught her 
 nothing, nor permitted her to be taught anything ; but that mere 
 ignorance would have been no preservation to a quick, obser- 
 vant mind. It was the bluntness of the senses themselves that 
 operated like an armor between her mind and the vile things 
 around her. It was the rough, dull covering of the chrysalis, 
 framed to bear rude contact and biting weather, that the but- 
 terfly might break forth, winged and glorious, in due season. Had 
 Alice been a quick child, Alice would have probably grown up a 
 depraved and dissolute woman ; but she comprehended, she un- 
 derstood little or nothing, till she found an inspirer in that affec- 
 tion which inspires both beast and man ; which makes the dog 
 (in his natural state one of the meanest of the savage race) a 
 companion, a guardian, a protector, and raises Instinct half-way 
 to the height of Reason. 
 
 The banker had a strong regard for Alice ; and when he 
 reached home, he heard with great pain that she was in a high 
 state of fever. She remained beneath his roof that night, and 
 the elderly gentlewoman, his relation and gouvernante, attended
 
 146 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 her. The banker slept but little ; and the next morning his 
 countenance was unusually pale. 
 
 Towards daybreak Alice had fallen into a sound and refresh- 
 ing sleep ; and when, on waking, she found, by a note from her 
 host, that her father had left her house, and she might return 
 in safety and without fear, a violent flood of tears, followed by 
 long and grateful prayer, contributed to the restoration of her 
 mind and nerves. Imperfect as this young woman's notions of 
 abstract right and wrong still were, she was yet sensible to the 
 claims of a father (no matter how criminal) upon his child : for 
 feelings with her were so good and true, that they supplied in 
 a great measure the place of principles. She knew that she 
 could not have lived under the same roof with her dreadful 
 parent ; but still she felt an uneasy remorse at thinking he had 
 been driven from that roof in destitution and want. She hast- 
 ened to dress herself and seek an audience with her protector ; 
 and the latter found with admiration and pleasure that he had 
 anticipated her own instantaneous and involuntary design in the 
 settlement upon Darvil. He then communicated to Alice the 
 compact he had already formed with her father, and she wept 
 and kissed his hand when she heard, and secretly resolved that 
 she would work hard to be enabled to increase the sum allowed. 
 Oh, if her labors could serve to retrieve a parent from the 
 necessity of darker resources for support ! Alas ! when crime 
 has become a custom, it is like gaming or drinking the excite- 
 ment is wanting ; and had Luke Darvil been suddenly made 
 inheritor of the wealth of a Rothschild, he would either still 
 have been a villain in one way or the other ; or ennui would 
 have awakened conscience, and he would have died of the 
 change of habit. 
 
 Our banker always seemed more struck by Alice's moral feel- 
 ings than even by her physical beauty. Her love for her child, 
 for instance, impressed him powerfully, and he always gazed 
 upon her with softer eyes when he saw her caressing or nursing the 
 little fatherless creature, whose health was now delicate and pre- 
 carious. It is difficult to say whether he was absolutely in love 
 with Alice ; the phrase is too strong, perhaps, to be applied to 
 a man past fifty, who had gone through emotions and trials 
 enough to wear away freshness from his heart. His feelings 
 altogether for Alice, the designs he entertained towards her, 
 were of a very complicated nature ; and it will be long, perhaps, be- 
 fore the reader can thoroughly comprehend them. He conducted 
 Alice home that day ; but he said little by the way, perhaps be- 
 cause his female relation, for appearance' sake, accompanied
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 147 
 
 them also. He, however, briefly cautioned Alice on no account 
 to communicate to any one that it was her father who had been 
 her visitor ; and she still shuddered too much at the remin- 
 iscence to appear likely to converse on it. The banker also 
 judged it advisable to be so far confidential with Alice's ser- 
 vant as to take her aside, and to tell her that the inauspicious 
 stranger of the previous evening had been a very distant rela- 
 tion of Mrs. Butler, who, from a habit of drunkenness, had 
 fallen into evil and disorderly courses. The banker added 
 with a sanctified air that he trusted, by a little serious conversa- 
 tion, he had led the poor man to better notions, and that he 
 had gone home with an altered mind to his family. "But, my 
 good Hannah," he concluded, " you know you are a superior 
 person, and above the vulgar sin of indiscriminate gossip ; 
 therefore, mention what has occurred to no one ; it can do no 
 good to Mrs. Butler it may hurt the man himself, who is well- 
 to-do better off than he seems ; and who, I hope, with 
 grace, may be a sincere penitent ; and it will also but 
 that is nothing very seriously displease me. By the bye, 
 Hannah, I shall be able to get your grandson into the Free 
 School." 
 
 The banker was shrewd enough to perceive that he had 
 carried his point ; and he was walking home satisfied, on the 
 whole, with the way matters had been arranged, when he was 
 met by a brother magistrate. 
 
 " Ha ! " said the latter, "and how are you, my good sir? Do 
 you know that we have had^the Bow Street officers here, in search 
 of a notorious villain who has broken from prison ? He is one 
 of the most determined and dexterous burglars in all England, 
 and the runners have hunted him into our town. His very rob- 
 beries have tracked him by the way. He robbed a gentleman 
 the day before yesterday of his watch, and left him for dead on 
 the road this was not thirty miles hence." 
 
 "Bless me!" said the banker, with emotion ; "and what is 
 the wretch's name?" 
 
 " Why, he has as many aliases as a Spanish grandee ; but I 
 believe the last name he has assumed is Peter Watts." 
 
 "Oh!" said our friend, relieved, "well, have the runners 
 found him ?" 
 
 " No, but they are on his scent. A fellow answering to his 
 description was seen by the man at the toll-bar, at daybreak 
 
 this morning, on the way to F ; the officers are after 
 
 him." 
 
 " I hope he may meet with his deserts and crime is never
 
 140 ERNEST MALTR AVERS. 
 
 unpunished, even in this world. My best compliments to your 
 lady; and how is little Jack? Well! glad to hear it fine 
 boy, little Jack ! Good-day." 
 
 " Good-day, my dear sir. Worthy man, that ! " 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 " But who is this ? thought he, a demon vile, 
 With wicked meaning and a vulgar style ; 
 Hammond they call him they can give the name 
 Of man to devils ; Why am I so tame ? 
 Why crush I not the viper ? Fear replied, 
 Watch him awhile, and let his strength be tried." CRABBE. 
 
 THE next morning, after breakfast, the banker took his horse 
 a crop-eared, fast-trotting hackney and merely leaving word 
 that he was going upon business into the country, and should not 
 return to dinner, turned his back on the spires of C . 
 
 He rode slowly, for the day was hot. The face of the coun- 
 try, which was fair and smiling, might have tempted others to 
 linger by the way ; but our hard and practical man of the world 
 was more influenced by the weather than the loveliness of the 
 scenery. He did not look upon Nature with the eye of imagi- 
 nation ; perhaps a railroad, had it then and there existed, would 
 have pleased him better than the hanging woods, the shadowy 
 valleys, and the changeful river that from time to time beautified 
 the landscape on either side of the road. But, after all, there is 
 a vast deal of hypocrisy in the affected admiration for Nature ; 
 and I don't think one person in a hundred cares for what lies 
 by the side of a road, so long as the road itself is good, hills 
 levelled, and turnpikes cheap. 
 
 It was mid-noon, and many miles had been passed, when the 
 banker turned down a green lane and quickened his pace. At 
 the end of about three-quarters of an hour, he arrived at a little 
 solitary inn, called "The Angler," put up his horse, ordered 
 his dinner at six o'clock begged to borrow a basket to hold 
 his fish and it was then apparent that a longish cane he had 
 carried with him was capable of being extended into a fishing 
 rod. He fitted in the various joints with care, as if to be sure 
 no accident had happened to the implement by the journey 
 pried anxiously 'into the contents of a black case of lines and 
 flies slung the basket be! ind his back, and while his horse was 
 putting down his nose and whisking about his tail, in the course 
 of those nameless coquetries that horses carry on with hostlers
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 149 
 
 our worthy brother of the rod strode rapidly through some green 
 fields, gained the river-side, and began fishing with semblance 
 of earnest interest in the sport. He had caught one trout, 
 seemingly by accident for the astonished fish was hooked up 
 on the outside of its jaw probably while in the act, not of bit- 
 ing, but of gazing at, the bait, when he grew discontented witb 
 the spot he had selected ; and, after looking round as if to con- 
 vince himself that he was not liable to be disturbed or observed 
 (a thought hateful to the fishing fraternity), he stole quickly 
 along the margin, and finally quitting the river-side altogether, 
 struck into a path that, after a sharp walk of nearly an hour, 
 brought him to the door of a cottage. He knocked twice, then 
 entered of his own accord nor was it till the summer sun was 
 near its decline that the banker regained his inn. His simple 
 dinner, which they had delayed in wonder at the protracted 
 absence of the angler, and in expectation of the fishes he 
 was to bring back to be fried, was soon despatched ; his 
 horse was ordered to the door, and the red clouds in the 
 west already betokened the lapse of another day, as he 
 spurred from the spot on the fast-trotting hackney, fourteen 
 miles an hour. 
 
 "That ere gemman has a nice bit of blood," said the hostler, 
 scratching his ear. 
 
 " Oiy, who be he ?" said a hanger-on of the stables. 
 
 " I dooant know. He has been here twice afoar, and he nevei 
 cautches anything to sinnify he be mighty fond of fishing, 
 sure/y." 
 
 Meanwhile, away sped the banker milestone on milestone 
 glided by and still, scarce turning a hair, trotted gallantly out 
 the good hackney. But the evening grew darker, and it began 
 to rain ; a drizzling, persevering rain, that wets a man through 
 ere he is aware of it. After his fiftieth year, a gentleman who 
 has a tender regard for himself does not like to get wet ; and 
 the rain inspired the banker, who was subject to rheumatism, 
 with the resolution to make a short cut along the fields. There 
 were one or two low hedges by this short way, but the banker 
 had been therein the spring, and knew every inch of the ground. 
 The hackney leaped easily and the rider had a tolerably prac- 
 tised seat and two miles saved might just prevent the menaced 
 rheumatism ; accordingly, our friend opened a white gate, and 
 scoured along the fields without any misgivings as to the pru- 
 dence of his choice. He arrived at his first leap there was the 
 hedge, its summit j ust discernible in the dim light. On the other 
 side, to the right, was a haystack, and close by this haystack
 
 150 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 seemed the most eligible place for clearing this obstacle. Now 
 since the banker had visited this place, a deep ditch, that served 
 as a drain, had been dug at the opposite base of the hedge, of 
 which neither horse nor man was aware, so that the leap was far 
 more perilous than was anticipated. Unconscious of this addi- 
 tional obstacle, the rider set off in a canter. The banker was 
 high in air, his loins bent back, his rein slackened, his right hand 
 raised knowingly when the horse took fright at an object 
 crouched by the haystack swerved, plunged midway into the 
 ditch, and pitched its rider two or three yards over its head. 
 The banker recovered himself sooner than might have been ex- 
 pected ; and, finding himself, though bruised and shaken, still 
 whole and sound, hastened to his horse. But the poor animal 
 had not fared so well as its master, and its off -shoulder was 
 either put out or dreadfully sprained. It had scrambled its way 
 out of the ditch, and there it stood disconsolate by the hedge, 
 as lame as one of the trees that, at irregular intervals, broke the 
 symmetry of the barrier. On ascertaining the extent of his mis- 
 fortune, the banker became seriously uneasy ; the rain increased 
 he was several miles yet from home he was in the midst of 
 houseless fields, with another leap before him the leap he had 
 just passed behind and no other egress that he knew of into 
 the main road. While these thoughts passed through his brain, 
 he became suddenly aware that he was not alone. The dark 
 object that had frightened his horse rose slowly from the snug 
 corner it had occupied by the haystack, and a gruff voice that 
 made the banker thrill to the marrow of his bones, cried, "Hallo ! 
 who the devil are you?" 
 
 Lame as his horse was, the banker instantly put his foot into 
 the stirrup ; but before he could mount, a heavy gripe was laid 
 on his shoulder and turning around with as much fierceness 
 as he could assume, he saw what the tone of the voice had 
 already led him to forebode the ill-omened and cut-throat fea- 
 tures of Luke Darvil. 
 
 " Ha ! ha ! my old annuitant, my clever feelosofer jolly old 
 boy how are you ? give us a fist. Who could have thought to 
 meet you on a rainy night, by a lone haystack, with a deep ditch 
 on one side, and no chimney-pot within sight? Why, old fel- 
 low, I, Luke Darvil I, the vagabond I, whom you could have 
 sent to the treadmill for being poor, and calling on my own 
 daughter I am as rich as you are here and as great, and as 
 strong, and as powerful ! " 
 
 And while he spoke, Darvil, who was really an under-sized 
 man, seemed to swell and dilate ? till he appeared half a head
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 15! 
 
 taller than the shrinking banker, who was five feet eleven inches 
 without his shoes. 
 
 " E hem ! " said the rich man, clearing his throat, which 
 seemed to him uncommonly husky ; " I do not know whether I 
 insulted your poverty, my dear Mr. Darvil I hope not ; but 
 this is hardly a time for talking please let me mount, and " 
 
 "Not a time for talking?" interrupted Darvil, angrily; "it's 
 just the time to my mind ; let me consider, ay, I told you, that 
 whenever we met by the roadside, it would be my turn to have 
 the best of the argufying." 
 
 " I dare say I dare say, my good fellow." 
 
 " Fellow not me ! I won't be fellowed now. I say I have the 
 best of it here man to man I am your match." 
 
 " But why quarrel with me ? " said the banker, coaxingly ; " I 
 never meant you harm, and I am sure you cannot mean me 
 harm." 
 
 " No ! and why ? " asked Darvil, coolly ; " why do you think 
 I can mean you no harm ?" 
 
 " Because your annuity depends on me." 
 
 " Shrewdly put we'll argufy that point. My life is a bad one, 
 not worth more than a year's purchase ; now, suppose you have 
 more than forty pounds about you it may be better worth my 
 while to draw my knife across your gullet than to wait for the 
 quarter-day's ten pounds, at a time. You see it's all a matter of 
 calculation, my dear Mr. What's-your-name ! " 
 
 "But," replied the banker, and his teeth began to chatter, "I 
 have not forty pounds about me." 
 
 " How do I know that ! you say so. Well, in the town yon- 
 der your word goes for more than mine ; I never gainsayed you 
 when you put that to me, did I ? But here, by the haystack, my 
 word is better than yours ; and if I say you must and shall have 
 forty pounds about you, let's see whether you dare contradict 
 
 me 
 
 " Look you, Darvil," said the banker, summoning up all his 
 energy and intellect, for his moral power began now to back his 
 physical cowardice, and he spoke calmly and even bravely, though 
 his heart throbbed aloud beneath his breast, and you might have 
 knocked him down with a feather " the London runners are 
 even now hot after you." 
 
 " Ha ! you lie ! " 
 
 " Upon my honor I speak the truth ; I heard the news last 
 
 evening. They tracked you to C ; they tracked you out of 
 
 the town; a word from me would have given you into their hands. 
 I said nothing you are safe you may yet escape. I will even
 
 It;2 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 help you to fly the country, and live out your natural date of 
 years, secure and in peace." 
 
 "You did not say that the other day in the snug drawing- 
 room ; you see I have the best of it now own that." 
 
 " I do," said the banker. 
 
 Darvil chuckled, and rubbed his hands. 
 
 The man of wealth once more felt his importance, and went 
 on. "This is one side of the question. On the other, suppose 
 you rob and murder me, do you think my death will lessen the 
 heat of the pursuit against you? The whole country will be in 
 arms, and before forty-eight hours are over you will be hunted 
 down like a mad dog." 
 
 Darvil was silent, as if in thought ; and after a pause, re- 
 plied "Well, you are a cute one, after all. What have you got 
 about you? you know you drove a hard bargain the other day 
 now it's my market fustian has riz kersey has fell." 
 
 "All I have about me shall be yours," said the banker eagerly. 
 
 "Give it me, then." 
 
 " There ! " said the banker, placing his purse and pocket-book 
 into Darvil's hands. 
 
 "And the watch?" 
 
 " The watch ? well, there ! " 
 
 "What's that?" 
 
 The banker's senses were sharpened by fear, but they were 
 not so sharp as those of Darvil ; he heard nothing but the rain 
 pattering on the leaves, and the rush of water in the ditch at 
 hand. Darvil stopped and listened till, raising himself again, 
 with a deep drawn breath, he said, " I think there are rats in the 
 haystack ; they will be running over me in my sleep ; but thev 
 are playful creturs, and I like 'em. And now, my dear sir, I 
 am afraid I must put an end^to you ! " 
 
 "Good Heavens ! What do you mean? How?" 
 
 " Man, there is another world ! " quoth the ruffian, mimicking 
 the banker's solemn tone in their former interview. " So much 
 the better for you ! In that world they don't tell tales. 
 
 " I swear I will never betray you." 
 
 " You do ? swear it, then." 
 
 " By all my hopes of earth and heaven ! " 
 
 "What a d d coward you be ! " said Darvil, laughing scorn- 
 fully. " Go you are safe. I am in good humor with myself 
 again. I crow over you, for no man can make me tremble. And 
 villain as you think me, while you fear me you cannot despise 
 you respect me. Go, I say go." 
 
 The banker was about to obey, when suddenly, from the hay-
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 153 
 
 stack, a broad, red light streamed upon the pair, and the next mo- 
 ment Darvil was seized from behind, and struggling in the gripe 
 of a man nearly as powerful as himself. The light, which came 
 from a dark-lanthorn, placed on the ground, revealed the forms 
 of a peasant in a smock-frock, and two stout-built, stalwart 
 men, armed with pistols besides the one engaged with 
 Darvil. 
 
 The whole of this scene was brought as by the trick of the 
 stage as by a flash of lightning as by the change of a show- 
 man's phantasmagoria before the astonished eyes of the banker. 
 He stood arrested and spell-bound, his hand on his bridle, his 
 foot on his stirrup. A moment more, and Darvil had dashed 
 his antagonist on the ground ; he stood at a little distance, his 
 face reddened by the glare of the lanthorn, and fronting his 
 assailants that fiercest of all beasts, a desperate man at bay ! 
 He had already succeeded in drawing forth his pistols, and he 
 held one in each hand his eyes flashing from beneath his bent 
 brows, and turning quickly from foe to foe ! At last those 
 terrible eyes rested on the late reluctant companion of his 
 solitude. 
 
 " Soj'tfw then, betrayed me," he said, very slowly, and directed 
 his pistol to the head of the dismounted horseman. 
 
 " No, no ! " cried one of the officers, for such were Darvil's 
 assailants ; "fire away in this direction, my hearty we're paid 
 for it. The gentleman knew nothing at all about it." 
 
 "Nothing, by G !" cried the banker, startled out of his 
 sanctity. 
 
 "Then I shall keep my shot," said Darvil; "and mind, the 
 first who approaches me is a dead man." 
 
 It so happened, that the robber and the officers were beyond 
 the distance which allows sure mark for a pistol-shot, and each 
 party felt the necessity of caution. 
 
 " Your time is up, my swell cove ! " cried the head of the 
 detatchment ; "you have had your swing, and a long one it 
 seems to have been you must now give in. Throw down 
 your barkers, or we must make mutton of you, and rob the 
 gallows." 
 
 Darvil did not reply, and the officers, accustomed to hold 
 life cheap, moved on towards him their pistols cocked and 
 levelled. 
 
 Darvil fired one of the men staggered and fell. With a kind 
 of instinct, Darvil had singled out the one with whom he had 
 before wrestled for life. The ruffian waited not for the others 
 he turned and fled along the fields.
 
 154 ERNESt MALTRAVERS. 
 
 " Zounds, he is off ! " cried the other two, and they rushed 
 after him in pursuit. A pause a shot another an oath a 
 groan and all was still. 
 
 " It's all up with him now ! " said one of the runners in the 
 distance ; "he dies game." 
 
 At these words, the peasant, who had before skulked behind 
 the haystack, seized the lanthorn from the ground, and ran to 
 the spot. The banker involuntarily followed. 
 
 There lay Luke Darvil on the grass still living but a horri- 
 ble and ghastly spectacle. One ball had pierced his breast, 
 another had shot away his jaw. His eyes rolled fearfully, and 
 he tore up the grass with his hands. 
 
 The officers looked coldly on. " He was a clever fellow ! " 
 said one. 
 
 "And has given us much trouble," said the other; "let us 
 see to Will." 
 
 " But he's not dead yet," said the banker, shuddering. 
 
 " Sir, he cannot live a minute." 
 
 Darvil raised himself bolt upright shook his clenched fist at 
 his conquerors, and a fearful gurgling howl, which the nature of his 
 wounds did not allow him to syllable into a curse, came from his 
 breast with that he fell flat on his back a corpse. 
 
 "I am afraid, sir," said the elder officer, turning away, "you 
 had a narrow escape but how came you here?" 
 
 "Rather, how camejv<?# here?" 
 
 "Honest Hodge there, with the lanthorn, had marked the 
 fellow skulk behind a haystack, when he himself was going out 
 tosnare rabbits. He had seen our advertisement of Watts'siperson, 
 and knew that we were then at a public house some miles off. 
 He came to us conducted us to the spot we heard voices 
 showed up the glim and saw our man. Hodge, you are a 
 good subject, and love justice." 
 
 " Yees, but I shall have the rewourd," said Hodge, showing 
 his teeth. 
 
 "Talk o' that by and by," said the officer. "Will, how are 
 you, man ? " 
 
 "Bad," groaned the poor runner, and a rush of blood from 
 the lips followed the groan. 
 
 It was many days before the ex-member from C sufficiently 
 
 recovered the tone of his mind to think further of Alice ; when 
 he did, it was with great satisfaction that he reflected that Dar- 
 vil was no more, and that the deceased ruffian was only known 
 to the neighborhood by the name of Peter Watts.
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 155 
 
 BOOK V. 
 
 '0 fiovanoiof evOaf iTrnuvat; 
 
 Et fJV VOT/Tjpbf, [11] liOTKpXEV T(l 
 
 Et S 1 effort Kpijyv6 re (cat 
 
 Qapaeuv nadi^EV K.dv 6e^.yf dndppigow. 
 
 THEOC. Epig. in Nippon. 
 
 PARODY. 
 
 My hero, turned author, lies mute in this section, 
 
 You may pass by the place if you're bored by reflection : 
 
 But if honest enough to be fond of the Muse, 
 
 Stay, and read where you're able, and sleep where you choose. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 k * * " My genius spreads her wing, 
 And flies where Britain courts the western spring. 
 ******* 
 
 Pride in their port, defiance in their eye, 
 I see the lords of human kind pass by, 
 Intent on high designs." GOLDSMITH. 
 
 I HAVE no respect for the Englishman who re-enters London 
 after long residence abroad, without a pulse that beats quick, 
 and a heart that heaves high. The public buildings are few, 
 and for the most part, mean ; the monuments of antiquity not 
 comparable to those which the pettiest town in Italy can boast 
 f ; the palaces are sad rubbish ; the houses of our peers and 
 princes are shabby and shapeless heaps of brick. But what 
 of all this ? The spirit of London is in her thoroughfares her 
 population! What wealth what cleanliness what order what 
 animation ! How majestic, and yet how vivid, is the life that 
 runs through her myriad veins ! How, as the lamps blaze upon 
 you at night, and street after street glides by your wheels, each 
 so regular in its symmetry, so equal in its civilization how all 
 speak of the CITY OF FREEMEN ! 
 
 Yes, -Maltravers felt his heart swell within him, as the post- 
 horses whirled on his dingy carriage over Westminster Bridge 
 along Whitehall through Regent Street towards one of the 
 quiet and private house-like hotels, that are scattered round the 
 neighborhood of Grosvenor Square. 
 
 Ernest's arrival had been expected. He had written from 
 Paris to Cleveland to announce it ; and Cleveland had, in reply,
 
 156 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 informed him that he had engaged apartments for him at Mivart's. 
 The smiling waiters ushered him into a spacious and well-aired 
 room the arm-chair was already wheeled by the fire a score 
 or so of letters strewed the table, together with two of the even- 
 ing papers. And how eloquently of busy England do those even- 
 ing papers speak ! A stranger might have felt that he wanted no 
 friend to welcome him the whole room smiled on him a welcome. 
 
 Maltravers ordered his dinner and opened his letters ; they 
 were of no importance ; one from his steward, one from his 
 banker, another about the County Races, a fourth from a man he 
 had never heard of, requesting the vote and powerful interest 
 
 of Mr. Maltravers for the county of B , should the rumor of 
 
 a dissolution be verified ; the unknown candidate referred Mr. 
 Maltravers to his " well-known public character." From these 
 epistles Ernest turned impatiently, and perceived a little three- 
 cornered note which had hitherto escaped his attention. It was 
 from Cleveland, intimating that he was in town ; that his health 
 still precluded his going out, but that he trusted to see his dear 
 Ernest as soon as he arrived. 
 
 Maltravers was delighted at the prospect of passing his even- 
 ing so agreeably ; he soon despatched his dinner and his news- 
 papers, and walked in the brilliant lamplight of a clear frosty 
 evening of early December in London, to his friend's house in 
 Curzon Street ; a small house, bachelor-like and unpretending; 
 for Cleveland spent his moderate though easy fortune almost en- 
 tirely upon his country villa. The familiar face of the old valet 
 greeted Ernest at the door, and he only paused to hear that his 
 guardian was nearly recovered to his usual health, ere he was 
 in the cheerful drawing-room, and since Englishmen do not 
 embrace returning the cordial gripe of the kindly Cleveland. 
 
 "Well, my dear Ernest,'' said Cleveland, after they had gone 
 through the preliminary round of questions and answers, "here 
 you are at last; Heaven be praised; and how well you are looking 
 how much you are improved ! It is an excellent period of the 
 year for your cttbut in London. I shall have time to make you 
 intimate with people before the whirl of 'the season' commences." 
 
 " Why, I thought of going to Burleigh, my country-place. 
 I have not seen it since I was a child." 
 
 "No, no! you have had solitude enough at Como, if I may trust 
 to your letter ; you must now mix with the great London world; 
 and you will enjoy Burleigh the more in the summer." 
 
 "I fancy this great London world will give me very little 
 pleasure ; it may be pleasant enough to young men just let loose 
 from college, but your crowded ball-rooms and monotonous
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 157 
 
 clubs will be wearisome to one who has grown fastidious before 
 his time. J\ii vc'cu beaucoup dans pen d'annees. I have drawn 
 in youth too much upon the capital of existence, to be highly 
 delighted with the ostentatious parsimony with which our great 
 men economize pleasure." 
 
 "Don't judge before you have gone through the trial," said 
 Cleveland : " there is something in the opulent splendor, the 
 thoroughly sustained magnificence, with which the leaders of 
 English fashion conduct even the most insipid amusements, that 
 is above contempt. Besides, you need not necessarily live with 
 the butterflies. There are plenty of bees that will be very happy 
 to make your acquaintance. Add to this, my dear Ernest, the 
 pleasure of being made of of being of importance in your own 
 country. For you are young, well-born, and sufficiently hand- 
 some to be an object of interest to mothers and to daughters ; 
 while your name, and property, and interest will make you 
 courted by men who want to borrow your money and obtain your 
 influence in your county. No, Maltravers, stay in London 
 amuse yourself your first year, and decide on your occupation 
 and career the next ; but reconnoitre before you give battle." 
 
 Maltravers was not ill pleased to follow his friend's advice, 
 since by so doing he obtained his friend's guidance and society. 
 Moreover, he deemed it wise and rational to see, face to face, 
 the eminent men in England, with whom, if he fulfilled his prom- 
 ise to De Montaigne, he was to run the race of honorable rivalry. 
 Accordingly, he consented to Cleveland's propositions. 
 
 "And have you," said he hesitating, as he loitered by the 
 door after the stroke of twelve had warned him to take his 
 leave " have you never heard anything of my my the un- 
 fortunate Alice Darvil?" 
 
 "Who? Oh, that poor young woman ; I remember ! not a 
 syllable." 
 
 Maltravers sighed deeply and departed. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 " Je trouve que c'est une folie de vouloir e'tudier le monde en simple spec- 
 tateur. * * Dans 1'ecole du monde, comme dans cette de 1'amour, il faut 
 commencer par pratiquer ce qu'on veut apprendre." * ROUSSEAU. 
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERSwas now fairly launched upon the wide 
 ocean of London. Amongst his other property was a house in 
 
 * I find that it is a folly to wish to study the world like a simple spectator. * * In the 
 school ot the world, as in that of love, it is necessary to begin by practising what we wish 
 to learn.
 
 158 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 Seamore Place that quiet, yet central street, which enjoys the 
 air, without the dust, of the Park. It had been hitherto let, and, 
 the tenant now quitting very opportunely, Maltravers was de- 
 lighted to secure so pleasant a residence : for he was still ro- 
 mantic enough to desire to look out upon trees and verdure 
 rather than brick houses. He indulged only in two other luxu- 
 ries ; his love of music tempted him to an opera-box, and he had 
 that English feeling which prides itself in the possession of beau- 
 tiful horses, a feeling that enticed him into an extravagance 
 on this head that baffled the competition and excited the envy 
 of much richer men. But four thousand a year goes a great way 
 with a single man who does not gamble, and is too philosophical 
 to make superfluities wants. 
 
 The world doubled his income, magnified his country- 
 seat into a superb chateau, and discovered that his elder 
 brother, who was only three or four years older than him- 
 self, had no children. The world was very courteous to 
 Ernest Maltravers. 
 
 It was, as Cleveland said, just at that time of year when peo- 
 ple are at leisure to make new acquaintances. A few only of 
 the most difficult houses in town were open ; and their doors 
 were cheerfully expanded to the accomplished ward of the popu- 
 lar Cleveland. Authors, and statesmen, and orators, and phil- 
 osophers to all he was presented ; all seemed pleased with 
 him, and Ernest became the fashion before he was conscious of 
 the distinction. But he had rightly foreboded. He had com- 
 menced life too soon ; he was disappointed ; he found some 
 persons he could admire, some whom he could like, but none 
 with whom he could grow intimate, or for whom he could feel 
 an interest. Neither his heart nor his imagination was touched; 
 all appeared to him like artificial machines ; he was discontent- 
 ed with things like life, but in which something or other was 
 wanting. He more than ever recalled the brilliant graces of 
 Valerie deVentadour, which had thrown a charm over the most 
 frivolous circles ; he even missed the perverse and fantastic 
 vanity of Castruccio. The mediocre poet seemed to him at least 
 less mediocre than the worldlings about him. Nay, even the 
 selfish good spirits and dry shrewdness of Lumley Ferrers would 
 have been an acceptable change to the dull polish and unre- 
 vealed egotism of jealous wit and party politicians. "If these 
 are the flowers of the parterre, what must be the weeds ?" said 
 Maltravers to himself, returning from a party at which he had 
 met half a score of the most orthodox lions. 
 
 He began to feel the aching pain of satiety,
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 1 59 
 
 But the winter glided away : the season commenced, and 
 Maltravers was whirled on with the rest into the bubbling 
 vortex. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 " And crowds commencing mere vexation, 
 Retirement sent its invitation." SHENSTONE. 
 
 THE tench, no doubt, considers the pond in which he lives 
 as the Great World. There is no place, however stagnant, which 
 is not the great world to the creatures that move about in it. 
 People who have lived all their lives in a village still talk of the 
 world as if they had ever seen it ! An old woman in a hovel 
 does not put her nose out of her door on a Sunday without 
 thinking she is going amongst the pomps and vanities of the 
 great world. -Ergo, the great world is to all of us the little 
 circle in which we live. But as fine people set the fashion, so 
 the circle of fine people is called the Great World , par ex- 
 cellence. Now this great world is not a bad thing when we 
 thoroughly understand it ; and the London great world is at least 
 as good as any other. But then we scarcely d<? understand that 
 or anything else in our beaux Jours, which, if they are some- 
 times the most exquisite, are also often the most melancholy 
 and the most wasted portion of our life. Maltravers had not 
 yet found out either the set that pleased him or the species of 
 amusement that really amused. Therefore he drifted on and 
 about the vast whirlpool, making plenty of friends going to 
 balls and dinners and bored with both, as men are who have 
 no object in society. Now the way society is enjoyed is to 
 have a pursuit, a me'iier of some kind, and then go into the 
 world, either to make the individual object a social pleasure, 
 or to obtain a reprieve from some toilsome avocation. Thus if 
 you are a politician politics at once make an object in your 
 closet, and a social tie between others and yourself when you 
 are in the world. The same may be said of literature, 
 though in a less degree ; and though, as fewer persons care 
 about literature than politics, your companions must be 
 more select. If you are very young, you are fond of dancing; 
 if you are very profligate, perhaps you are fond of flirtations 
 with your friend's wife. These last are objects in their way : 
 but they don't last long, and, even with the most frivolous, are 
 not occupations that satisfy the whole mind and heart, in which 
 there is generally an aspiration after something useful. It is not
 
 l6o ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 vanity alone that makes the man of the mode invent a new bit, or 
 give his name to a new kind of carriage; it is the influence of 
 that mystic yearning after utility, which is one of -the master- 
 ties between the individual and the species. 
 
 Maltravers was not happy that is a lof common enough; but 
 he was not amused and that is a sentence more insupportable. 
 He lost a great part of his sympathy with Cleveland, for, when 
 a man is not amused, he feels an involuntary contempt for those 
 who are. He fancies they are pleased with trifles which his 
 superior wisdom is compelled to disdain. Cleveland was of 
 that age when we generally grow social for by being rubbed 
 long and often against the great loadstone of society, we obtain, 
 in. a thousand little minute points, an attraction in common 
 with our fellows. Their petty sorrows and small joys their 
 objects of interest or employment, at some time or other have 
 been ours. We gather up a vast collection of moral and mental 
 farthings of exchange; and we scarcely find any intellect too 
 poor, but what we can deal with it in some way. But in youth, 
 we are egotists and sentimentalists, and Maltravers belonged to 
 the fraternity who employ 
 
 " The heart in passion and the head in rhymes." 
 
 At length just when London begins to grow most pleasant 
 when flirtations become tender, and water-parties numerous 
 when birds sing in the groves of Richmond, and whitebait 
 refresh the statesman by the shores of Greenwich, Maltravers 
 abruptly fled from the gay metropolis, and arrived, one lovely 
 evening in July, at his own ivy-grown porch of Burleigh. 
 
 What a soft, fresh, delicious evening it was ! He had quitted 
 his carriage at the lodge, and followed it across the small but 
 picturesque park alone and on foot. He had not seen the place 
 since childhood he had quite forgotten its aspect. He now 
 wondered how he could have lived anywhere else. The trees 
 did not stand in stately avenues, nor did the antlers of the deer 
 wave above the sombre fern; it was not the domain of a grand 
 seigneur, but of an old, long-descended English squire. Antiq- 
 uity spoke in the moss-grown palings, in the shadowy groves, 
 in the sharp gable-ends and heavy mullions of the house, as it 
 now came in view, at the base of a hill covered with wood 
 and partially veiled by the shrubs of the neglected pleasure- 
 ground, separated from the park by the in visible ha-ha. There, 
 gleamed in the twilight the watery face of the oblong fish-pool, 
 with its old-fashioned willows at each corner there, gray and 
 quaint, was the monastic dial and there was the long terrace- 
 walk, with discolored and broken vases, now filled with the
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVER3. l6l 
 
 orange or the aloe, which, in honor of his master's arrival, the 
 gardener had extracted from the dilapidated green-house. The 
 very evidence of neglect around, the very weeds and grass on 
 the half-obliterated road, touched Maltravers with a sort of 
 pitying and remorseful affection for his calm and sequestered 
 residence. And it was not with his usual proud step and erect 
 crest that he passed from the porch to the solitary library,through 
 a line of his servants : the two or three old retainers belong- 
 ing to the place were utterly unfamiliar to him, and they had no 
 smile for their stranger lord. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 " Lucian. He that is born to be a man, neither should nor can be any- 
 thing nobler, greater, and better than a man. 
 
 " Peregrine. But, good Lucian, for the very reason that he may not be- 
 come less than a man, he should be always striving to be more." WIELAND'S 
 Peregrinus Proteus. 
 
 IT was two years from the date of the last chapter before 
 Maltravers again appeared in general society. These two years 
 had sufficed to produce a revolution in his fate. Ernest Mal- 
 travers had lost the happy rights of the private individual ; he 
 had given himself to the Public ; he had surrendered his name 
 to men's tongues, and was athing that all had a right to praise, 
 to blame, to scrutinize, to spy. Ernest Maltravers had become 
 an author. 
 
 Let no man tempt Gods and Columns, without weigh ing well 
 the consequences of his experiment. He who publishes a book, 
 attended with a moderate success, passes a mighty barrier. He 
 will often look back with a sigh of regret at the land he has 
 left for ever. The beautiful and decent obscurity of hearth and 
 home is gone. He can no longer feel the just indignation of 
 manly pride when he finds himself ridiculed or reviled. He 
 has parted with the shadow of his life. His motives may be 
 misrepresented, his character belied ; his manners, his person, 
 his dress, the "very trick of his walk," are all fair food for the 
 cavil and the caricature. He can never go back, he cannot 
 even pause ; he has chosen his path, and all the natural feel- 
 ings that make the nerve and muscle of the active being, urge 
 him to proceed. To stop short is to fail. He has told the 
 world that he will make a name; and he must be set down as a 
 pretender, or toil on till the boast be fulfilled. Yet Maltravers 
 thought nothing of all this when, intoxicated with his own 
 dreams and aspirations, he desired to make a world his con-
 
 l62 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 fidant; when from the living Nature, and the lore of books, 
 and the mingled result of inward study and external observa- 
 tion, he sought to draw forth something that might interweave 
 his name with the pleasurable associations of his kind. His 
 easy fortune and lonely state gave him up to his own thoughts 
 and contemplations ; they suffused his mind, till it ran over 
 upon the page which makes the channel that connects the soli- 
 tary Fountain with the vast Ocean of Human Knowledge. The 
 temperament of Maltravers was, as we have seen, neither irri- 
 table nor fearful. He formed himself, as a sculptor forms, with 
 a model before his eyes and an ideal in his heart. He endeav- 
 ored, with labor and patience, to approach nearer and nearer 
 with every effort to the standard of such excellence as he thought 
 might ultimately be attained by a reasonable ambition ; and 
 when, at last, his judgment was satisfied, he surrendered the 
 product with a tranquil confidence to a more impartial tribunal. 
 His first work was successful ; perhaps from this reason 
 that it bore the stamp of the Honest and the Real. He did not 
 sit down to report of what he had never seen, to dilate on what 
 he had never felt. A quiet and thoughtful observer of life, his de- 
 scriptions were the more vivid, because his own first impressions 
 were not yet worn away. His experience was sunk deep ; not 
 on the arid surface of matured age, but in the fresh soil of youth- 
 ful emotions. Another reason, perhaps, that obtained success 
 for his essay was, that he had more varied and more elaborate 
 knowledge than young authors think it necessary to possess. 
 He did not, likeCesarini, attempt to make a show of words upon 
 a slender capital of ideas. Whether his style was eloquent or 
 homely, it was in him a faithful transcript of considered and 
 digested thought. A third reason and I dwell on these points 
 not more to elucidate the career of Maltravers than as hints 
 which may be useful to others a third reason why Maltravers 
 obtained a prompt and favorable reception from the public was, 
 that he had not hackneyed his peculiarities of diction and thought 
 in that worst of all schools for the literary novice the columns 
 of a magazine. Periodicals form an excellent mode of commu- 
 nication between the public and an author already established, 
 who has lost the charm of novelty, but gained the weight of 
 acknowledged reputation; and who, either upon politics or crit- 
 icism, seeks for frequent and continuous occasions to enforce 
 his peculiar theses and doctrines. But, upon the young writer, 
 this mode of communication, if too long continued, operates 
 most injuriously both as to his future prospects and his own 
 present taste and style. With respect to the first, it familiarizes
 
 ERNEST MALTR AVERS. 163 
 
 the puolic to his mannerism (and all writers worth reading have 
 mannerism) in a form to which the said public are not inclined 
 to attach much weight. He forestalls in a few months what 
 ought to be the effect of years ; namely, the wearying a world 
 soon nauseated with the toujours perdrix. With respect to the 
 last, it induces a man to write for momentary effects ; to study 
 a false smartness of style and reasoning : to bound his ambition 
 of durability to the last day of the month ; to expect immedi- 
 ate returns for labor ; to recoil at the hope " deferred " of seri- 
 ous works on which judgment is slowly formed. The man of 
 talent who begins young at periodicals, and goes on long, has 
 generally something crude and stunted about both his composi- 
 tions and his celebrity. He grows the oracle of small coteries; 
 and we can rarely get out of the impression that he is cockney- 
 fied and conventional. Periodicals sadly mortgaged the claims 
 that Hazlitt, and many others of his contemporaries, had upon 
 a vast reversionary estate of Fame. But I here speak too polit- 
 ically ; to some, the res angustce domi leave no option. And, 
 as Aristotle and the Greek proverb have it, we cannot carve out 
 all things with the knife of the Delphic cutler. 
 
 The second work that Maltravers put forth, at an interval ot 
 eighteen months from the first, was one of a graver and higher 
 nature; it served to confirm his reputation : and that is success 
 enough for a second work, which is usually an author's pons 
 asinorum. He who, after a triumphant first book, does not dis- 
 satisfy the public with a second, has a fair chance of gaining a 
 fixed station in literature. But now commenced the pains and 
 perils of the after-birth. By a maiden effort an author rarely 
 makes enemies. His fellow-writers are not yet prepared to con- 
 sider him as a rival ; if he be tolerably rich, they unconsciously 
 trust that he will not became a regular, or, as they term it, " a 
 professional " author : he did something just to be talked of ; 
 he may write no more, or his second book may fail. But when 
 that second book comes out, and does not fail, they begin to 
 look about them ; envy wakens, malice begins. And all the 
 old school gentlemen who have retired on their pensions of 
 renown regard him as an intruder : then the sneer, then the 
 frown, the caustic irony, the biting review, the depreciating praise. 
 The novice begins to think that he is further from the goal than 
 before he set out upon the race. 
 
 Maltravers had, upon the whole, a tolerably happy tempera- 
 ment ; but he was a very proud man, and he had the nice soul of 
 a courageous, honorable, punctilious gentleman. He thought it 
 singular that society should call upon him, as a gentleman, to
 
 164 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 shoot his best friend, if that friend affronted him with a rude 
 word ; and yet that, as an author, every fool and liar might, with 
 perfect impunity, cover reams of paper with the most virulent 
 personal abuse of him. 
 
 It was one evening in the early summer that, revolving anx- 
 ious and doubtful thoughts, Ernest sauntered gloomily along 
 his terrace, 
 
 " And watched with wistful eyes the setting sun," 
 
 when he perceived a dusty travelling carriage whirled along the 
 road by the ha-ha, and a hand waved in recognition from the 
 open window. His guests had been so rare, and his friends 
 were so few, that Maltravers could not conjecture who was his 
 intended visitant. His brother, he knew, was in London. 
 Cleveland, from whom he had that day heard, was at his villa. 
 Ferrers was enjoying himself at Vienna. Who could it be ? We 
 may say of solitude what we please ; but after two years of sol- 
 itude, a visitor is a pleasurable excitement. Maltravers re- 
 traced his steps, entered his house, and was just in time to find 
 himself almost in the arms of De Montaigne. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 " Quid tarn dextro pede concipis ut te, 
 Conatvis non pceniteat, votique peracti ? "* Juv. 
 
 " YES," said De Montaigne, " in my way / also am fulfilling 
 my destiny. I am a member of the Chambre de Deputes, and 
 on a visit to England upon some commercial affairs. I found 
 myself in your neighborhood, and, of course, could not resist the 
 temptation; so you must receive me as your guest for some days." 
 
 " I congratulate you cordially on your senatorial honors. I 
 have already heard of your rising name." 
 
 " I return the congratulations with equal warmth. You are 
 bringing my prophecies to pass. I have read your works with 
 increased pride at our friendship." 
 
 Maltravers sighed slightly, and half turned away. 
 
 " The desire of distinction," he said, after a pause, "grows 
 upon us till excitement becomes disease. The child who is 
 born with the Mariner's instinct laughs with glee when his paper 
 bark skims the wave of a pool. By-and-by, nothing will content 
 him but the ship and the ocean. Like the child is the author." 
 
 * What under such happy auspices do you conceive, that you may not repent of your en 
 deavor and accomplished wish ?
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 165 
 
 " I am pleased with your simile," said De Montaigne, smiling. 
 *' Do not spoil it, but go on with your argument." 
 
 Maltravers continued : " Scarcely do we win the applause of 
 a moment, ere we summon the past and conjecture the future. 
 Our contemporaries no longer suffice for competitors, our age 
 for the Court to pronounce on our claims ; we call up the Dead 
 as our only true rivals we appeal to Posterity as our sole just 
 tribunal. Is this vain in us? Possibly. Yet such vanity hum- 
 bles. 'Tis then only we learn all the difference between Repu- 
 tation and Fame between To-Day and Immortality!" 
 
 " Do you think," replied De Montaigne, " that the dead did 
 not feel the same when they first trod the path that leads to the 
 life beyond life? Continue to cultivate the mind, to sharpen 
 by exercise the genius, to attempt to delight or to instruct your 
 race; and even supposing you fall short of every model you set 
 before you supposing your name moulder with your dust, still 
 you will have passed life more nobly than the unlaborious herd. 
 Grant that you win not that glorious accident, ' a name below,' 
 how can you tell but what you may have fitted yourself for 
 high destiny and employ in the world not of men, but of spirits? 
 The powers of the mind are things that cannot be less immortal 
 than the mere sense of identity; their acquisition accompany us 
 through the Eternal Progress ; and we may obtain a lower or a 
 higher grade hereafter, in proportion as we are more or less 
 fitted by the exercise of our intellect to comprehend and exe- 
 cute the solemn agencies of God. The wise man is nearer to 
 the angels than the fool is. This may be an apocryphal dogma, 
 but it is not an impossible theory." 
 
 " But we may waste the sound enjoyments of actual life in 
 chasing the hope you justly allow to be 'apocryphal'; and 
 our knowledge may go for nothing in the eyes of the 
 Omniscient." 
 
 " Very well," said De Montaigne, smiling; "but answer me 
 honestly. By the pursuits of intellectual ambition, do you waste 
 the sound enjoyments of life? If so, you do not pursue the 
 system rightly. Those pursuits ought only to quicken your 
 sense for such pleasures as are the true relaxations of life. And 
 this, with you peculiarly, since you are fortunate enough not to 
 depend for subsistence upon literature ; did you do so, I might 
 rather advise you to be a trunkmaker than an author. A man 
 ought not to attempt any of the highest walks of Mind and Art 
 as the mere provision of daily bread ; not literature alone, but 
 everything else of the same degree. He ought not to be a 
 statesman, or an orator, or a philosopher, as a thing of pence
 
 166 ERNEST MALTRAVF.RS. 
 
 and shillings : and usually all men, save the poor poet, feel this 
 truth insensibly." 
 
 "This may be fine preaching," said Maltravers ; "but you 
 may be quite sure that the pursuit of literature is a pursuit apart 
 from the ordinary objects of life, and you cannot command the 
 enjoyments of both." 
 
 " I think otherwise," said De Montaigne; "but it is not in a 
 country house eighty miles from the capital, without wife, guests 
 or friends, that the experiment can be fairly made. Come, 
 Maltravers, I see before you a brave career, and I cannot per- 
 mit you to halt at the onset." 
 
 "You do not see all the calumnies that are already put forth 
 against me, to say nothing of all the assurances (and many by 
 clever men) that there is nothing in me." 
 
 " Dennis was a clever man, and said the same thing of your 
 Pope. Madame de Sevigne was a clever woman, but she thought 
 Racine would never be very famous. Milton saw nothing in the 
 first efforts of Dryden that made him consider Dryden better than 
 a rhymester. Aristophanes was a good judge of poetry, yet how 
 ill he judged of Euripides ! But all this is commonplace, and yet 
 you bring arguments that a commonplace answers in evidence 
 against yourself." 
 
 "But it is unpleasant not to answer attacks not to retaliate 
 on enemies." 
 
 " Then answer attacks, and retaliate on enemies." 
 
 " But would that be wise ? " 
 
 " If it give you pleasure it would not please me" 
 
 " Come, De Montaigne, you are reasoning Socratically. I 
 will ask you plainly and bluntly, would you advise an author to 
 wage war on his literary assailants, or to despise them ?" 
 
 "Both; let him attack but few, and those rarely. But it is his 
 policy to show that he is one whom it is better not to provoke too 
 far. The author always has the world on his side against the 
 critics, if he choose his opportunity. And he must always 
 recollect that he is 'A STATE* in himself, which must some- 
 times go to war in order to procure peace. The time for 
 war or for peace must be left to the State's own diplomacy 
 and wisdom." 
 
 " You would make us political machines." 
 
 " I would make every man's conduct more or less mechanical ; 
 for system is the triumph of mind over matter; the just equilib- 
 rium of all the powers and passions may seem like machinery. 
 Be it so. Nature meant the world the creation man himself, 
 for machines."
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 167 
 
 "And one must even be in a passion mechanically, according 
 to your theories." 
 
 4< A man is a poor creature who is not in a passion sometimes; 
 but a very unjust, or a very foolish one, if he be in a passion 
 with the wrong person, and in the wrong place and time. But 
 enough of this, it is growing late." 
 
 " And when will Madame visit England ?" 
 
 " Oh, not yet, I fear. But you will meet Cesarini in London 
 this year or the next. He is persuaded that you did not see justice 
 done to his poems, and is coming here as soon as his indolence 
 will let him, to proclaim your treachery in a biting preface to 
 some toothless satire." 
 
 " Satire ! " 
 
 " Yes ; more than one of your poets made their way by a 
 satire, and Cesarini is persuaded he shall do the same. Castruccio 
 is not as far-sighted as his namesake, the Prince of Lucca. 
 Good-night, my dear Ernest." 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 " When with much pains this boasted learning's got, 
 "Tis an affront to those who have it not." 
 
 CHURCHILL : The Author. 
 
 THERE was something in De Montaigne's conversation, which, 
 without actual flattery, reconciled Maltravers to himself and his 
 career. It served less, perhaps, to excite than to sober and 
 brace his mind. De Montaigne could have made no man rash, 
 but he could have made many men energetic and persevering. 
 The two friends had some points in common ; but Maltravers 
 had far more prodigality of nature and passion about him had 
 more of flesh and blood, with the faults and excellencies of 
 flesh and blood. De Montaigne held so much to his favorite 
 doctrine of moral equilibrium, that he had really reduced him- 
 self, in much, to a species of clockwork. As impulses are 
 formed from habits, so the regularity of De Montaigne's habits 
 made his impulses virtuous and just, and he yielded to them as 
 often as a hasty character might have done ; but then those 
 impulses never urged to anything speculative or daring. De 
 Montaigne could not go beyond a certain defined circle of 
 action. He had no sympathy for any reasonings based purely 
 on the hypotheses of the imagination ; he could not endure 
 Plato, and he was dumb on the eloquent whispers of whatever 
 was refining in poetry or mystical in wisdom.
 
 1 68 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 Maltravers, on the contrary, not disdaining Reason, evet 
 sought to assist her by the Imaginative Faculty, and held all 
 philosophy incomplete and unsatisfactory that bounded its in- 
 quiries to the limits of the Known and Certain. He loved the 
 inductive process ; but he carried it out to Conjecture as well 
 as Fact. He maintained that, by a similar hardihood, all the 
 triumphs of science, as well as art, had been accomplished 
 that Newton, that Copernicus, would have done nothing if they 
 had not imagined as well as reasoned, guessed as well as ascer- 
 tained. Nay, it was an aphorism with him, that the very soul 
 of philosophy is conjecture. He had the most implicit confi- 
 dence in the operations of the mind and the heart properly 
 formed, and deemed that the very excesses of emotion and 
 thought, in men well trained by experience and study, are con- 
 ducive to useful and great ends. But the more advanced 
 years, and the singularly practical character of De Montaigne's 
 views, gave him a superiority in argument over Maltravers, 
 which the last submitted to unwillingly. While, on the other 
 hand, De Montaigne secretly felt that his young friend reasoned 
 from a broader base, and took in a much wider circumference ; 
 and that he was, at once, more liable to failure and error, and 
 more capable of new discovery and of intellectual achievement. 
 But their ways in life being different, they did not clash ; and 
 De Montaigne, who was sincerely interested in Ernest's fate, 
 was contented to harden his friend's mind against the obstacles 
 in his way, and leave the rest to experiment and to Providence. 
 They went up to London together : and De Montaigne returned 
 to Paris. Maltravers appeared once more in the haunts of the 
 gay and great. He felt that his new character had greatly 
 altered his position. He was no longer courted and caressed 
 for the same vulgar and adventitious circumstances of fortune, 
 birth, and connections as before yet for circumstances that to 
 him seemed equally unflattering. He was not sought for his 
 merit, his intellect, his talents ; but for his momentary celeb- 
 rity. He was an author in fashion, and run after as anything 
 else in fashion might have been. He was invited, less to be 
 talked to than to be stared at. He was far too proud in his 
 temper, and too pure in his ambiti'on, to feel his vanity elated 
 by sharing the enthusiasm of the circles with a German prince 
 or an industrious flea. Accordingly he soon repelled the 
 advances made to him, was reserved and supercilious to fine 
 ladies, refused to be the fashion, and became very unpopular 
 with the literary exclusives. They even began to run down 
 the works, because they were dissatisfied with the author. But
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 169 
 
 Maltravers had based his experiments upon the vast masses of 
 the general Public. He had called the PEOPLE of his own and 
 other countries to be his audience and his judges ; and all the 
 coteries in the world could not have injured him. He was like 
 the member for an immense constituency, who may offend 
 individuals, so long as he keep his footing with the body at large. 
 But while he withdrew himself from the insipid and the idle, he 
 took care not to become separated from the world. He formed 
 his own society according to his tastes ; took pleasure in the 
 manly and exciting topics of the day ; and sharpened his obser- 
 vation and widened his sphere as an author, by mixing freely 
 and boldly with all classes as a citizen. But literature became 
 to him as art to the artist as his mistress to the lover an 
 engrossing and passionate delight. He made it his glorious and 
 divine profession he loved it as a profession he devoted to 
 its pursuits and honors his youth, cares, dreams his mind, and 
 his heart, and his soul. He was a silent but intense enthusiast 
 in the priesthood he had entered. From LITERATURE he imag- 
 ined had come all that makes nations enlightened and men 
 humane. And he loved Literature the more, because her dis- 
 tinctions were not those of the world because she had neither 
 ribands, nor stars, nor high places at her command. A name 
 in the deep gratitude and hereditary delight of men this was 
 the title she bestowed. Hers was the Great Primitive Church 
 of the world, without Popes or Muftis sinecures, pluralities, 
 and hierarchies. Her servants spoke to the earth as the pro- 
 phets of old, anxious only to be heard and believed. Full of 
 this fanaticism, Ernest Maltravers pursued his way in the great 
 procession of the myrtle-bearers to the sacred shrine. He carried 
 the thyrsus, and he believed in the god. By degrees his fanat- 
 icism worked in him the philosophy which De Montaigne 
 would have derived from sober calculation ; it made him indif- 
 ferent to the thorns in the path, to the storms in the sky. He 
 learned to despise the enmity he provoked, the calumnies that 
 assailed him. Sometimes he was silent, but sometimes he 
 retorted. Like a soldier who serves a cause, he believed that 
 when the cause was injured in his person, the weapons con- 
 fided to his hands might be wielded without fear and without 
 reproach. Gradually he became feared as well as known. And 
 while many abused him, none could contemn. 
 
 It would not suit the design of this work to follow Maltravers 
 step by step in his course. I am only describing the principal 
 events, not the minute details, of his intellectual life. Of the 
 character of his works it will be enough to say that, whatever
 
 I 70 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 their faults, they were original they were his own. He did 
 not write according to copy, nor compile from commonplace- 
 books. He was an artist, it is true, for what is genius itself 
 but art ? but he took laws, and harmony, and order, from the 
 great code of Truth and Nature ; a code that demands intense 
 and relaxing study though its first principles are few and 
 simple ; that study Maltravers did not shrink from. It was a 
 deep love of truth that made him a subtle and searching analyst, 
 even in what the dull world considers trifles ; for he knows 
 that nothing in literature is in itself trifling that it is often but 
 a hair's breadth that divides a truism from a discovery. He 
 was the more original because he sought rather after the True 
 than the New. No two minds are ever the same ; and there- 
 fore any man who will give us fairly and frankly the results of 
 his own impressions, uninfluenced by the servilities of imitation, 
 will be original. But it was not from originality, which really 
 made his predominant merit, that Maltravers derived his repu- 
 tation, for his originality was not of that species which generally 
 dazzles the vulgar it was not extravagant nor bizarre he 
 affected no system and no school. Many authors of his day 
 seemed more novel and unique to the superficial. Profound 
 and durable invention proceeds by subtle and fine gradations 
 it has nothing to do with those jerks and starts, those convul- 
 sions and distortions, which belong not to the vigor and health, 
 but to the epilepsy and disease, of Literature. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 " Being got out of town, the first thing I did was to give my mule her 
 head." Gil Bias. 
 
 ALTHOUGH the character of Maltravers was gradually be- 
 coming more hard and severe, although as his reason grew 
 more muscular, his imagination lost something of its early 
 bloom, and he was already very different from the wild boy 
 who had set the German youths in a blaze, and had changed 
 into a Castle of Indolence the little cottage, tenanted with 
 Poetry and Alice, he still preserved many of his old habits ; 
 he loved, at frequent intervals, to disappear from the great 
 world to get rid of books and friends, and luxury and wealth, 
 and make solitary excursions, sometimes on foot, sometimes on 
 horseback, through this fair garden of England. 
 
 \\ was one soft May-day that he found himself on such an
 
 ERNEST MALTR AVERS. 171 
 
 expedition, slowly riding through one of the green lanes of 
 shire. His cloak and his saddle-bags comprised all his bag- 
 gage, and the world was before him "where to choose his place of 
 rest." The lane wound at length into the main road, and just 
 as he came upon it, he fell in with a gay party of equestrians. 
 
 Foremost of the cavalcade rode a lady in a dark-green habit, 
 mounted on a thoroughbred English horse, which she man- 
 aged with so easy a grace that Maltravers halted in involuntary 
 admiration. He himself was a consummate horseman, and he 
 had the quick eye of sympathy for those who shared the ac- 
 complishment. He thought, as he gazed, that he had never 
 seen but one woman, whose air and mien on horseback were so 
 full of that nameless elegance which skill and courage in any 
 art naturally bestow that woman was Valerie de Ventadour. 
 Presently, to his great surprise, the lady advanced from her 
 companions, neared Maltravers, and said, in a voice which he 
 did not at first distinctly recognize "Is it possible ! do I see 
 Mr. Maltravers ?" 
 
 She paused a moment, and then threw aside her veil, and 
 Ernest beheld Madame de Ventadour ! By this time a tall, 
 thin gentleman had joined the Frenchwoman. 
 
 " Has madame met with an acquaintance ? " said he ; " and, 
 if so, will she permit me to partake her pleasure ?" 
 
 The interruption seemed a relief to Valerie ; she smiled and 
 colored. 
 
 " Let me introduce you to Mr. Maltravers. Mr. Maltravers, 
 this is my host, Lord Doningdale." 
 
 The two gentlemen bowed, the rest of the cavalcade sur- 
 rounded the trio, and Lord Doningdale, with a stately yet frank 
 courtesy, invited Maltravers to return with the party to his 
 house, which was about four miles distant. As may be sup- 
 posed, Ernest readily accepted the invitation. The cavalcade 
 proceeded, and Maltravers hastened to seek an explanation 
 from Valerie. It was soon given. Madame de Ventadour had 
 a younger sister, who had lately married a son of Lord Doning- 
 dale. The marriage had been solemnized in Paris, and Mon- 
 sieur and Madame de Ventadour had been in England a week 
 on a visit to the English peer. 
 
 The rencontre was so sudden and unexpected, that neither 
 recovered sufficient self-possession for fluent conversation. 
 The explanation given, Valerie sank into a thoughtful silence, 
 and Maltravers rode by her side equally taciturn, pondering on 
 the strange chance which, after the lapse of years, had thrown 
 them again together.
 
 172 ERNEST MAI.TRAVERS. 
 
 Lord Doningdale, who at first lingered with his other visi- 
 tors, now joined them, and Maltravers was struck with his 
 highbred manner, and a singular and somewhat elaborate polish 
 in his emphasis and expression. They soon entered a noble 
 park, which attested far more care and attention than are 
 usually bestowed upon those demesnes, so peculiarly English. 
 Young plantations everywhere contrasted the venerable groves 
 new cottages of picturesque design adorned the outskirts 
 and obelisks and columns, copied from the antique, and evi- 
 dently of recent workmanship, gleamed upon them as they 
 neared the house a large pile, in which the fashion of Queen 
 Anne's day had been altered into the French roofs and windows 
 of the architecture of the Tuileries. " You reside much in the 
 country, I am sure, my lord," said Maltravers. 
 
 "Yes," replied Lord Doningdale, with a pensive air, "this 
 place is greatly endeared to me. Here his Majesty, Louis 
 XVIII., when in England, honored me with an annual visit. 
 In compliment to him, I sought to model my poor mansion into 
 an humble likeness of his own palace, so that he might as little 
 as possible miss the rights he had lost. His own rooms were 
 furnished exactly like those he had occupied at the Tuileries. 
 Yes, the place is endeared to me I think of the old times with 
 pride. It is something to have sheltered a Bourbon in his mis- 
 fortunes." 
 
 "It cost milord a vast sum to make these alterations," said 
 Madame de Ventadour, glancing archly at Maltravers. 
 
 "Ah, yes," said the old lord; and his face, lately elated, 
 became overcast "nearly three hundred thousand pounds; 
 but what then ? 'Les souvenirs, madame, sont sans prix! ' ' 
 
 " Have you visited Paris since the restoration, Lord Doning- 
 dale?" asked Maltravers. 
 
 His lordship looked at him sharply, and then turned his eye 
 to Madame de Ventadour. 
 
 " Nay," said Valerie, laughing, " I did not dictate the 
 question." 
 
 "Yes," said Lord Doningdale, "I have been to Paris." 
 
 " His Majesty must have been delighted to return your lord- 
 ship's hospitality." 
 
 Lord Doningdale looked a little embarrassed, and made no 
 reply, but put his horse into a canter. 
 
 "You have galled our host," said Valerie, smiling. "Louis 
 XVIII. and his friends lived here as long as they pleased, and 
 as sumptuously as they could ; their visits half-ruined the 
 owner, who is the model of a gentilhomme and preux chevalier.
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 173 
 
 He went to Paris to witness their triumph ; he expected, I 
 fancy, the order of the St. Esprit. Lord Doningdale has royal 
 blood in his veins. His Majesty asked him once to dinner, 
 and, when he took leave, said to him, ' We are happy, Lord 
 Doningdale, to have thus requited our obligations to your lord- 
 ship.' Lord Doningdale went back in dudgeon, yet lie still 
 boasts of his souvenirs, poor man." 
 
 "' Princes are not grateful, neither are republics," said Mal- 
 travers. 
 
 "Ah ! who is grateful," rejoined Valerie, "except a dog and 
 a woman ?" 
 
 Maltravers found himself ushered into a vast dressing-room, 
 and was informed by a French valet, that, in the country, Lord 
 Doningdale dined at six the first bell would ring in a few 
 minutes. While the valet was speaking, Lord Doningdale 
 entered the room. His lordship had learned, in the mean- 
 while, that Maltravers was of the great and ancient commoners' 
 house, whose honors were centred in his brother ; and yet 
 more, that he was the Mr. Maltravers whose writings every one 
 talked of, whether for praise or abuse. Lord Doningdale had 
 the two characteristics of a high-bred gentleman of the old 
 school respect for birth and respect for talent ; he was, there- 
 fore, more than ordinarily courteous to Ernest, and pressed 
 him to stay some days with so much cordiality, that Maltravers 
 could not but assent. His travelling toilet was scanty, but 
 Maltravers thought little of dress. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 " It is the soul that sees. The outward eyes 
 Present the object, but the mind descries : 
 And thence delight, disgust, or cool indifference rise." CRABBE. 
 
 WHEN Maltravers entered the enormous saloon, hung with 
 damask, and decorated with the ponderous enrichments and 
 furniture of the time of Louis XIV. (that most showy and bar- 
 barous of all tastes, which has nothing in it of the graceful, 
 nothing of the picturesque, and, which, nowadays, people who 
 should know better imitate with a ludicrous servility), he found 
 sixteen persons assembled. His host stepped up from a circle 
 which surrounded him, and formally presented his new visitor 
 to the rest. He was struck with the likeness which the sister 
 of Valerie bore to Valerie herself ; but it was a sober and
 
 174 ERNEST MALTR'AVERS. 
 
 chastened likeness less handsome, less impressive. Mrs. 
 George Herbert such was the name she now owned was a 
 pretty, shrinking, timid girl, fond of her husband, and mightily 
 awed by her father-in-law. Maltravers sat by her, and drew 
 her into conversation. He could not help pitying the poor 
 lady, when he found she was to live altogether at Uoningdale 
 Park remote from all the friends and habits of her childhood 
 alone, so far as the affections were concerned, with a young 
 husband who was passionately fond of field-sports, and who, 
 from the few words Ernest exchanged with him, seemed to 
 have only three ideas his dogs, his horses, and his wife. 
 Alas ! the last would soon be the least in importance. It is a sad 
 position that of a lively young Frenchwoman, entombed in an 
 English country-house ! Marriages with foreigners are seldom 
 fortunate experiments ! But Ernest's attention was soon 
 diverted from the sister by the entrance of Valerie herself, 
 leaning on her husband's arm. Hitherto he had not very 
 minutely observed what change time had effected in her per- 
 haps he was half afraid. He now gazed at her with curious 
 interest. Valerie was still extremely handsome, but her face 
 had grown sharper, her form thinner and more angular; there 
 was something in her eye and lip, discontented, almost queru- 
 lous ; such is the too common expression in the face of those 
 born to love, and condemned to be indifferent. The little 
 sister was more to be envied of the two come what may, she 
 loved her husband, such as he was, and her heart might ache, 
 but it was not with a void. 
 
 Monsieur de Ventadour soon shuffled up to Maltravers his 
 nose longer than ever. 
 
 "Hein hein how d'ye do how d'ye do? charmed to see 
 you saw madame before me hein hein I suspect I sus- 
 pect " 
 
 " Mr. Maltravers, will you give Madame de Ventadour your 
 arm ?" said Lord Doningdale, as he stalked on to the dining- 
 room with a duchess on his own. 
 
 " And you have left Naples," said Maltravers : " left it for 
 good ?" 
 
 " We do not think of returning." 
 
 "It was a charming place how I loved it! how well I re- 
 member it ! " Ernest spoke calmly it was but a general remark. 
 
 Valerie sighed gently. 
 
 During dinner, the conversation between Maltravers and 
 Madame de Ventadour was vague and embarrassed. Ernest 
 was no longer in love with her he had outgrown that youthful
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. i^S 
 
 fancy. She had exercised influence over him the new influ- 
 ences that he had created, had chased away her image. Such 
 is life. Long absences extinguish all the false lights, though 
 not the true ones. The lamps are dead in the banquet-room 
 of yesterday ; but a thousand years hence, and the stars we 
 look on to-night will burn as brightly. Maltravers was no 
 longer in love with Valerie. But Valerie ah, perhaps hers 
 had been true love ! 
 
 Maltravers was surprised when he came to examine the state 
 of his own feelings he was surprised to find that his pulse did 
 not beat quicker at the touch of one whose very glance had 
 once thrilled him to the soul he was surprised, but rejoiced. 
 He was no longer anxious to seek but to shun excitement, and 
 he was a better and a higher being than he had been on the 
 shores of Naples. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 " Whence that low voice, a whisper from the heart, 
 That told of days long past ? " WORDSWORTH. 
 
 ERNEST stayed several days at Lord Doningdale's, and every 
 day he rode out with Valerie, but it was with a large party ; 
 and every evening he conversed with her, but the whole world 
 might have overheard what they said. In fact, the sympathy 
 that had once existed between the young dreamer and the 
 proud, discontented woman had in much passed away. Awak- 
 ened to vast and grand objects, Maltravers was a dreamer no 
 more. Inured to the life of trifles she had once loathed, Val- 
 erie had settled down into the usages and thoughts of the com- 
 mon world she had no longer the superiority of earthly wisdom 
 over Maltravers, and his romance was sobered in its eloquence, 
 and her ear dulled to its tone. Still Ernest felt a deep interest 
 in her, and still she seemed to feel a sensitive pride in his career. 
 
 One evening Maltravers had joined a circle in which Madame 
 de Ventadour, with more than her usual animation, presided 
 and to which in her pretty, womanly, and thoroughly French 
 way, she was lightly laying down the law on a hundred sub- 
 jects Philosophy, Poetry, Sevres china, and the Balance of 
 Power in Europe. Ernest listened to her, delighted, but not 
 enchanted. Yet Valerie was not natural that night she was 
 speaking from forced spirits. 
 
 "Well," said Madame de Ventadour at last, tired, perhaps, 
 of the part she had been playing, and bringing to a sudden
 
 1?6 tRNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 close an animated description of the then French court " well, 
 see now if we ought not to be ashamed of ourselves our talk 
 has positively interrupted the music. Did you see Lord Don- 
 ingdale stop it with a bow to me, as much as to say, with his 
 courtly reproof, 'It shall not disturb you, Madam ?' I will no 
 longer be accessory to your crime of bad taste ! " 
 
 With this the Frenchwoman rose, and, gliding through the 
 circle, retired to the further end of the room. Ernest followed 
 her with his eyes. Suddenly she beckoned to him, and he ap- 
 proached and seated himself by her side. 
 
 " Mr. Maltravers," said Valerie, then, with great sweetness 
 in her voice, " I have not yet expressed to you the delight I 
 have felt from your genius. In absence you have suffered me 
 to converse with you your books have been to me dear friends; 
 as we shall soon part again, let me now tell you of this, frankly 
 and without compliment." 
 
 This paved the way to a conversation that approached more 
 on the precincts of the past than any they had yet known. But 
 Ernest was guarded, and Valerie watched his words and looks 
 with an interest she could not conceal an interest that par- 
 took of disappointment. 
 
 "It is an excitement," said Valerie, " to climb a mountain, 
 though it fatigue ; and though the clouds may even deny us a 
 prospect from its summit it is an excitement that gives a very 
 universal pleasure, and that seems almost as if it were the result 
 of a common human instinct, which makes us desire to rise to 
 get above the ordinary thoroughfares and level of Ife. Some 
 such pleasure you must have in intellectual ambition, in which 
 the mind is the upward traveller." 
 
 " It is not the ambition that pleases," replied Maltravers, " it 
 is the following a path congenial to our tastes, and made dear 
 to us in a short time by habit. The moments in which we look 
 beyond our work, and fancy ourselves seated beneath the Ever- 
 lasting Laurel, are few. It is the work itself, whether of action 
 or literature, that interests and excites us. And at length the 
 dryness of toil takes the familiar sweetness of custom. But in 
 intellectual labor there is another charm we become more in- 
 timate with our own nature. The heart and the soul grow 
 friends, as it were, and the affections and aspirations unite. 
 Thus, we are never without society we are never alone ; all 
 that we have read, learned, and discovered, is company to us. 
 This is pleasant," added Maltravers, " to those who have no 
 dear connections in the world without." 
 
 "And is that your case ?" asked Valerie, with a timid smile.
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 177 
 
 " Alas, yes ! and since I conquered one affection, Madame 
 de Ventadour, I almost think I have outlived the capacity of 
 loving. I believe that when we cultivate very largely the reason 
 or the imagination, we blunt, to a certain extent, our young 
 susceptibilities to the fair impressions of real life. From 'idle- 
 ness,' says the old Roman poet, ' Love feeds his torch."' 
 
 " You are too young to talk thus." 
 
 "I speak as I feel." 
 
 Valerie said no more. 
 
 Shortly afterwards Lord Doningdale approached them, and 
 proposed that they should make an excursion the next day to 
 see the ruins of an old abbey, some few miles distant. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 " If I should meet thee 
 
 After long years, 
 How shall I greet thee ? " BYRON. 
 
 IT was a smaller party than usual the next day, consisting 
 only of Lord Doningdale, his son George Herbert, Valerie, and 
 Ernest. They were returning from the ruins, and the sun, now 
 gradually approaching the west, threw its slant rays over the 
 gardens and houses of a small, picturesque town, or, perhaps, 
 rather village, on the high North Road. It is one of the pret- 
 tiest places in England, that town or village, and boasts an 
 excellent old-fashioned inn, with a large and quaint pleasure- 
 garden. It was through the long and straggling street that our 
 little party slowly rode, when the sky became suddenly overcast, 
 and a few large hailstones falling, gave notice of an approach- 
 ing storm. 
 
 "I told you we should not get safely through the day," said 
 George Herbert. "Now we are in for it." 
 
 " George, that is a vulgar expression," said Lord Doningdale, 
 buttoning up his coat. While he spoke, a vivid flash of light- 
 ning darted across their very path, and the sky grew darker 
 and darker. 
 
 "We may as well rest at the inn," said Maltravers : "the 
 storm is coming on apace, and Madame de Ventadour " 
 
 "You are right," interrupted Lord Doningdale; and he put 
 his horse into a canter. 
 
 They were soon at the door of the old hotel. Bells rang 
 dogs barked hostlers ran. A plain, dark, travelling post-
 
 MALtRAVEfcg. 
 
 chariot was before the inn-door ; and, roused perhaps by the 
 noise below, a lady in the " first-floor front, No. 2," came to the 
 window. This lady owned the travelling-carriage, and was at 
 this time alone in that apartment. As she looked carelessly at 
 the party, her eyes rested on one form she turned pale, uttered 
 a faint cry, and fell senseless on the floor. 
 
 Meanwhile, Lord Doningdale and his guests were shown into 
 the room next to that tenanted by the lady. Properly speaking, 
 both the rooms made one long apartment for balls and county 
 meetings, and the division was formed by a thin partition, re- 
 movable at pleasure. The hail now came on fast and heavy, 
 the trees groaned, the thunder roared ; and in the large, dreary 
 room there was a palpable and oppressive sense of coldness and 
 discomfort. Valerie shivered a fire was lighted and the 
 Frenchwoman drew near to it. 
 
 "You are wet, my dear lady," said Lord Doningdale. "You 
 should take off that close habit, and have it dried." 
 
 " Oh, no : what matters it ? " said Valerie, bitterly, and al- 
 most rudely. 
 
 " It matters everything," said Ernest , "pray be ruled." 
 
 " And you do care for me? " murmured Valerie. 
 
 " Can you ask that question ? " replied Ernest, in the same 
 tone, and with affectionate and friendly warmth. 
 
 Meanwhile the good old lord had summoned the chamber- 
 maid, and, with the kindly imperiousness of a father, made 
 Valerie quit the room. The three gentlemen, left together, 
 talked of the storm, wondered how long it would last, and de- 
 bated the propriety of sending to Doningdale for the carriage. 
 While they spoke, the hail suddenly ceased, though clouds 
 in the distant horizon were bearing heavily up to renew the charge. 
 George Herbert, who was the most impatient of mortals, espe- 
 cially of rainy weather in a strange place, seized the occasion, and 
 insisted on riding to Doningdale, and sending back the carriage. 
 
 "Surely a groom would do as well, George," said the father. 
 
 " My dear father, no ; I should envy the rogue too much. I 
 am bored to death here. Marie will be frightened about us. 
 Brown Bess will take me back in twenty minutes. I am a 
 hardy fellow, you know. Good-bye." 
 
 Away darted the young sportsman, and in two minutes they 
 saw him spur gaily from the inn-door. 
 
 " It is very odd that / should have such a son," said Lord 
 Doningdale, musingly "a son who cannot amuse himself in- 
 doors for two minutes together. I took great pains with his 
 education, too. Strange that people should weary so much of
 
 ERNEST MALtRAVERS. 170 
 
 themselves that they cannot brave the prospect of a few minutes 
 passed in reflection that a shower and the resources of their own 
 thoughts are evils so galling very strange indeed. But it is a con- 
 founded climate this, certainly. I wonder when it will clear up." 
 
 Thus muttering, Lord Doningdale walked, or rather marched, 
 to and fro the room, with his hands in his coat pockets, and his 
 whip sticking perpendicularly out of the right one. Just at 
 this moment the waiter came to announce that his lordship's 
 groom was without, and desired much to see him. Lord Don- 
 ingdale had then the pleasure of learning that his favorite gray 
 hackney, which he had ridden, winter and summer, for fifteen 
 years, was taken with shivers, and, as the groom expressed it, 
 seemed to have " the collar [cholera ?] in its bowels ! " 
 
 Lord Doningdale turned pale, and hurried to the stables with- 
 out saying a word. 
 
 Maltravers, who, plunged in thought, had not overhead the 
 low and brief conference between master and groom, remained 
 alone, seated by the fire, his head buried in his bosom, and his 
 arms folded. 
 
 Meanwhile the lady who occupied the adjoining chamber had 
 recovered slowly from her swoon. She put both hands to her 
 temples, as if trying to recollect her thoughts. Hers was a fair, 
 innocent, almost childish face; and now, as a smile shot across 
 it, there was something so sweet and touching in the gladness it 
 shed over that countenance, that you could 'not have seen it 
 without strong and almost painful interest. For it was the glad- 
 ness of a person who has known sorrow. Suddenly she started 
 up, and said " No then ! I do not dream. He is comeback 
 he is here all will be well again ! Ha ! it is his voice. Oh, 
 bless him, it is his voice ! " She paused, her finger on her lip, 
 her face bent down. A low and indistinct sound of voices 
 reached her straining ear through the thin door that divided 
 her from Maltravers. She listened intently, but she could not 
 overhear the import. Her heart beat violently. " He is not 
 alone ! " she murmured mournfully. "I will wait till the sound 
 ceases, and then I will venture in ! " 
 
 And what was the conversation carried on in that chamber? 
 We must return to Ernest. He was sitting in the same thought- 
 ful posture when Madame de Ventadour returned. The French- 
 woman colored when she found herself alone with Ernest, and 
 Ernest himself was not at his ease. 
 
 " Herbert has gone home to order the carriage, and Lord 
 Doningdale has disappeared, I scarce know whither. You do 
 not, I trust, feel the worse for the rain ? "
 
 l8o EfcNfcST JkfALTRAVERS. 
 
 " No," said Valerie. 
 
 "Shall you have any commands in London ?" asked Mal- 
 travers ; " I return to town to-morrow." 
 
 "So soon ! " and Valerie sighed. "Ah ! " she added, after a 
 pause, " we shall not meet again for years, perhaps. Monsieur 
 de Ventadour is to be appointed ambassador to the Court 
 and so and so Well, it is no matter. What has become of 
 the friendship we once swore to each other ? " 
 
 " It is here," said Maltravers, laying his hand on his heart. 
 " Here, at least, lies the half of that friendship which was my 
 charge ; and more than friendship, Valerie de Ventadour re- 
 spect admiration gratitude. At a time of life, when passion 
 and fancy, most strong, might have left me an idle and worth- 
 less voluptuary, you convinced me that the world has virtue, 
 and that woman is too noble to be our toy the idol of to-day, 
 the victim of to-morrow. Your influence, Valerie, left me a 
 more thoughtful man I hope a better one." 
 
 " Oh ! " said Madame de Ventadour, strongly affected ; " I 
 bless you for what you tell me : you cannot know you cannot 
 guess how sweet it is to me. Now I recognize you once more. 
 What what did my resolution cost me ? Now I am repaid ! " 
 
 Ernest was moved by her emotion, and by his own remembran- 
 ces ; he took her hand, and pressing it with frank and respect- 
 ful tenderness " I did not think, Valerie," said he, "when I 
 reviewed the past, I did not think that you loved me I was not 
 vain enough for that ; but, if so, how much is your character 
 raised in my eyes how provident, how wise your virtue ! Hap- 
 pier and better for both, our present feelings, each to each, than 
 if we had indulged a brief and guilty dream of passion, at war 
 with all that leaves passion without remorse, and bliss without 
 alloy. Now " 
 
 " Now," interrupted Valerie, quickly, and fixing on him her 
 dark eyes " now you love me no longer ! Yes, it is better so. 
 Well, I will go back to my cold and cheerless state of life, and 
 forget once more that Heaven endowed me with a heart ! " 
 
 " Ah, Valerie ! esteemed, revered, still beloved, not indeed 
 with the fires of old, but with a deep, undying, and holy tender- 
 ness, speak not thus to me. Let me not believe you unhappy; 
 let me think that, wise, sagacious, brilliant as you are, you have 
 employed your gifts to reconcile yourself to a common lot. 
 Still let me look up to you when I would despise the circles in 
 which you live, and say ' On that pedestal an altar is yet 
 placed, to which the heart may bring the offerings of the soul.' " 
 
 " It is in vain in vain that I struggle," said Valerie, half-
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. l8l 
 
 choked with emotion, and clasping her- hands passionately. 
 " Ernest, I love you still I am wretched to think you love me 
 no more : I would give you nothing yet I exact all; my youth 
 is going my beauty dimmed my very intellect is dulled by 
 the life I lead ; and yet I ask from you that which your young 
 heart once felt for me. Despise me, Maltravers, I am not what 
 I seemed I am a hypocrite despise me." 
 
 " No," said Ernest, again possessing himself of her hand, and 
 falling on his knee by her side. " No, never to be forgotten, 
 ever to be honored Valerie, hear me." As he spoke, he kissed 
 the hand he held; with the other, Valerie covered her face and 
 wept bitterly, but in silence. Ernest paused till the burst of 
 her feelings had subsided, her hand still in his still warmed 
 by his kisses kisses as pure as cavalier ever impressed on the 
 hand of his queen. 
 
 At this time, the door communicating with the next room 
 gently opened. A fair form a form fairer and younger than 
 that of Valerie de Ventadour entered the apartment; the silence 
 had deceived her she believed that Maltravers was alone. 
 She entered with her heart upon her lips; love, sanguine, hope- 
 iul love in every vein, in every thought she had entered, 
 dreaming that across that threshold life would dawn upon her 
 afresh that all would be once more as it had been, when the 
 common air was rapture. Thus she entered, and now she stood 
 spellbound, terror-stricken, pale as death life turned to stone 
 youth hope bliss were ever over to her ! Ernest kneeling to 
 another was all she saw ! For this she had been faithful and 
 true, amidst storm and desolation ; for this she had hoped 
 dreamed lived. They did not note her ; she was unseen 
 unheard. And Ernest, who. would have gone barefoot 
 to the end of the earth to find her, was in the very room with 
 her, and knew it not ! 
 
 " Call me again beloved! " said Valerie, very softly. 
 
 "Beloved Valerie, hear me." 
 
 These words were enough for the listener ; she turned noise- 
 lessly away : humble as that heart was, it was proud. The door 
 closed on her she had obtained the wish of her whole being 
 Heaven had heard her prayer she had once more seen the lover 
 of her youth ; and thenceforth all was night and darkness to 
 her. What matter what became of her ? One moment, what 
 an effect it produces upon years ! ONE MOMENT ! virtue, crime t 
 glory, shame, woe, rapture, rest upon moments ! Death itself 
 is but a moment, yet Eternity is its successor ! 
 
 "Hear me," continued Ernest ? unconscious of what
 
 182 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 passed "hear me ; let us be what human nature and worldly 
 forms seldom allow those of opposite sexes to be friends to each 
 other, and to virtue also friends through time and absence 
 friends through all the vicissitudes of life friends on whose 
 affection shame and remorse never cast a shade friends who 
 are to meet hereafter! Oh! there is no attachment so true, no 
 tie so holy, as that which is founded on the old chivalry of 
 loyalty and honor; and which is what love would be, if the heart 
 and the soul were unadulterated by clay." 
 
 There was in Ernest's countenance an expression so noble, 
 in his voice a tone so thrilling, that Valerie was brought back at 
 once to the nature which a momentary weakness had subdued. 
 She looked at him with an admiring and grateful gaze, and then 
 said in a calm but low voice, " Ernest, I understand you ; yes, 
 your friendship is dearer to me than love." 
 
 At this time they heard the voice of Lord Doningdale on the 
 stairs. Valerie turned away. Maltravers, as he rose, extended 
 his hand ; she pressed it warmly, and the spell was broken, the 
 temptation conquered, the ordeal passed. While Lord Doning- 
 dale entered the room, the carriage, with Herbert in it, drove to 
 the door. In a few minutes the little party were within the 
 vehicle. As they drove away, the hostlers were harnessing the 
 horses to the dark-green travelling-carriage. From the window, 
 a sad and straining eye gazed upon the gayer equipage of the 
 peer that eye which Maltravers would have given his whole 
 fortune to meet again. But he did not look up ; and Alice 
 Darvil turned away, and her fate was fixed ! 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 "Strange fits of passion I have known, 
 
 And I will dare to tell." WORDSWORTH. 
 
 * * * The food of hope 
 Is meditated action." WORDSWORTH. 
 
 MALTRAVERS left Doningdale the next day. He had no further 
 conversation with Valerie ; but when he took leave of her, she 
 placed in his hand a letter, which he read as he rode slowly 
 through the beech avenues of the park. Translated, it ran 
 thus: 
 
 " Others would despise me for the weakness I showed but 
 you will not ! It is the sole weakness of a life. None can know 
 what I have passed through what hours of dejection and,
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 1 83 
 
 gloom I, whom so many envy ! Better to have been a peasant 
 girl, with love, than a queen whose life is but a dull mechanism. 
 You, Maltravers, I never forgot in absence ; and your image 
 made yet more wearisome and trite the things around me. Years 
 passed, and your name was suddenly in men's lips. I heard of 
 you wherever I went I could not shut you from me. Your 
 fame was as if you were conversing by my side. We met at last, 
 suddenly and unexpectedly. I saw that you loved me no more, 
 and that thought conquered all my resolves; anguish subdues 
 the nerves of the mind as sickness those of the body. And thus 
 I forgot, and humbled, and might have undone myself. Juster 
 and better thoughts are once more awakened within me, and 
 when we meet again I shall be worthy of your respect. 1 see 
 how dangerous are that luxury of thought, that sin of discontent, 
 which I indulged. I go back to life resolved to vanquish all 
 that can interfere with its claims and duties. Heaven guide 
 and preserve you, Ernest. Think of me as one whom you will 
 not blush to have loved whom you will not blush hereafter to 
 present to your wife. With so much that is soft, as well as great 
 within you, you were not formed like me to be alone. 
 
 FAREWELL ! " 
 
 Maltravers read, and re-read this letter ; and when he reached 
 his home, he placed it carefully amongst the things he most 
 valued. A lock of Alice's hair lay beside it he did not think 
 that either was dishonored by the contact. 
 
 With an effort, he turned himself once more to those stern 
 yet high connections which literature makes with real life. Per- 
 haps there was a certain restlessness in his heart which induced 
 him ever to occupy his mind. That was one of the busiest years 
 of his life the one in which he did most to sharpen jealousy 
 and confirm fame. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 " In effect he entered my apartment." GIL BLAS. 
 
 " I am surprised, said he, at the caprice of fortune, who sometimes delights 
 in loading an execrable author with favors, while she leaves good writers to 
 perish for want. " GIL BLAS. 
 
 IT was just twelve months after his last interview with Valerie, 
 and Madame de Ventadour had long since quitted England, 
 when one morning, as Maltravers sate alone in his study, Cas- 
 truccio Cesarini was announced. 
 
 "Ah, my dear Castruccio, how are you?" cried Maltravers, 
 eagerly, as the opening door presented the form of the Italian,,
 
 184 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 "Sir," said Castruccio, with great stiffness, and speaking in 
 French, which was his wont when he meant to be distant "sir, 
 I do not come to renew our former acquaintance you are a 
 great man (here a bitter sneer), I an obscure one (here Cas- 
 truccio drew himself up) I only come to discharge a debt to 
 you which I find I have incurred." 
 
 "What tone is this, Castruccio; and what debt do you speak 
 of?" 
 
 "On my arrival in town yesterday," said the poet solemnly, 
 "I went to the man whom you deputed some years since to 
 publish my little volume, to demand an account of its success; 
 and I found that it had cost one hundred and twenty pounds, 
 deducting the sale of forty-nine copies which had been sold. 
 Your books sell some thousands, I am told. It is well con- 
 trived mine fell stillborn, no pains were taken with it no 
 matter (a wave of the hand). You discharged this debt, I 
 repay you ; there is a check for the money. Sir, I have done ! 
 I wish you a good-day, and health to enjoy your reputation." 
 
 "Why, Cesarini, this is folly." 
 
 "Sir" 
 
 "Yes, it is folly ; for there is no folly equal to that of throw- 
 ing away friendship in a world where friendship is so rare. 
 You insinuate that I am to blame for any neglect which your 
 work experienced. Your publisher can tell you that I was more 
 anxious about your book than I have ever been about my own." 
 
 "And the proof is, that forty-nine copies were sold ! " 
 
 "Sit down, Castruccio; sit down and listen to reason"; and 
 Maltravers proceeded to explain, and soothe, and console. He 
 reminded the poor poet that his verses were written in a foreign 
 tongue that even English poets of great fame enjoyed but a 
 limited sale for their works that it was impossible to make the 
 avaricious public purchase what the stupid public would not 
 take an interest in in short, he used all those arguments which 
 naturally suggested themselves as best calculated to convince 
 and soften Castruccio : and he did this with so much evident 
 sympathy and kindness, that at length the Italian could no 
 longer justify his own resentment. A reconciliation took place, 
 sincere on the part of Maltravers, hollow on the part of Cesarini; 
 for the disappointed author could not forgive the successful one. 
 
 " And how long will you stay in London? " 
 
 "Some months." 
 
 "Send for your luggage, and be my guest." 
 
 " No ; I have taken lodgings that suit me. I am formed for 
 Solitude."
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 185 
 
 "While you stay here, you will, however, go into the world?" 
 
 "Yes, I have some letters of introduction, and I hear that 
 the English can honor merit, even in an Italian." 
 
 "You hear the truth, and it will amuse you, at least, to see 
 our eminent men. They will receive you most hospitably. 
 Let me assist you as a cicerone." 
 
 " Oh, your valuable time ! " 
 
 "Is at your disposal : but where are you going?" 
 
 " It is Sunday, and I have had my curiosity excited to hear a 
 
 celebrated preacher, Mr , who, they tell me, is now more 
 
 talked of than any author in London." 
 
 "They tell you truly I will go with you I myself have not 
 yet heard him, but proposed to do so this very day." 
 
 "Are you not jealous of a man so much spoken of?" 
 
 " Jealous ! why, I never set up for a popular preacher ! 
 ce n'est pas mon metier'' 
 
 "If I were a successful author, I should be jealous if the 
 dancing-dogs were talked of." 
 
 "No, my dear Cesarini, I am sure you would not. You are a 
 little irritated at present by natural disappointment; but the 
 man who has as much success as he deserves, is never morbidly 
 jealous, even of a rival in his own line : want of success sours 
 us ; but a little sunshine smiles away the vapors. Come, we 
 have no time to lose." 
 
 Maltravers took his hat, and the two young men bent their 
 
 way to Chapel. Cesarini still retained the singular fashion 
 
 of his dress, though it was now made of handsomer materials, 
 and worn with more coxcombry and pretension. He had much 
 improved in person had been admired in Paris and told that 
 he looked like a man of genius, and, with his black ringlets 
 flowing over his shoulders, his long moustache, his broad, Span- 
 ish-shaped hat and eccentric garb, he certainly did not look like 
 other people. He smiled with contempt at the plain dress of 
 his companion. "I see," said he, " that you follow the fashion, 
 and look as if you passed your life with e"le'gans instead of 
 students. I wonder you condescend to such trifles as fashion- 
 ably-shaped hats and coats." 
 
 "It would be worse than trifling to set up for originality in hats 
 and coats, at least in sober England. I was born a gentleman, 
 and I dress my outward frame like others of my order. Because I 
 am a writer, why should I affect to be different from other men ? " 
 
 "I see that you are not above the weakness of your country- 
 man, Congreve," said Cesarini, "who deemed it finer to be a 
 gentleman than an author."
 
 l86 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 "I always thought that anecdote misconstrued. Congreve 
 had a proper and manly pride, to my judgment, when he ex- 
 pressed a dislike to be visited merely as a raree-show." 
 
 "But is it policy to let the world see that an author is like 
 other people? Would he not create a deeper personal interest 
 if he showed that even in person alone he was unlike the herd? 
 He ought to be seen seldom not to stale his presence and to 
 resort to the arts that belong to the royalty of intellect as well 
 as the royalty of birth." 
 
 "I dare say an author, by a little charlatanism of that nature, 
 might be more talked of might be more adored in the board- 
 ing schools, and make a better picture in the exhibition. But I 
 think, if his mind be manly, he would lose in self-respect at 
 every quackery of the sort. And my philosophy is, that to re- 
 spect oneself is worth all the fame in the world." 
 
 Cesarini sneered and shrugged his shoulders; it was quite evi- 
 dent that the two authors had no sympathy with each other. 
 
 They arrived at last at the chapel, and with some difficulty 
 procured seats. 
 
 Presently the service began. The preacher was a man of un- 
 questionable talent and fervid eloquence; but his theatrical arts, 
 his affected dress, his artificial tones and gestures, and, above 
 all, the fanatical mummeries which he introduced into the house 
 of God, disgusted Maltravers, while they charmed, entranced 
 and awed Cesarini. The one saw a montebank and impostor 
 the other recognized a profound artist and an inspired prophet. 
 
 But while the discourse was drawing towards a close, while 
 the preacher was in one of his most eloquent bursts the ohs ! 
 and ahs! of which were the grand prelude to the pathetic per- 
 oration the dim outline of a female form, in the distance, 
 riveted the eyes and absorbed the thoughts of Maltravers. The 
 chapel was darkened, though it was broad daylight; and the face 
 of the person that attracted Ernest's attention was concealed 
 by her head-dress and veil. But that bend of the neck, so simply 
 graceful, so humbly modest, recalled to his heart but one image. 
 Every one has, perhaps, observed that there is a physiognomy 
 (if the bull may be pardoned) of form as well as face, which it 
 rarely happens that two persons possess in common. And this, 
 with most, is peculiarly marked in the turn of the head, the out- 
 line of the shoulders, and the ineffable something that charac- 
 terizes the postures of each individual in repose. The more in- 
 tently he gazed, the more firmly Ernest was persuaded that he 
 saw before him the long-lost, the never-to-be-forgotten mistress 
 of his boyish days, and his first love. On one side of the lady
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 187 
 
 in question sat an elderly gentleman, whose eyes were fixed 
 upon the preacher; on the other, a beautiful little girl, with long 
 fair ringlets, and that cast of features which, from its exquisite 
 delicacy and expressive mildness, painters and poets call the 
 "angelic." These persons appeared to belong to the same party. 
 Maltravers literally trembled, so great were his impatience and 
 agitation. Yet still, the dress of the supposed likeness of Alice, 
 the appearance of her companions, were so evidently above the 
 ordinary rank, that Ernest scarcely ventured to yield to the 
 suggestions of his own heart. Was it possible that the daughter 
 of Luke Darvil, thrown upon the wide world, could have risen 
 so far beyond her circumstances and station ? At length the 
 moment came when he might resolve his doubts the discourse 
 was concluded the extemporaneous prayer was at an end the 
 congregation broke up, and Maltravers pushed his way, as well 
 as he could, through the dense and serried crowd. But every 
 moment some vexatious obstruction, in the shape of a fat gen- 
 tleman or three close-v/edged ladies, intercepted his progress. 
 He lost sight of the party in question amidst the profusion of 
 tall bonnets and waving plumes. He arrived at last, breathless 
 and pale as death (so great was the struggle within him), at the 
 door of the chapel. He arrived in time to see a plain carriage 
 with servants in gray undress liveries, driving from the porch 
 and caught a glimpse, within the vehicle, of the golden ringlets 
 of a child. He darted forward, he threw himself almost be- 
 fore the horses. The coachman drew in, and with an angry ex- 
 clamation, very much like an oath, whipped his horses aside and 
 went off. But that momentary pause sufficed. "It is she it is! 
 Oh heaven, it is Alice ! " murmured Maltravers. The whole place 
 reeled before his eyes, and he clung, overpowered and uncon- 
 scious, to a neighboring lamp-post for support. But he recov- 
 ered himself with an agonizing effort, as the thought struck upon 
 his heart, that he was about to lose sight of her again forever. 
 And he rushed forward, like one frantic, in pursuit of the car- 
 riage. But there was a vast crowd of other carriages, besides 
 stream upon stream of foot passengers for the great and the 
 gay resorted to that place of worship, as a fashionable excite- 
 ment in a dull day. And after a weary and dangerous chase, 
 in which he had been nearly run over three times, Maltravers 
 halted at last, exhausted and in despair. Every succeeding 
 Sunday, for months, he went to the same chapel, but in vain; 
 in vain, too, he resorted to every public haunt of dissipation 
 and amusement. Alice Darvil he beheld no more!
 
 l88 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 " Tell me, sir, 
 
 Have you cast up your state, rated your land, 
 And find it able to endure the charge ? " 
 
 The Noble Gentleman. 
 
 BY degrees, as Maltravers sobered down from the first shock 
 of that unexpected meeting, and from the prolonged disappoint- 
 ment that followed it, he became sensible of a strange kind of 
 happiness or contentment. Alice was not in poverty, she was 
 not eating the unhallowed bread of vice, or earning the bitter 
 wages of laborious penury.' He saw her in reputable, nay, opu- 
 lent circumstances. A dark nightmare, that had often, amidst 
 the pleasures of youth, or the triumphs of literature, weighed 
 upon his breast was removed. He breathed more freely he 
 could sleep in peace. His conscience could no longer say to 
 him, " She who slept upon thy bosom is a wanderer upon the 
 /ace of the earth exposed to every temptation, perishing per- 
 haps for want." That single sight of Alice had been like the 
 apparition of the injured Dead conjured up at Heraclea whose 
 sight could pacify the aggressor and exorcise the spectres of re- 
 morse. He was reconciled with himself, and walked on to the 
 Future with a bolder step and a statelier crest. Was she mar- 
 ried to that staid and sober-looking personage whom he had be- 
 held with her? was that child the offspring of their union ? He 
 almost hoped so it was better to lose than to destroy her. Poor 
 Alice! could she have dreamed, when she sat at his feet gazing up 
 into his eyes, that a time would come when Maltravers would 
 thank Heaven for the belief that she was happy with another? 
 
 Ernest Maltravers now felt a new man: the relief of con- 
 science operated on the efforts of his genius. A more buoyant 
 and elastic spirit entered into them they seemed to breathe as 
 with a second youth. 
 
 Meanwhile, Cesarini threw himself into the fashionable world, 
 and to his own surprise was feted and caressed. In fact, Cas- 
 truccio was exactly the sort of person to be made a lion of. The 
 letters of introduction that he had brought from Paris were ad- 
 dressed to those great personages in England between whom 
 and personages equally as great in France politics makes a bridge 
 of connection. Cesarini appeared to them as an accomplished 
 young man, brother-in-law to a distinguished member of the 
 French Chamber. Maltravers, on the other hand, introduced 
 him to the literary dilettanti, who admire all authors that are
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 189 
 
 not rivals. The singular costume of Cesarini, which would have 
 revolted persons in an Englishman, enchanted them in an Italian. 
 He looked, they said, like a poet. Ladies like to have verses 
 written to them, and Cesarini, who talked very little, made up 
 for it by scribbling eternally. The young man's head soon grew 
 filled with comparisons between himself in London and Petrarch 
 at Avignon. As he had always thought that fame was in the 
 gift of lords and ladies, and had no idea of the multitude, he 
 fancied himself already famous. And, since one of his strong- 
 est feelings was his jealousy of Maltravers, he was delighted at 
 being told he was a much more interesting creature than that 
 haughty personage, who wore his neckcloth like other people, 
 and had not even those indispensable attributes of genius black 
 curls and a sneer. Fine society, which, as Madame de Stae'l 
 well says, depraves the frivolous mind and braces the strong one, 
 completed the ruin of all that was manly in Cesarini's intellect. 
 He soon learned to limit his desire of effect or distinction to 
 gilded saloons; and his vanity contented itself upon the scraps 
 and morsels from which the lion heart of true ambition turns in 
 disdain. But this was not all. Cesarini was envious of the greater 
 affluence of Maltravers. His own fortune was in a small capi- 
 tal of eight or nine thousand pounds; but, thrown in the midst 
 of the wealthiest society in Europe, he could not bear to sacri- 
 fice a single claim upon its esteem. He began to talk of the 
 satiety of wealth, and young ladies listened to him with remark- 
 able interest when he did so he obtained the reputation of 
 riches he was too vain not to be charmed with it. He en- 
 deavored to maintain the claim by adopting the extravagant ex- 
 cesses of the day. He bought horses he gave away jewels he 
 made love to a marchioness of forty-two, who was very kind to 
 him and very fond of ecartt he gambled he was i~o the high 
 road to destruction.
 
 I go ERNEST MALTR AVERS. 
 
 BOOK VI. 
 
 av 
 
 Hfanrrelv re Tpnv6v. EukiP. Ion. line 641. 
 
 Perchance you say that gold's the arch-exceller, 
 And to be rich is sweet? 
 
 6' 
 rolf Kanioiaiv. Ibid, line 669. 
 
 * * * 'Tis not to be endured, 
 To yield our trodden path and turn aside, 
 Giving our place to knaves. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 " L'addresse et 1'artifice ont passe dans mon coeur, 
 Qu'on a sous cet habit et d'esprit et de ruse." * REGNARD. 
 
 IT was a fine morning in July, when a gentleman who had 
 arrived in town the night before after an absence from Eng- 
 land of several years walked slowly and musingly up that 
 superb thoroughfare which connects the Regent's Park with St. 
 James's. 
 
 He was a man who, with great powers of mind, had wasted 
 his youth in a wandering vagabond sort of life, but who had 
 worn away the love of pleasure, and began to awaken to a sense 
 of ambition. 
 
 " It is astonishing how this city is improved," said he to him- 
 self. " Everything gets on in this world with a little energy and 
 bustle and everybody as well as everything. My old cronies, 
 fellows not half so clever as I am, are all doing well. There's 
 Tom Stevens, my very fag at Eton snivelling little dog he 
 was too ! just made under-secretary of state. Pearson, whose 
 longs and shorts I always wrote, is now head-master to the 
 human longs and shorts of a public school editing Greek plays, 
 and booked for a bishopric. Collier, I see by the papers, is leading 
 his circuit and Ernest Maltravers (but he had some talent) 
 has made a name in the world. Here am I, worth them all 
 put together, who have done nothing but spend half my little 
 fortune in spite of all my economy. Egad, this must have an 
 end. I must look to the main chance ; and yet, just when I 
 want his help the most, my worthy uncle thinks fit to marry 
 again. Humph I'm too good for this world." 
 
 * Subtlety and craft have taken possession of my heart, but under this habit one exhibits 
 both shrewdness and wit.
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 191 
 
 While thus musing, the soliloquist came in direct personal 
 contact with a tall gentleman, who carried his head very high 
 in the air, and did not appear to see that he had nearly thrown 
 our abstracted philosopher off his legs. 
 
 " Zounds, sir, what do you mean ?" cried the latter. 
 
 " I beg your par " began the other meekly, when his arm 
 was seized, and the injured man exclaimed, "Bless me, sir, is it 
 indeed you whom I see ? " 
 
 "Ha! Lumley?" 
 
 " The same ; and how fares it, my dear uncle ? I did not know 
 you were in London. I only arrived last night. How well 
 you are looking ! " 
 
 " Why, yes, Heaven be praised, I am pretty well." 
 
 " And happy in your new ties ? You must present me to 
 Mrs. Templeton." 
 
 " Ehem," said Mr. Templeton, clearing his throat, and with 
 a slight but embarrassed smile, " I never thought I should 
 marry again." 
 
 " IS komme propose, et Dieu dispose" observed Lumley Ferrers, 
 for it was he. 
 
 " Gently, my dear nephew," replied Mr. Templeton, gravely ; 
 " those phrases are somewhat sacrilegious ; I am an old-fashioned 
 person, you know." 
 
 " Ten thousand apologies." 
 
 " One apology will suffice ; these hyperboles of phrase are 
 almost sinful." 
 
 "Confounded old prig!" thought Ferrers; but he bowed 
 sanctimoniously. 
 
 " My dear uncle, I have been a wild fellow in my day : but 
 with years comes reflection ; and under your guidance, if I may 
 hope for it, I trust to grow a wiser and a better man." 
 
 "It is well, Lumley," returned the uncle; "and I am very 
 glad to see you returned to your own country. Will you dine 
 with me to-morrow ? I am living near Fulham. You had 
 better bring your carpet-bag, and stay with me some days ; you 
 will be heartily welcome, especially if you can shift without a 
 foreign servant. I have a great compassion for papists, but 
 
 "Oh, my dear uncle, do not fear, I am not rich enough to 
 have a foreign servant, and have not travelled over three quar- 
 ters of the globe without learning that it is possible to dispense 
 with a valet." 
 
 "As to being rich enough," observed Mr. Templeton, with a 
 calculating air, "seven hundred and ninety-five pounds ten 
 shillings a year will allow a man to keep two servants, if he
 
 IQ2 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 pleases ; but I am glad to find you economical, at all events. 
 We meet to-morrow, then, at six o'clock." 
 
 " Au revolt I mean, God bless you." 
 
 "Tiresome old gentleman that," muttered Ferrers, "and not 
 cordial as formerly ; perhaps his wife is enceinte, and. he is going 
 to do me the injustice of having another heir. I must look to 
 this ; for without riches I had better go back and live au cin- 
 qutime at Paris." 
 
 With this conclusion Lumley quickened his pace, and soon 
 arrived inSeamore Place. In a few moments more he was in 
 the library well stored with books, and decorated with marble 
 busts and images from the studios of Canova and Thorwaldsen. 
 
 " My master, sir, will be down immediately," said the servant 
 who admitted him, and Ferrers threw himself on a sofa, and 
 contemplated the apartment with an air half envious and half 
 cynical. 
 
 Presently the door opened, and " My dear Ferrers ! " " Well, 
 man cher, how are you ! " were the salutations hastily ex- 
 changed. 
 
 After the first sentences of inquiry, gratulation, and welcome 
 had cleared the way for more general conversation, "Well, 
 Maltravers," said Ferrers, "so here we are together again, and 
 after a lapse of so many years ! both older certainly ; and you, 
 I suppose, wiser. At all events, people think you so ; and that's 
 all that's important in the question. Why, man, you are look- 
 ing as young as ever, only a little paler and thinner : but look 
 at me I am not vziy much past thirty, and I am almost an old 
 man ; bald at the temples, crows' feet, too, eh ! Idleness ages 
 one damnably." 
 
 "Pooh, Lumley, I never saw you look better. And are you 
 really come to settle in England ?" 
 
 "Yes, if I can afford it. But at my age and after having 
 seen so much, the life of an idle, obscure gar f on does not 
 content me. I feel that the world's opinion, which I used to de- 
 spise, is growing necessary to me. I want to be something. 
 What can I be ? Don't look- alarmed, I won't rival you. I 
 dare say literary reputation is a fine thing, but I desire some 
 distinction more substantial and worldly. You know your 
 own country ; give me a map of the roads to Power." 
 
 "To Power! Oh, nothing but law, politics, and riches." 
 
 " For law, I am too old ; politics, perhaps, might suit me ; 
 but riches, my dear Ernest ah, how 1 long for a good account 
 with my banker ! " 
 
 "Well, patience and hope. Are you not a rich uncle's heir?"
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 193 
 
 " I don't know," said Ferrers, very dolorously ; " the old gentle- 
 man has married again, and may have a family." 
 
 " Married ! to whom ? " 
 
 "A widow, I hear; I know nothing more, except that she 
 has a child already. So you see she has got into a cursed way 
 of having children. And, perhaps, by the time I'm forty, I shall 
 see a whole covey of cherubs flying away with the great Tem- 
 pleton property ! " 
 
 " Ha, ha ; your despair sharpens your wit, Lumley ; but why 
 not take a leaf out of your uncle's book, and marry yourself?" 
 
 " So I will when I can find an heiress. If that is what you 
 meant to say it is a more sensible suggestion than any I could 
 have supposed to come from a man who writes books, especially 
 poetry ; and your advice is not to be despised. For rich I will be ; 
 and as the fathers (I don't mean of the Church, but in Horace) 
 told the rising generation the first thing is to resolve to be rich, 
 it is only the second thing to consider how." 
 
 "Meanwhile, Ferrers, you will be my guest." 
 
 "I'll dine with you to-day ; but to-morrow I amoff toFulham, 
 to be introduced to my aunt. Can't you fancy her? gray gros 
 de Naples gown : gold chain with an eyeglass ; rafher fat ; two 
 pugs and a parrot ! 'Start not, this is fancy's sketch ! ' I have 
 not yet seen the respectable relative with my physical optics. 
 What shall we have for dinner ! Let me choose, you were always 
 a bad caterer." 
 
 As Ferrers thus rattled on, Maltravers felt himself growing 
 younger : old times and old adventures crowded fast upon him ; 
 and the two friends spent a most agreeable day together. It was 
 only the next morning that Maltravers, in thinking over the 
 various conversations that had passed between them, was forced 
 reluctantly to acknowledge that the inert selfishness of Lumley 
 Ferrers seemed now to have hardened into a resolute and syste- 
 matic want of principle, which might, perhaps, make him a dan- 
 gerous and designing man, if urged by circumstances into action 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 " Dauph. Sir, I must speak to you. I have been long your despised kins, 
 man. 
 
 " Morose. O, what thou wilt, nephew." EPICENE. 
 
 " Her silence is dowry eno' exceedingly soft spoken ; thrifty of her 
 speech, that spends but six words a day." Ibid. 
 
 THE coach dropped Mr. Ferrers at the gate of a villa about
 
 194 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 three miles from town. The lodge-keeper charged himself with 
 the carpet-bag, and Ferrers strolled, with his hands behind him 
 (it was his favorite mode of disposing of them), through the 
 beautiful and elaborate pleasure-grounds. 
 
 "A very nice, snug little box (jointure-house, I suppose) ! I 
 would not grudge that, I'm sure, if I had but the rest. But here, 
 I suspect, comes madam's first specimen of the art of having a 
 family." This last thought was extracted from Mr. Ferrers's con- 
 templative brain by a lovely little girl, who came running up to 
 him, fearless and spoilt as she was ; and, after indulging in a 
 tolerable stare, exclaimed, "Are you come to see papa, sir ?" 
 
 "Papa ! the deuce ! " thought Lumley ; "and who is papa, 
 my dear?" 
 
 " Why, mamma's husband. He is not my papa by rights." 
 
 " Certainly not, my love ; not by rights I comprehend." 
 
 " Eh ! " 
 
 "Yes, I am going to your papa by wrongs Mr. Templeton." 
 
 "Oh, this way, then." 
 
 "You are very fond of Mr. Templeton, my little angel." 
 
 "To be sure I am. You have not seen the rocking-horse he 
 is going to give me." 
 
 " Not yet, sweet child ! And how is mamma?" 
 
 "Oh, poor, dear mamma," said the child, with a sudden change 
 of voice, and tears in her eyes. "Ah, she is not well !" 
 
 " In the family way, to a dead certainty ! " muttered Ferrers, 
 with a groan ; "but here is my uncle. Horrid name ! Uncles 
 were always wicked fellows. Richard the Third, and the man 
 who did something or other to the babes in the wood, were a 
 joke to my hard-hearted old relation, who has robbed me with a 
 widow ! The lustful, liquorish old My dear sir, I'm so glad to 
 see you ! " 
 
 Mr. Templeton, who was a man very cold in manners, and 
 alvvayseither looked over people's heads or down upon theground, 
 just touched his nephew's outstretched hand, and, telling him 
 that he was welcome, observed that it was a very fine afternoon. 
 
 "Very, indeed; sweet place this; you see, by the way, that 
 I have already made acquaintance with my fair cousin-in-law. 
 She is very pretty." 
 
 " I really think she is," said Mr. Templeton, with some warmth, 
 and gazing fondly at the child, who was now throwing butter- 
 cups up in the air, and trying to catch them. Mr. Ferrers wished 
 in his heart that they had been brick-bats ! 
 
 " Is she like her mother ? " asked the nephew, 
 
 4< Like whom, sir ? "
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. Ip5 
 
 "Her mother Mrs. Templeton." 
 
 " No, not very ; there is an air, perhaps, but the likeness is 
 not remarkably strong. Would you not like to go to your room 
 before dinner ?" 
 
 " Thank you. Can I not first be presented to Mrs. Tem 
 
 " She is at her devotions, Mr. Lurnley," interrupted Mr. Tem- 
 pleton, grimly. 
 
 " The she-hypocrite ! " thought Ferrers. " Oh, I am delighted 
 that, your pious heart has found so congenial a helpmate ! " 
 
 " It is a great blessing, and I am grateful for it. This is the 
 way to the house." 
 
 Lumley, now formally installed in a grave bedroom, with dimity 
 curtains, and dark-brown paper with light-brown stars on it, 
 threw himself into a large chair, and yawned and stretched with 
 as much fervor as if he could have yawned and stretched him- 
 self into his uncle's property. He then slowly exchanged his 
 morning dress for a quiet suit of black, and thanked his stars 
 that, amidst all his sins, he had never been a dandy, and had 
 never rejoiced in a fine waistcoat a criminal possession that he 
 well knew would have entirely hardened his uncle's conscience 
 against him. He tarried in his room till the second bell sum- 
 moned him to descend ; and then, entering the drawing-room, 
 which had a cold look even in July, found his uncle standing 
 by the mantelpiece, and a young, slight, handsome woman, half- 
 buried in a huge but not comfortable/t7z/////. 
 
 "Your aunt, Mrs. Templeton ; madam, my nephew, Mr. Lum- 
 ley Ferrers," said Templeton, with a wave of the hand. " John, 
 dinner ! " 
 
 " I hope I am not late ! " 
 
 "No," said Templeton, gently, for he had always liked his 
 nephew, and began now to thaw towards him a little on seeing 
 that Lumley put a good face upon the new state of affairs, 
 " No, my dear boy no ; but I think order and punctuality 
 cardinal virtues in a well-regulated family." 
 
 " Dinner, sir," said the butler, opening the folding-doors at 
 the end of the room. 
 
 " Permit me," said Lumley, offering his arm to the aunt, 
 " What a lovely place this is ! " 
 
 Mrs. Templeton said something in reply, but what it was Fer- 
 rers could not discover, so low and choked was the voice. 
 
 "Odd," thought he : "for a widow? but that's the way those 
 husband-buriers take us in ! " 
 
 Plain as was the general furniture of the apartment, the nat- 
 ural ostentation of Mr. Templeton broke out in the massive
 
 190 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 value of the plate, and the number of the attendants. He was 
 a rich man, and he was proud of his riches : he knew it was re- 
 spectable to be rich, and he thought it was moral to be respecta- 
 ble. As for the dinner, Lumley knew enough of his uncle's 
 tastes to be prepared for viands and wines that even he (fastidi- 
 ous gourmand as he was) did not despise. 
 
 But between the intervals of eating, Mr. Ferrers endeavored 
 to draw his aunt into conversation, but he found all his ingenuity 
 fail him. There was, in the features of Mrs. Templeton, an 
 expression of deep but calm melancholy that would have sad- 
 dened most persons to look upon, especially in one so young and 
 lovely. It was evidently something beyond shyness or reserve 
 that made her so silent and subdued, and even in her silence 
 there was so much natural sweetness, that Ferrers could not ascribe 
 her manner to haughtiness or the desire to repel. He was rather 
 puzzled ; " for though," thought he, sensibly enough, " my uncle 
 is not a youth, he is a very rich fellow ; and how any widow, 
 who is married again to a rich old fellow, can be melancholy, 
 passes my understanding ! " 
 
 Templeton, as if to draw attention from his wife's taciturnity, 
 talked more than usual. He entered largely into politics, and 
 regretted that in times so critical he was not in Parliament. 
 
 " Did I possess your youth and your health, Lumley, I would 
 not neglect my country Popery is abroad." 
 
 " I myself should like very much to be in Parliament," said 
 Lumley, boldly. 
 
 "I dare say you would," returned the uncle, dryly. "Par- 
 liament is very expensive only fit for those who have a large 
 rsJ.ake in the country. Champagne to Mr. Ferrers." 
 
 Lumley bit his lip, and spoke little during the rest of the 
 dinner. Mr. Templeton, however, waxed gracious by the time 
 the dessert was on the table ; and began cutting up a pineapple, 
 with many assurances to Lumley that gardens were nothing 
 without pineries. " Whenever you settle in the country, nephew, 
 be sure you have a pinery." 
 
 " Oh, yes," said Lumley, almost bitterly, " and a pack of hounds, 
 and a French cook ; they will all suit my fortune very well." 
 
 " You are more thoughtful on pecuniary matters than you 
 used to be," said the uncle. 
 
 " Sir," replied Ferrers, solemnly, " in a very short time I shall 
 be what is called a middle-aged man." 
 
 " Humph ! " said the host. 
 
 There was another silence. Lumley was a man, as we have 
 said or implied before, of great knowledge of human nature, at
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. IQ7 
 
 least the ordinary sort of it, and he now revolved in his mind 
 the various courses it might be wise to pursue towards his rich 
 relation. He saw that, in delicate fencing, his uncle had over 
 him the same advantage that a tall man has over a short one 
 with the physical sword-play, by holding his weapon in a 
 proper position, he kept the other at arm's length. There was 
 a grand reserve and dignity about the man who had something 
 to give away, of which Ferrers, however actively he might 
 shift his ground and flourish his rapier, could not break the 
 defence. He determined, therefore, upon a new game, for 
 which his frankness of manner admirably adapted him. Just 
 as he formed this resolution, Mrs. Templeton rose, and with a 
 gentle bow, and soft, though languid smile, glided from the 
 room. The two gentlemen resettled themselves, and Temple- 
 ton pushed the bottle to Ferrers. 
 
 " Help yourself, Lumley ; your travels seem to have deprived 
 you of your high spirits you are pensive." 
 
 "Sir," said Ferrers, abruptly, "I wish to consult you." 
 
 " Oh, young man ! you have been guilty of some excess 
 you have gambled you have " 
 
 " I have done nothing, sir, that should make me less worthy 
 your esteem. I repeat, I wish to consult you ; I have outlived 
 the hot days of my youth I am now alive to the claims of the 
 world. I have talents, I believe ; and I have application, 
 I know. I wish to fill a position in the world that may redeem 
 my past indolence and do credit to my family. Sir, I set your 
 example before me, and I now ask your counsel, with the deter- 
 mination to follow it." 
 
 Templeton was startled ; he half shaded his face with his hand, 
 and gazed searchingly upon the high forehead and bold eyes of 
 his nephew. " I believe you are sincere," said he, after a pause. 
 
 " You may well believe so, sir." 
 
 " Well, I will think of this. I like an honorable ambition 
 not too extravagant a one that is sinful ; but a respectable 
 station in the world is a proper object of desire, and wealth is 
 a blessing ; because," added the rich man, taking another slice 
 of the pineapple, "it enables us to be of use to our fellow- 
 creatures ! " 
 
 " Sir, then," said Ferrers, with daring animation " then I 
 avow that my ambition is precisely of the kind you speak of. 
 I am obscure, I desire to be reputably known ; my fortune is 
 mediocre, I desire it to be great. I ask you for nothing I 
 know your generous heart ; but I wish independently to work 
 out my own career ! "
 
 198 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 " Lumley," said Templeton, " I never esteemed you so much 
 as I do now. Listen to me I will confide in you ; I think the 
 government are under obligations to me." 
 
 "I know it," exclaimed Ferrers, whose eyes sparkled at the 
 thought of a sinecure for sinecures then existed ! 
 
 "And," pursued the uncle, "I intend to ask them a favor in 
 return." 
 
 " Oh, sir ! " 
 
 " Yes, I think mark me with management and address, I 
 may " 
 
 " Well, my dear sir ! " 
 
 " Obtain a barony for myself and heirs : I trust I shall soon 
 have a family ! " 
 
 Had somebody given Lumley Ferrers a hearty cuff on the 
 ear, he would have thought less of it than of this wind-up of his 
 uncle's ambitious projects. His jaws fell, his eyes grew an inch 
 larger, and he remained perfectly speechless. 
 
 "Aye," pursued Mr. Templeton," I have long dreamed of 
 this ; my character is spotless, my fortune great. I have ever 
 exerted my parliamentary influence in favor of ministers, and, 
 in this commercial country, no man has higher claims than 
 Richard Templeton to the honors of a virtuous, loyal, and re- 
 ligious state. Yes, my boy, I like your ambition you see I 
 have some of it myself ; and since you are sincere in your wish 
 to tread in my footsteps, I think I can obtain you a junior 
 partnership in a highly respectable establishment. Let me see ; 
 your capital now is " 
 
 " Pardon me, sir," interrupted Lumley, coloring with indig- 
 nation despite himself; "I honor commerce much, but my 
 paternal relations are not such as would allow me to enter into 
 trade. And permit me to add," continued he, seizing with 
 instant adroitness the new weakness presented to him " permit 
 me to add, that those relations who have been ever kind to me 
 would, properly managed, be highly efficient in promoting your 
 own views of advancement ; for your sake I would not break 
 with them. Lord Saxingham is still a minister nay, he is in 
 the cabinet." 
 
 " Hem Lumley hem ! " said Templeton, thoughtfully, " we 
 will consider we will consider. Any more wine ? " 
 
 " No, I thank you, sir." 
 
 "Then I'll just take my evening stroll, and think over mat- 
 ters. You can rejoin Mrs. Templeton. And I say, Lumley 
 I read prayers at nine o'clock. Never forget your Maker, and 
 He will not forget you. The barony will be an excellent thing
 
 ERNEST MALT RAVERS. 199 
 
 eh ? au English peerage ! very different from your beggarly 
 countships abroad ! " 
 
 So saying, Mr. Templeton rang for his hat and cane, and 
 stepped into the lawn from the window of the dining-room. 
 
 " The world's mine oyster, which I with sword will open," 
 muttered Ferrers ; " I would mould this selfish old man to my 
 purpose ; for, since I have neither genius to write nor eloquence 
 to declaim, I will at least see whether I have not cunning tc 
 plot, and courage to act. Conduct conduct conduct there 
 lies my talent ; and what is conduct but a steady walk from 2 
 design to its execution ! " 
 
 With these thoughts Ferrers sought Mrs. Templeton. He 
 opened the folding-doors very gently, for all his habitual move- 
 ments were quick and noiseless, and perceived that Mrs. 
 Templeton sat by the window, and that she seemed engrossed 
 with a book which lay open on a little work-table before her. 
 
 " Fordyce's Advice to Young Married Women, I suppose. 
 Sly jade ! However, I must not have her against me." 
 
 He approached ; still Mrs. Templeton did not note him ; 
 nor was it till he stood facing her that he himself observed that 
 her tears were falling fast over the page. 
 
 He was a little embarrassed, and, turning towards the window, 
 affected to cough, and then said, without looking at Mrs. Temple- 
 ton, " I fear I have disturbed you." 
 
 " No," answered the same low, stifled voice that had before 
 replied to Lumley's vain attempts to provoke conversation, "it 
 was a melancholy employment, and perhaps it is not right to 
 indulge in it." 
 
 " May I inquire what author so affected you ? " 
 
 " It is but a volume of poems, and I am no judge of poetry ; 
 but it contains thoughts which which " Mrs. Templeton 
 paused abruptly, and Lumley quietly took up the book. 
 
 " Ah ! " said he, turning to the title-page " my friend ought 
 to be much flattered." 
 
 " Your friend ? " 
 
 " Yes : this, I see, is by Ernest Maltravers, a very intimate 
 ally of mine." 
 
 " I should like to see him," cried Mrs. Templeton, almost 
 with animation " I read but little ; it was by chance that I 
 met with one of his books, and they are as if I heard a dear 
 friend speaking to me. Ah ! I should like to see him !" 
 
 " I'm sure, madam," said the voice of a third person, in an 
 austere and rebuking accent, "I do not see what good "t would 
 do your immortal soul to see a man who writes idlt verses,
 
 200 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 which appear to me, indeed, highly immoral. I just looked 
 into that volume this morning, and found nothing but trash 
 love-sonnets and such stuff." 
 
 Mrs. Templeton made no reply, and Lumley, in order to 
 change the conversation, which seemed a little too matrimonial 
 for his taste, said, rather awkwardly, " You are returned very 
 soon, sir." 
 
 " Yes, I don't like walking in the rain ! " 
 
 " Bless me, it rains, so it does I had not observed " 
 
 " Are you wet, sir ? had you not better " began the wife, 
 timidly. 
 
 " No, ma'am, I'm not wet, I thank you. By-the-by, nephew, 
 this new author is a friend of yours. I wonder a man of his 
 family should condescend to turn author. He can come to no 
 good. I hope you will drop his acquaintance authors are very 
 unprofitable associates, I'm sure. I trust I shall see no more 
 of Mr. Maltravers's books in my house." 
 
 " Nevertheless, he is well thought of, sir, and makes no mean 
 figure in the world," said Lumley, stoutly ; for he was by no 
 means disposed to give up a friend who might be as useful to 
 him as Mr. Templeton himself. 
 
 " Figure, or no figure I have not had many dealings with 
 authors in my day ; and when I had, I always repented it. Not 
 sound, sir, not sound all cracked somewhere. Mrs. Temple- 
 ton, have the kindness to get the Prayer-book my hassock 
 must be fresh stuffed, it gives me quite a pain in my knee. 
 Lumley, will you ring the bell ? Your aunt is very melancholy. 
 True religion is not gloomy ; we will read a sermon on Cheer- 
 fulness." 
 
 " So, so," said Mr. Ferrers to himself, as he undressed that 
 night "I see that my uncle is a little displeased with my aunt's 
 pensive face a little jealous of her thinking of anything but 
 himself : tant mieux. I must work upon this discovery ; it will 
 not do for them to live too happily with each other. And what 
 with that lever, and what with his ambitious projects, I think I 
 see a way to push the good things of this world a few inches 
 nearer to Lumley Ferrers."
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 2OI 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 " The pride too of her step, as light 
 
 Along the unconscious earth she went, 
 Seemed that of one born with a right 
 
 To walk some heavenlier elements." Loves of the Angels. 
 
 * * * "Can it be 
 
 That these fine impulses, these lofty thoughts 
 Burning with their own beauty, are but given 
 To make me the low slave of vanity ? " Eiinna. 
 
 * * * "Is she not too fair 
 
 Even to think of maiden's sweetest care ? 
 The mouth and brow are contrasts." Ibid. 
 
 IT was two or three evenings after the date of the last chap- 
 ter, and there was what the newspapers call " a select party" 
 in one of the noblest mansions in London. A young lady, on 
 whon all eyes were bent, and whose beauty might have served 
 the painter for a model of a Semiramis or Zenobia, more majes- 
 tic than became her years, and so classically faultless as to have 
 something cold and statue-like in its haughty lineaments, was 
 moving through the crowd that murmured applauses as she 
 passed. This lady was Florence Lascelles, the daughter of 
 Lumley's great relation, the Earl of Saxingham, and supposed 
 to be the richest heiress in England. Lord Saxingham himself 
 drew aside his daughter as she swept along. 
 
 " Florence," said he, in a whisper, " the Duke of is greatly 
 
 struck with you be civil to him I am about to present him." 
 
 So saying, the Earl turned to a small, dark, stiff-looking man, 
 of about twenty-eight years of age, at his left, and introduced 
 
 the Duke of to Lady Florence Lascelles. The Duke was 
 
 unmarried ; it was an introduction between the greatest match 
 and the wealthiest heiress in the peerage. 
 
 " Lady Florence," said Lord Saxingham, " is as fond of horses 
 as yourself, Duke, though not quite so good a judge." 
 
 " I confess I do like horses," said the Duke, with an ingenu- 
 ous air. 
 
 Lord Saxingham moved away. 
 
 Lady Florence stood mute one glance of bright contempt 
 shot from her large eyes ; her lip slightly curled, and she then 
 half turned aside, and seemed to forget that her new acquaint- 
 ance was in existence. 
 
 His grace, like most great personages, was not apt to take 
 offence ; nor could he, indeed, ever suppose that any slight
 
 202 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 towards the Duke of could be intended ; still he thought 
 
 it would be proper in Lady Florence to begin the conversation ; 
 for he himself, though not shy, was habitually silent, and ac- 
 customed to be saved the fatigue of defraying the small charges 
 of society. After a pause, seeing, however, that Lady Florence 
 remained speechless, he began : 
 
 " You ride sometimes in the Park, Lady Florence ? " 
 
 " Very seldom." 
 
 "It is, indeed, too warm for riding at present" 
 
 "I did not say so." 
 
 "Hem I thought you did." 
 
 Another pause. 
 
 " Did you speak, Lady Florence ?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 " Oh ! I beg pardon Lord Saxingham is looking very well." 
 
 "I am glad you think so." 
 
 "Your picture in the exhibition scarcely does you justice, 
 Lady Florence ; yet Lawrence is usually happy." 
 
 " You are very flattering," said Lady Florence, with a lively 
 and perceptible impatience in her tone and manner. The young 
 beauty was thoroughly spoilt and now all the scorn of a scorn- 
 ful nature was drawn forth, by observing the envious eyes of 
 
 the crowd were bent upon one whom the Duke of was 
 
 actually talking to. Brilliant as were her own powers of con- 
 versation, she would not deign to exert them she was an aris- 
 tocrat of intellect rather than birth, and she took it into her 
 head that the Duke was an idiot. She was very much mistaken. 
 If she had but broken up the ice, she would have found that 
 the water below was not shallow. The Duke, in fact, like many 
 other Englishmen, though he did not like the trouble of show- 
 ing forth, and had an ungainly manner, was a man who had 
 read a great deal, possessed a sound head and an honorable 
 mind, though he did not know what it was to love anybody, to 
 care much for anything, and was at once perfectly sated and 
 yet perfectly contented ; for apathy is the combination of satiety 
 and content. 
 
 Still Florence judged of him as lively persons are apt to 
 judge of the sedate; besides she wanted to proclaim to him and 
 everybody else how little she cared for dukes and great 
 matches ; she therefore, with a slight inclination of her head, 
 turned away, and extended her hand to a dark young man, 
 who was gazing on her with that respectful but unmistakable 
 admiration which proud women are never proud enough to 
 despise.
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 203 
 
 "Ah, signer," said she, in Italian, " I am so glad to see you; 
 it is a relief, indeed, to find genius in a crowd of nothings." 
 
 So saying, the heiress seated herself on one of those con- 
 venient couches which hold but two, and beckoned the Italian to 
 her side. Oh, how the vain heart of Castruccio Cesarini beat ! 
 what visions of love, rank, wealth, already flitted before him ! 
 
 " I almost fancy," said Castruccio, " that the old days of 
 romance are returned, when a queen could turn from princes 
 and warriors to listen to a troubadour." 
 
 "Troubadours are now more rare than warriors and princes," 
 said Florence, with gay animation, which contrasted strongly 
 
 with the coldness she had manifested to the Duke of ," and 
 
 therefore it would not now be a very great merit in a queen to 
 fly from dullness and insipidity to poetry and wit." 
 
 " Ah, say not wit," said Cesarini; " wit is incompatible with 
 the grave character of deep feelings; incompatible with enthu- 
 siasm, with worship; incompatible with the thoughts that wait 
 upon Lady Florence Lascelles." 
 
 Florence colored and slightly frowned; but the immense dis- 
 tinction between her position and that of the young foreigner, 
 with her own inexperience, both of real life and the presump- 
 tion of vain hearts, made her presently forget the flattery that 
 would have offended her in another. She turned the conversa- 
 tion, however, into general channels, and talked of Italian 
 poetry with a warmth and eloquence worthy of the theme. White 
 they thus conversed, a new guest had arrived, who, from thf spot 
 where he stood, engaged with Lord Saxingham, fixed a steady 
 and scrutinizing gaze upon the pair. 
 
 " Lady Florence has indeed improved," said this new guest. 
 " I could not have conceived that England boasted any one 
 half so beautiful." 
 
 "She certainly is handsome, my dearLumley, the Lascelles 
 cast of countenance," replied Lord Saxingham " and so gifted! 
 She is positively learned quite a basbleu. I tremble to think 
 of the crowd of poets and painters who will make a fortune out 
 of her enthusiasm. Entrenous, Lumley, I could wish her mar* 
 
 ried to a man of sober sense, like the Duke of ; for sobe^c 
 
 sense is exactly what she wants. Doobseive, she has been just 
 half an hour flirting with that odd-looking adventurer, a Signor 
 Cesarini, merely because he writes sonnets and wears a dress 
 like a stage-player ! " 
 
 " It is the weakness of the sex, my dear lord," said Lumley; 
 " they like to patronize, and they dote upon all oddities, from 
 china monsters to cracked poets. But I fancy, by a restless
 
 204 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 glance cast every now and then around the room, that my beau- 
 tiful cousin has in her something of the coquette." 
 
 "There, you are quite right, Lumley," returned Lord Sax- 
 ingham, laughing; " but I will not quarrel with her for breaking 
 hearts and refusing hands, if she do but grow steady at last, 
 and settle into the Duchess of ." 
 
 " Duchess of ! "repeated Lumley, absently; "well, I will 
 
 go and present myself. ' I see she is growing tired of the signer. 
 1 will sound her as to the ducal impressions, my dear lord." 
 
 "Do, /dare not," replied the father; "she is an excellent 
 girl, but heiresses are always contradictory. It was very foolish 
 to deprive me of all control over her fortune. Come and see 
 me again soon, Lumley. I suppose you are going abroad ? " 
 
 " No, I shall settle in England; but of my prospects and plans 
 more hereafter." 
 
 With this, Lumley quietly glided away to Florence. There 
 was something in Ferrers that was remarkable from its very 
 simplicity. His clear, sharp features, with the short hair and 
 high brow the absolute plainness of all his dress, and the noise- 
 less, easy, self-collected calm of all his motions, made a strong 
 contrast to the showy Italian, by whose side he now stood. 
 Florence looked up at him with some little surprise at his in- 
 trusion. 
 
 " Ah, you don't recollect me ! " said Lumley, with his pleasant 
 laugh. " Faithless Imogen, after all your vows of constancy ! 
 Behold your Alonzo ! 
 
 ' The worms they crept in and the worms they crept out. 
 
 Don't you remember how you trembled when I told you that 
 true story, as we 
 
 ' Conversed as we sate on the green ? ' " 
 
 " Oh ! " cried Florence, " it is indeed you, my dear cousin 
 my dear Lumley ! What an age since we parted ! " 
 
 "Don't talk of age it is an ugly word to a man of my years. 
 Pardon, signor, if I disturb you." 
 
 And here Lumley, with a low bow, slid coolly into the place 
 which Cesarini, who had shyly risen, left vacant for him. Cas- 
 truccio looked disconcerted; but Florence had forgotten him in 
 her delight at seeing Lumley, and Cesarini moved discontentedly 
 away, and seated himself at a distance. 
 
 "And I come back," continued Lumley, *' to find you a con- 
 firmed beauty and a professional coquette. Don't blush ! " 
 
 "Do they, indeed, call me a coquette?" 
 
 " Qfy yes ? for once the world is just,"
 
 MALtRAVEUS. 26$ 
 
 " Peril aps I deserve the reproach. Oh, Lumley, how I despise 
 all that I see and hear ! " 
 
 " What, even the Duke of ? " 
 
 " Yes, I fear even the Duke of is no exception ! " 
 
 "Your father will go mad if he hear you." 
 
 " My father! my poor father! yes, he thinks the utmost 
 that I, Florence Lascelles, am made for, is to wear a ducal 
 coronet, and give the best balls in London." 
 
 "And pray what was Florence Lascelles made for?" 
 
 " Ah ! I cannot answer the question. I fear for Discon- 
 tent and Disdain." 
 
 " You are an enigma but I will take pains and not rest till I 
 solve you." 
 
 " I defy you." 
 
 "Thanks better defy than despise." 
 
 " Oh, you must be strangely altered, if I can despise you" 
 
 " Indeed, what do you remember of me ?" 
 
 " That you were frank, bold, and therefore, I suppose, true ! 
 that you shocked my aunts and my father by your contempt 
 for the vulgar hypocrisies of our conventional life. Oh, no ! 
 I cannot despise you." 
 
 Lumley raised his eyes to those of Florence he gazed on her 
 long and earnestly ambitious hopes rose high within him. 
 
 " My fair cousin," said he, in an altered and serious tone, " I 
 see something in your spirit kindred to mine ; and I am glad that 
 yours is one of the earliest voices which confirm my new re- 
 solves on my return to busy England ! " 
 
 "And those resolves?" 
 
 " Are an Englishman's energetic and ambitious." 
 
 " Alas, ambition ! How many false portraits are there of the 
 great original." 
 
 Lumley thought he had found a clue to the heart of his 
 cousin, and he began to expatiate, with unusual eloquence, on 
 the nobleness of that daring sin which " lost angels heaven." 
 Florence listened to him with attention, but not with sym- 
 pathy. Lumley was deceived. His was not an ambition that 
 could attract the fastidious but high-souled Idealist. The sel- 
 fishness of his nature broke out in all the sentiments that he 
 fancied would seem to her most elevated. Place Power 
 titles all these objects were low and vulgar to one who saw 
 them daily at her feet. 
 
 At a distance, the Duke of continued from time to time 
 
 to direct his cold gaze at Florence. He did not like her the 
 less for not seeming to court him. He had something generous
 
 2o6 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 within him, and could understand her. He went away at last, 
 and thought seriously of Florence as a wife. Not a wife for 
 companionship, for friendship, for love ; but a wife who could 
 take the trouble of rank off his hands do him honor, and raise 
 him an heir, whom he might flatter himself would be his own. 
 From his corner also, with dreams yet more vain and daring, 
 Castruccio Cesarini cast his eyes upon the queen-like brow of 
 the great heiress. Oh, yes, she had a soul she could disdain 
 rank and revere genius! What a triumph over De Montaigne 
 Maltravers all the world, if he, the neglected poet, could win 
 the hand for which the magnates of the earth sighed in vain! 
 Pure and lofty as he thought himself, it was her birth and her 
 wealth which Cesarini adored in Florence. And Lumley, 
 nearer perhaps to the prize than either yet still far oil went 
 on conversing, with eloquent lips and sparkling eyes, while his 
 cold heart was planning every word, dictating every glance, 
 and laying out (for the most worldly are often the most vision- 
 ary) the chart for a royal road to fortune. And Florence Las- 
 celles, when the crowd had dispersed and she sought her 
 chamber, forgot all three ; and with that morbid romance often 
 peculiar to those for whom Fate smiles the most, mused over 
 the ideal image of the one she could love " in maiden medita- 
 tion not fancy free ! " 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 " In mea vesanas habui dispendia vires, 
 Et valui pcenas fortis in ipse meas." * OviD. 
 
 " Then might my breast be read within, 
 A thousand volumes would be written there." EARL OF STIRLING. 
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS was at the height of his reputation; the 
 work which he had deemed the crisis that was to make or mar 
 him was the most brilliantly successful of all he had yet com- 
 mitted to the public. Certainly, chance did as much for it as 
 merit, as is usually the case with works that become instanta- 
 neously popular. We may hammer away at the casket with strong 
 arm and good purpose, and all in vain ; when some morning a 
 careless stroke hits the right nail on the head, and we secure a 
 fortune. 
 
 It was at this time, when in the prime of youth rich, courted, 
 respected, run after that Ernest Maltravers fell seriously ill. 
 
 * I had the strength of a madman to my own cost, and employed that strength in my own 
 punishment.
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 207 
 
 It was no active or visible disease, but a general irritability of 
 the nerves, and a languid sinking of the whole frame. His la- 
 bors began, perhaps, to tell against him. In earlier life he had 
 been as active as a hunter of the chamois, and the hardy exer- 
 cise of his frame counteracted the effects of a restless and hard- 
 ened mind. The change from an athletic to a sedentary habit of 
 life the wear and tear of the brain the absorbing passion for 
 knowledge which day and night kept all his faculties in a stretch, 
 made strange havoc in a constitution naturally strong. The poor 
 author ! how few persons understand, and forbear with, and pity 
 him ! He sells his health and youth to a rugged taskmaster. 
 And, O blind and selfish world, you expect him to be as free of 
 manner, and as pleasant of cheer, and as equal of mood, as if he 
 were passing the most agreeable and healthful existence that 
 pleasure could afford to smoothe the wrinkles of the mind, or 
 medicine invent to regulate the nerves of the body ! But there 
 was, besides all this, another cause that operated against the suc- 
 cessful man ! His heart was too solitary. He lived without the 
 sweet household ties the connections and amities he formed 
 excited for a moment, but possessed no charm to comfort or to 
 soothe. Cleveland resided so much in the country, and was of 
 so much calmer a temperament, and so much more advanced in 
 age, that, with all the friendship that subsisted between them, 
 there was none of that daily and familiar interchange of confi- 
 dence which affectionate natures demand as the very food of 
 life. Of his brother (as the reader will conjecture from never 
 having been formally presented to him) Ernest saw but little. 
 Colonel Maltravers, one of the gayest and handsomest men of 
 his time, married to a fine lady, lived principally in Paris, ex- 
 cept when, fora few weeks in the shooting season, he filled his 
 country house with companions Avho had nothing in common 
 with Ernest : the brothers corresponded regularly every quarter, 
 and saw each other once a year this was all their intercourse, 
 Ernest Maltravers stood in the world alone, with that cold but 
 anxious spectre Reputation. 
 
 It was late at night. Before a table covered with the monu- 
 ments of erudition and thought sate a young man with a pale and 
 worn countenance. The clock in the room told with a fretting 
 distinctness every moment that lessened the journey to the grave. 
 There was an anxious and expectant expression on the face of 
 the student, and from time to time he glanced at the clock, and 
 muttered to himself. Was it a letter from some adored mistress 
 the soothing flattery from some mighty arbiter of arts and let- 
 ters that the young man eagerly awaited ? No ; the aspirer was
 
 2^8 ERNEST MALTR AVERS. 
 
 forgotten in the valetudinarian. Ernest Maltravers was waiting 
 the visit of his physician, whom at that hour a sudden thought 
 had induced him to summon from his rest. At length the well- 
 known knock was heard, and in a few moments the physician 
 entered. He was one well versed in the peculiar pathology of 
 book men, and kindly as well as skillful. 
 
 "My dear Mr. Maltravers, what is this? How are we? not 
 seriously ill, I hope no relapse pulse low and irregular, I see, 
 but no fever. You are nervous." 
 
 "Doctor," said the student, "I did not send for you at this 
 time of night from the idle fear or fretful caprice of an invalid. 
 But when I saw you this morning, you dropped some hints which 
 have haunted me ever since. Much that it befits the conscience 
 and the soul to attend to without loss of time, depends upon my 
 real state. If I understand you rightly, I may have but a short 
 time to live is it so?" 
 
 " Indeed ! " said the doctor, turning away his face ; "you have 
 exaggerated my meaning. I did not say that you were in what 
 we technically call danger." 
 
 " Am I then likely to be a fong-lived man ? " 
 
 The doctor coughed "That is uncertain, my dear young 
 friend," said he, after a pause. 
 
 " Be plain with me. The plans of life must be based upon 
 such calculations as we can reasonably form of its probable dura- 
 tion. Do not fancy that I am weak enough or coward enough 
 to shrink from any abyss which I have approached unconsciously; 
 I desire I adjure nay, I command you to be explicit." 
 
 There was an earnest and solemn dignity in his patient's voice 
 and manner which deeply touched and impressed the good phy- 
 sician. 
 
 " I will answer you frankly," said he; " you over-work the nerves 
 and the brain ; if you do not relax, you will subject yourself to 
 confirmed disease and premature death. For several months 
 perhaps for years to come you should wholly cease from literary 
 labor. Is this a hard sentence ? You are rich and young en- 
 joy yourself while you can." 
 
 Maltravers appeared satisfied changed the conversation 
 talked easily on other matters for a few minutes : nor was it till 
 he had dismissed his physician that he broke forth with the 
 thoughts that were burning in him. 
 
 "Oh !" cried he aloud, as he rose and paced the room with 
 rapid strides ; "now, when I see before me the broad and lumi- 
 nous path, am I to be condemned to halt and turn aside ? A vast 
 empire rises on my view, greater than that of Caesars and con-
 
 ERNESt MALTRAVEfcS. 260 
 
 querors an empire durable and universal in the souls of men, 
 that time itself cannot overthrow ; and Death marches with me, 
 side by side, and the skeleton hand waves me back to the noth- 
 ingness of common men." 
 
 He paused at the casement he threw it open, and leant forth 
 and gasped for air. Heaven was serene and still, as morning 
 came coldly forth amongst the waning stars ; and the haunts of 
 men, in their thoroughfare of idleness and of pleasure, were des- 
 olate and void. Nothing, save Nature, was awake. 
 
 "And if, O stars!" murmured Maltravers, from the depth of 
 his excited heart "if I have been insensible to your solemn 
 beauty if the Heaven and the Earth had been to me but as air 
 and clay if I were one of a dull and dim-eyed herd I might 
 live on, and drop into 'the grave from the ripeness of unprofita- 
 ble years. It is because I yearn for the great objects of an immor- 
 tal being, that life shrinks and shrivels up like a scroll. Away! 
 I will not listen to these human and material monitors, and 
 consider life as a thing greater than the things that I would 
 live for. My choice is made, glory is more persuasive than the 
 grave." 
 
 He turned from the casement his eyes flashed his chest 
 heaved he trod the chamber with a monarch's air. All the cal- 
 culations of prudence, all the tame and methodical reasonings 
 with which, from time to time, he had sought to sober down the 
 impetuous man into the calm machine, faded away before the 
 burst of awful and commanding passions that swept over his soul. 
 Tell a man, in the full tide of his triumphs, that he bears death 
 within him ; and what crisis of thought can be more startling and 
 more terrible ! 
 
 Maltravers had, as we have seen, cared little for fame, till fame 
 had been brought within his reach ; then, with every step he took, 
 new Alps had arisen. Each new conjecture brought to light a 
 new truth that demanded enforcement or defence. Rivalry and 
 competition chafed his blood, and kept his faculties at their full 
 speed. He had the generous race-horse spirit of emulation. 
 Ever in action, ever in progress, cheered on by the sarcasms of 
 foes, even more than by the applause of friends, the desire of 
 glory had become the habit of existence. When we have com- 
 menced a career, what stop is there till the grave ? where is the 
 definite barrier of that ambition which, like the eastern bird, 
 seems ever on the wing, and never rests upon the earth ? Our 
 names are not settled tillour death: the ghosts of what we have 
 done are made our haunting monitors our scourging avengers 
 if ever we cease to do, or fall short of the younger past. Repose is
 
 2 id ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 oblivion ; to pause is to unravel all the web that we have woven 
 until the tomb closes over us, and men, just when it is too late, 
 strike the fair balance between ourselves and our rivals ; and we 
 are measured, not by the least, but by the greatest, triumphs we 
 have achieved. Oh, what a crushing sense of impotence comes 
 over us, when we feel that our frame cannot support our mind 
 when the hand can no longer execute what the soul, actively as 
 ever, conceives and desires ! the quick life tied to the dead 
 form the ideas fresh as immortality, gushing forth rich and 
 golden, and the broken nerves, and the aching frame, and the 
 weary eyes ! the spirit athirst for liberty and heaven and the 
 damning, choking consciousness that we are walled up and pris- 
 oned in a dungeon that must be our burial-place! Talk not 
 of freedom there is no such thing as freedom to a man 
 whose body is the jail, whose infirmities are the racks, of his 
 genius ! 
 
 Maltravers paused at last, and threw himself on his sofa, 
 wearied and exhausted. Involuntarily, and as a half-uncon- 
 scious means of escaping from his conflicting and profitless 
 emotions, he turned to several letters, which had for hours lain 
 unopened on his table. Every one, the seal of which he broke, 
 seemed to mock his state every one seemed to attest the felicity 
 of his fortunes. Some bespoke the admiring sympathy of the 
 highest and wisest one offered him a brilliant opening into 
 public life another (it was from Cleveland) was fraught with 
 all the proud and rapturous approbation of a prophet whose 
 auguries are at last fulfilled. At that letter Maltravers sighed 
 deeply, and paused before he turned to the others. The last he 
 opened was in an unknown hand, nor was any name affixed 
 to it. Like all writers of some note, Maltravers was in the habit 
 of receiving anonymous letters of praise, censure, warning, and 
 exhortation especially from young ladies at boarding-schools, 
 and old ladies in the country ; but there was that in the first 
 sentences of the letter, which he now opened with a careless 
 hand, that riveted his attention. It was a small and beautiful 
 handwriting, yet the letters were more clear and bold than they 
 usually are in feminine caligraphy. 
 
 " Ernest Maltravers," began this singular effusion, "have you 
 weighed yourself? Are you aware of your capacities? Do you 
 feel that for you there may be a more dazzling reputation than 
 that which appears to content you ? You who seem to penetrate 
 into the subtlest windings of the human heart, and to have 
 examined nature as through a glass you, whose thoughts stand 
 forth like armies marshalled in defence of truth, bold and
 
 ERNEST MALTR AVERS. 2 1 1 
 
 dauntless, and without a stain upon their glittering armor ; are 
 you, at your age, and with your advantages, to bury yourself 
 amidst books and scrolls? Do you forget that action is the 
 grand career for men who think as you do ? Will this word- 
 weighing and picture-writing the cold eulogies of pedants 
 the listless praises of literary idlers, content all the yearnings of 
 your ambition ? You were not made solely for the closet ; ' The 
 Dreams of Pindus, and the Aonian Maids 'cannot endure 
 through the noon of manhood. You are too practical for the 
 mere poet, and too poetical to sink into the dull tenor of a 
 learned life. I have never seen you, yet I know you I read 
 your spirit in your page ; that aspiration for something better 
 and greater than the Great and the Good, which colors all your 
 passionate revelations of yourself and others cannot be satisfied 
 merely by ideal images. You cannot be contented, as poets 
 and historians mostly are, by becoming great only from de- 
 lineating great men, or imagining great events, or describing a 
 great era. Is it not worthier of you to be what you fancy or 
 relate? Awake, Maltravers, awake! Look into your heart, 
 and feel your proper destinies. And who am I that thus address 
 you? a woman whose soul is filled with you! a woman, in 
 whom your eloquence has awakened, amidst frivolous and vain 
 circles, the sense of a new existence a woman who would make 
 you, yourself, the embodied ideal of your own thoughts and 
 dreams, and who would ask from earth no other lot than that 
 of following you on the road of fame with the eyes of her heart. 
 Mistake me not ; I repeat that I have never seen you, nor do 
 I wish it ; you might be other than I imagine, and I should 
 lose an idol, and be left without a worship. I am a kind of 
 visionary Rosicrucian : it is a spirit that I adore, and not a 
 being like myself. You imagine, perhaps, that I have some pur- 
 pose to serve in this I have no object in administering to your 
 vanity ; and if I judge you rightly, this letter is one that might 
 make you vain without a blush. Oh, the admiration that does 
 not spring from holy and profound sources of emotion how it 
 saddens us or disgusts ! I have had my share of vulgar hom- 
 age, and it only makes me feel doubly alone. I am richer than 
 you I have youth I have what they call beauty. And neither 
 riches, youth, nor beauty, ever gave me the silent and deep 
 happiness I experience when I think of you. This is a wor- 
 ship that might, I repeat, well make even you vain. Think of 
 these words, I implore you. Be worthy, not of my thoughts 
 but of the shape in which they represent you : and every ray of 
 glory that surrounds you will brighten my own way, and inspire
 
 212 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 me with a kindred emulation. Farewell. I may write to you 
 again, but you will never discover me ; and in life I pray that 
 we may never meet .' " 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 "Our list of nobles next let Amri grace." 
 
 Absalom and Achitophel. 
 
 " Sine me vacivum tempus ne quod dem mihi 
 Laboris." * TER. 
 
 "I CAN'T think," said one of a group of young men, loiter- 
 ing by the steps of a club-house in St. James Street " I can't 
 think what has chanced to Maltravers. Do you observe (as he 
 walks there the other side of the way) how much he is al- 
 tered ? He stoops like an old man, and hardly ever lifts his 
 eyes from the ground. He certainly seems sick and sad ! " 
 
 " Writing books, I suppose." 
 
 "Or privately married." 
 
 "Or growing too rich rich men are always unhappy 
 beings." 
 
 ' Ha, Ferrers, how are you ?" 
 
 ' So so ! What's the news ? " replied Lumley. 
 
 ' Rattler pays forfeit." 
 
 ' Oh ! but in politics ? " 
 
 ' Hang politics ! are you turned politician ? " 
 
 ' At my age, what else is there left to do ?" 
 
 ' I thought so, by your hat ; all politician sport odd-looking 
 hats : it is very remarkable, but that is the great symptom of the 
 disease." 
 
 " My hat ! is it odd ? " said Ferrers, taking off the commo- 
 dity in question, and seriously regarding it. 
 
 " Why, who ever saw such a brim ? " 
 
 " Glad you think so." 
 
 " Why, Ferrers ? " 
 
 " Because it is a prudent policy in this country to surrender 
 something trifling up to ridicule. If people can abuse your hat 
 or your carriage, or the shape of your nose, or a wart on your 
 chin, they let slip a thousand more important matters. 'Tis the 
 wisdom of the camel-driver, who gives up his gown for the 
 camel to trample on, that he may escape himself." 
 
 " How droll you are, Ferrers ! Well, I shall turn in and read 
 the papers ; and you " 
 
 * Suffer me to employ my spare time in some kind of labor.
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 213 
 
 " Shall pay my visits, and rejoice in my hat." 
 
 " Good day to you ; by the bye, your friend, Maltravers, has 
 just passed, looking thoughtful, and talking to himself ! What's 
 the matter with him ? " 
 
 " Lamenting, perhaps, that he, too, does not wear an odd hat 
 for gentlemen like you to laugh at, and leave the rest of him 
 in peace. Good day." 
 
 On went Ferrers, and soon found himself in the Mall of the 
 Park. Here he was joined by Mr. Templeton. 
 
 " Well, Lumley," said the latter (and it may be here re- 
 marked that Mr. Templeton now exhibited towards his ne- 
 phew a greater respect of manner and tone than he had thought 
 it necessary to observe before) " well, Lumley, and have you 
 seen Lord Saxingham ?" 
 
 " I have, sir ; and I regret to say " 
 
 " I thought so I thought it," interrupted Templeton : " no 
 gratitude in public men no wish, in high place, to honor 
 virtue ! " 
 
 " Pardon me ; Lord Saxingham declares that he sliould be 
 delighted to forward your views that no man more deserves 
 a peerage ; but that " 
 
 " Oh, yes : always ' buts ! ' " 
 
 " But that there are so many claimants at present whom it is 
 impossible to satisfy ; and and but I feel I ought not to go on." 
 
 " Proceed, sir, I beg." 
 
 "Why, then, Lord Saxingham is (I must be frank) a man 
 who has a great regard for his own family. Your marriage (a 
 source, my dear uncle, of the greatest gratification to me) cuts 
 off the probable chance of your fortune and title, if you acquire 
 the latter, descending to " 
 
 " Yourself ! " put in Templeton, dryly. " Your relation seems, 
 for the first time, to have discovered how dear your interests 
 are to him." 
 
 "For me. individually, sir, my relation does not care a rush 
 but he cares a great deal for any member of his house being 
 rich and in high station. It increases the range and credit of 
 his connections ; and Lord Saxingham is a man whom connec- 
 tions help to keep great. To be plain with you, he will not stir 
 in this business, because he does not see how his kinsman is to 
 be benefited, or his house strengthened." 
 
 " Public virtue ! " exclaimed Templeton. 
 
 "Virtue, my dear uncle, is a female : as long as she is pri- 
 vate property, she is excellent ; but Public Virtue, like any 
 other public lady, is a common prostitute,"
 
 214 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 " Pshaw ! " grunted Templeton, who was too much out of 
 humor to read his nephew the lecture he might otherwise have 
 done upon the impropriety of his simile ; for Mr. Templeton 
 was one of those men who hold it vicious to talk of vice as ex- 
 isting in the world ; he was very much shocked to hear anything 
 called by its proper name. 
 
 " Has not Mrs. Templeton some connections that may be 
 useful to you ? " 
 
 " No, sir !" cried the uncle, in a voice of thunder. 
 
 " Sorry to hear it but we cannot expect all things : you have 
 married for love you have a happy home, a charming wife 
 this is better than a title and a fine lady." 
 
 " Mr. Lumley Ferrers, you may spare me your consolations. 
 My wife " 
 
 " Loves you dearly, I dare say," said the imperturbable 
 nephew. " She has so much sentiment, is so fond of poetry. 
 Oh, yes, she must love one who has done so much for her." 
 
 "Done so much ; what do you mean ?" 
 
 "Why, with your fortune with your station your just am- 
 bition you, who might have married anyone ; nay, by remain- 
 ing unmarried, have conciliated all my interested, selfish rela- 
 tions, hang them you have married a lady without connections, 
 and what more could you do for her ? " 
 
 " Pooh, pooh ; you don't know all." 
 
 Here Templeton stopped short, as if about to say too much, 
 and frowned ; then, after a pause, he resumed, " Lumley, I have 
 married, it is true. You may not be my heir, but I will make 
 it up to you that is, if you deserve my affection." 
 
 *' My dear unc " 
 
 " Don't interrupt me, I have projects for you. Let our in- 
 terests be the same. The title may yet descend to you. I may 
 have no male offspring meanwhile, draw on me to any reason- 
 able amount young men have expenses but be prudent, and 
 if you want to get on in the world, never let the world detect 
 your scrape. There, leave me now." 
 
 " My best, my heartfelt thanks ! " 
 
 " Hush sound Lord Saxingham again ; I must and will have 
 this bauble I have set my heart on it." So saying, Templeton 
 waved away his nephew, and musingly pursued his path towards 
 Hyde Park Corner, where his carriage awaited him. As soon 
 as he entered his demesnes, he saw his wife's daughter running 
 across the lawn to greet him. His heart softened ; he checked 
 the carriage and descended : he caressed her, he played with 
 her, he laughed as she laughed. No parent could be rnore^ fond,
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 215 
 
 " Lumley Ferrers has talent to do me honor," said he, anx- 
 iously, " but his principles seem unstable. However, surely 
 that open manner is the sign of a good heart." 
 
 Meanwhile, Ferrers, in high spirits, took his way to Ernest's 
 house. His friend was not at home, but Ferrers never wanted 
 a host's presence in order to be at home himself. Books were 
 round him in abundance, but Ferrers was not one of those who 
 read for amusement. He threw himself into an easy-chair, and 
 began weaving new meshes of ambition and intrigue. At length 
 the door opened, and Maltravers entered. 
 
 "Why, Ernest, how ill you are looking ! " 
 
 "I have not been well, but I am now recovering. As physi- 
 cians recommend change of air to ordinary patients so I am 
 about to try change of habit. Active I must be action is the 
 condition of my being ; but I must have done with books for 
 the present. You see me in a new character ! " 
 
 "How?" 
 
 "That of a public man I have entered Parliament." 
 
 "You astonish me ! I have read the papers this morning. I 
 see not even a vacancy, much less an election." 
 
 " It is all managed by the lawyer and the banker. In other 
 words, my seat is a close borough." 
 
 " No bore of constituents. I congratulate you, and envy. I 
 wish I were in Parliament myself." 
 
 " You ! I never fancied you bitten by the political mania." 
 
 " Political ! no. But it is the most respectable way, with 
 luck, of living on the public. Better than swindling." 
 
 "A candid way of viewing the question. But I thought at 
 one time you were half a Benthamite, and that your motto was, 
 'The greatest happiness of the greatest number.' ' 
 
 " The greatest number to me is number one. I agree with 
 the Pythagoreans unity is the perfect principle of creation ! 
 Seriously, how can you mistake the principles of opinion for 
 the principles of conduct ? I am a Benthamite, a benevolist, 
 as a logician but the moment I leave the closet for the world, 
 I lay aside speculation for others, and act for myself." 
 
 " You are, at least, more frank than prudent in these con- 
 fessions." 
 
 " There you are wrong. It is by affecting to be worse than 
 we are that we become popular and we get credit for being 
 both honest and practical fellows. My uncle's mistake is to be 
 a hypocrite in words : it rarely answers. Be frank in words, 
 and nobody will suspect hypocrisy in your designs." 
 
 Maltravers gazed hard at Ferrers something revolted and
 
 2l6 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 displeased his high-wrought Platonismin the easy wisdom of his 
 old friend. But he felt, almost for the first time, that Ferrers 
 was a man to get on in this world and he sighed ; I hope it 
 was for the world's sake ! 
 
 After a short conversation on indifferent matters, Cleveland 
 was announced ; and Ferrers, who could make nothing out of 
 Cleveland, soon withdrew. Ferrers was now becoming an 
 economist in his time. 
 
 " My dear Maltravers," said Cleveland, when they were 
 alone, " I am so glad to see you ; for, in the first place, I rejoice 
 to find you are extending your career of usefulness." 
 
 " Usefulness ah, let me think so ! Life is so uncertain and 
 so short, that we cannot too soon bring the little it can yield 
 into the great commonwealth of the Beautiful or the Honest ; 
 and both belong to and make up the Useful. But in politics, 
 and in a highly artificial state, what doubts beset us ! what 
 darkness surrounds ! If we connive at abuses, we juggle 
 with our own reason and integrity if we attack them, how 
 much, how fatally we may derange that solemn and conven- 
 tional ORDER which is the mainspring of the vast machine! 
 How little, too, can one man, whose talents may not be in that 
 coarse road in that mephitic atmosphere, be enabled to effect ! " 
 
 " He may effect a vast deal even without eloquence or la- 
 bor : he may effect a vast deal, if he can set one example, 
 amidst a crowd of selfish aspirants and heated fanatics, of an 
 honest and dispassionate man. He may effect more, if he may 
 serve among the representatives of that hitherto unrepresented 
 thing Literature ; if he redeem, by an ambition above place 
 and emolument, the character for subservience that court-poets 
 have obtained for letters if he may prove that speculative 
 knowledge is not disjoined from the practical world, and main- 
 tain the dignity of disinterestedness that should belong to learn- 
 ing. But the end of a scientific morality is not to serve others 
 only, but also to perfect and accomplish our individual selves ; 
 our own souls are a solemn trust to our own lives. You are 
 about to add to your experience of human motives and active 
 men ; and whatever additional wisdom you acquire will become 
 equally evident and equally useful, no matter whether it be com- 
 municated through action or in books. Enough of this, my dear 
 Ernest. I have come to dine with you, and make you ac- 
 company me to-night to a house where you will be welcome, and 
 I think interested. Nay, no excuses. I have promised Lord 
 Latimer that he shall make your acquaintance, and he is one of 
 the most eminent men with whom political life will connect you."
 
 ERNEST MALTR AVERS. 217 
 
 And to this change of habits, from the closet to the senate, 
 had Maltravers been induced by a state of health, which, with 
 most men, would have been an excuse for indolence. Indolent 
 he could not be ; he had truly said to Ferrers, that "action was 
 the condition of his being." If THOUGHT, with its fever and 
 aching tension, had been too severe a taskmaster on the nerves 
 and brain, the coarse and homely pursuit of political politics 
 would leave the imagination and intellect in repose, while it 
 would excite the hardier qualities and gifts, which animate with- 
 out exhausting. So, at least, hoped Maltravers. He remem- 
 bered the profound saying in one of his favorite German au- 
 thors, " that to keep the mind and body in perfect health, it is 
 necessary to mix habitually and betimes in the common affairs 
 of men." And the anonymous correspondent ; had her exhor- 
 tations any influence on his decision ? I know not. But 
 when Cleveland left him, Maltravers unlocked his desk, and re- 
 perused the last letter he had received from the Unknown. The 
 last letter ! yes, those epistles had now become frequent. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 * * * * " Le brillant de votre esprit donne un si grand eclat a votre teint 
 et a vos yeux, que quoiqu'il semble que 1'esprit ne doit toucher que les 
 oreilles, il est pourtant certain que la votre eblouit les yeux." Leltres de 
 
 Madame Stfvigne'.* 
 
 AT Lord Latimer's house were assembled some hundreds of 
 those persons who are rarely found together in London society; 
 for business, politics, and literature draft off the most eminent 
 men, and usually leave to houses that receive the world little 
 better than indolent rank or ostentatious wealth. Even the 
 young men of pleasure turn up their noses at parties nowa- 
 days, and find society a bore. But there are some dozen or 
 two of houses, the owners of which are both apart from and 
 above the fashion, in which a foreigner may see, collected under 
 the same roof, many of the most remarkable men of busy, 
 thoughtful, majestic England. Lord Latimer himself had been 
 a cabinet minister. He retired from public life on pretence of 
 ill-health ; but, in reality, because its anxious bustle was not 
 congenial to a gentle and accomplished, but somewhat feeble, 
 mind. With a high reputation and an excellent cook, he en- 
 joyed a great popularity, both with his own party and the world 
 
 * The brilliancy of your wit gives so great a lustre to your complexion and your eyes 
 that, though it seems that wit should only reach the ears, it is altogether certain that your 
 dazzles the eyes.
 
 2l8 ERNEST MALTR AVERS. 
 
 in general ; and he was the centre of a small but distinguished 
 circle of acquaintances, who drank Latimer's wine, and quoted 
 Latimer's sayings, and liked Latimer much better because, not 
 being author or minister, he was not in their way. 
 
 Lord Latimer received Maltravers with marked courtesy, and 
 even deference, and invited him to join his own whist-table, which 
 was one of the highest compliments his lordship could pay to 
 his intellect. But when his guest refused the preferred honor, 
 the Earl turned him over to the Countess, as having become the 
 property of the womankind ; and was soon immersed in his 
 cspirations for the odd trick. 
 
 While Maltravers was conversing with Lady Latimer, he hap- 
 pened to raise his eyes, and saw opposite to him a young lady 
 of such remarkable beauty that he could scarcely refrain from 
 an admiring exclamation. " And who," he asked, recovering 
 himself, " is that lady ? It is strange that even I, who go so little 
 into the world, should be compelled to inquire the name of one 
 whose beauty must already have made her celebrated." 
 
 "Oh, Lady Florence Lascelles she came out last year. She 
 isj, indeed, most brilliant, yet more so in mind and accomplish- 
 ments than face. I must be allowed to introduce you." 
 
 At this offer, a strange shyness, and as it were reluctant distrust, 
 seized Maltravers a kind of presentiment of danger and evil. 
 Ke drew back, and would have made some excuse, but Lady 
 Latimerdidnot heed his embarrassment, and was already by the 
 sr.de of Lady Florence Lascelles. A moment more, and beckoning 
 to Maltravers, the Countess presented him to the lady. As he 
 bowed and seated himself beside his new acquaintance, he could 
 not Out observe that her cheeks were suffused with the most lively 
 blushes, and that she received him with a confusion not common 
 even in ladies just brought out, and just introduced to "a lion." 
 He was rather puzzled than flattered by these tokens of an 
 embarrassment somewhat akin to his own ; and the first few 
 sentences of their conversation passed off with a certain awkward- 
 ness and reserve. At this moment, to the surprise, perhaps to 
 the relief, of Ernest, they were joined by Lumley Ferrers. 
 
 "Ah, Lady Florence, I kiss your hands I am charmed to 
 find you acquainted with my friend Maltravers." 
 
 " And Mr. Ferrers, what makes him so late to-night ? " asked the 
 fair Florence, with a sudden ease which rather startled Maltravers. 
 
 "A dull dinner, voila tout! I have no other excuse." And 
 Ferrers, sliding into a vacant chair on the other side of Lady 
 Florence, conversed volubly and unceasingly, as if seeking to 
 monopolize her attention.
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 21$ 
 
 Ernest had not been so much captivated with the manner of 
 Florence as he had been struck with her beauty, and now seeing 
 her apparently engaged with another, he rose and quietly moved 
 away. He was soon one of a knot of men who were conversing 
 on the absorbing topics of the day ; and as by degrees the exciting 
 subject brought out his natural eloquence and masculine sense, 
 the talkers became listeners, the knot widened into a circle, and 
 he himself was unconsciously the object of general attention 
 and respect. 
 
 " And what think you of Mr. Maltravers ? " asked Ferrers 
 carelessly ; "does he keep up your expectations ? " 
 
 Lady Florence had sunk into a reverie, and Ferrers repeated 
 his question. 
 
 "He is younger than I imagined him, and and " 
 
 " Handsomer, I suppose, you mean." 
 
 " No ! calmer and less animated." 
 
 "He seems animated enough now," said Ferrers ; "but you/ 
 ladylike conversation failed in striking the Promethean spark. 
 
 ' Lay that flattering unction to your soul.' " 
 
 "Ah, you are right he must have thought me very " 
 
 "Beautiful, no doubt." 
 
 " Beautiful ! I hate the word, Lumley. I wish I were not 
 handsome I might then get some credit for my intellect." 
 
 " Humph ! " said Ferrers, significantly. 
 
 "Oh, you don't think so, skeptic," said Florence, shaking her 
 head with a slight laugh and an altered manner. 
 
 " Does it matter what / think," said Ferrers, with an attempted 
 touch at the sentimental, "when Lord This, and Lord That, and 
 Mr. So-and-so, and Count What-d'ye-call-him, are all making 
 their way to you, to dispossess me of my envied monopoly?" 
 
 While Ferrers spoke, several of the scattered loungers grouped 
 around Florence, and the conversation of which she was the 
 cynosure, became animated and gay. Oh, how brilliant she was, 
 that peerless Florence ! with what petulant and sparkling grace 
 came wit and wisdom, and even genius, from those ruby lips ! 
 Even the assured Ferrers felt his subtle intellect as dull and 
 coarse to hers, and shrank with a reluctant apprehension from 
 the arrows of her careless and prodigal repartees. For there was 
 a scorn in the nature of Florence Lascelles which made her wit 
 pain more frequently than it pleased. Educated even to learn- 
 ing courageous even to a want of feminacy she delighted to 
 sport with ignorance and pretension, even in the highest places ; 
 and the laugh that she excited was like lightning, no one could 
 divine where next it might fall.-
 
 220 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 But Florence, though dreaded and unloved, was yet courted, 
 flattered, and the rage. For this there were two reasons : first, 
 she was a coquette, and secondly, she was an heiress. 
 
 Thus the talkers in the room were divided into two principal 
 groups, over one of which Maltravers may have said to have 
 presided ; over the other, Florence. As the former broke up, 
 Ernest was joined by Cleveland. 
 
 " My dear cousin," said Florence, suddenly, and in a whisper, 
 as she turned to Lumley, " your friend is speaking of me I see 
 it. Go, I implore you. and let me know what he says ! " 
 
 " The commission is not flattering," said Ferrers, almost 
 sullenly. 
 
 " Nay, a commission to gratify a woman's curiosity is ever 
 one of the most flattering embassies with which we can invest 
 an able negotiator." 
 
 "Well, I must do your bidding, though I disown the favor." 
 Ferrers moved away and joined Cleveland and Maltravers. 
 
 " She is indeed beautiful ; so perfect a contour I never be- 
 held ; she is the only woman I ever saw in whom the aquiline 
 features seem more classical than even the Greek." 
 
 " So, that is your opinion of my fair cousin ! " cried Ferrers ; 
 " you are caught." 
 
 " I wish he were," said Cleveland. " Ernest is now old 
 enough to settle, and there is not a more dazzling prize in Eng- 
 land rich, high-born, lovely, and accomplished." 
 
 " And what say you ? " asked Lumley, almost impatiently to 
 Maltravers. 
 
 " That I never saw one whom I admire more or could love 
 less," replied Ernest, as he quitted the rooms. 
 
 Ferrers looked after him, and muttered to himself ; he then 
 rejoined Florence, who presently rose to depart, and, taking 
 Lumley's arm, said, "Well, I see my father is looking round for 
 me and so for once I will forestall him. Come, Lumley, let 
 us join him ; I know he wants to see you." 
 
 " Well," said Florence, blushing deeply, and almost breath- 
 less, as they crossed the now half -empty apartments. 
 
 " Well, my cousin ?" 
 
 " You provoke me well, then, what said your friend ? " 
 
 " That you deserved your reputation of beauty, but that you 
 were not his style. Maltravers is in love, you know ?" 
 
 " In love ! " 
 
 "Yes, a pretty Frenchwoman ! quite romantic an attach- 
 ment of some years' standing." 
 
 Florence turned away her face, and said no more.
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVKRS. 221 
 
 "That's a good fellow, Lumley," said Lord Saxingham ; "Flor- 
 ence is never more welcome to my eyes than at half-past 
 one o'clock A. M., when I associate her with thoughts of my 
 natural rest and my unfortunate carriage-horses. By the bye, 
 I wish you would dine with me next Saturday." 
 
 "Saturday ; unfortunately, I am engaged to my uncle." 
 
 " Oh ! he has behaved handsomely to you ?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Mrs. Templeton pretty well ? " 
 
 " I fancy so." 
 
 "As ladies wish to be, etc ? " whispered his lordship. 
 
 " No, thank Heaven ! " 
 
 " Well, if the old man could but make you his heir, we might 
 think twice about the title." 
 
 " My dear lord, stop ; one favor write me a line to hint 
 that delicately." 
 
 " No no letters ; letters always get into the papers." 
 
 " But cautiously worded no danger of publication, on my 
 honor." 
 
 " I'll think of it. Good-night." 
 
 BOOK VII. 
 
 Xpay of apiorov fj.lv avrav Treipaodat, yivsoQai, pj fibvov 6e avrbv vofii^eiv apiarov 
 6vvaa6ai yeveaOai, etc. PLOTIN. EN. 11. lib. ix. c. 9. 
 
 Every man should strive to be as good as possible, but not suppose himself 
 to be the only thing that is good. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 " Deceit is the strong but subtile chain which runs through all the mem- 
 bers of a society and links them together ; trick or be tricked, is the alter- 
 native ; 'tis the way of the world, and without it intercourse would drop." 
 Anonymous Writer of 1722. 
 
 " A lovely child she was, of looks serene, 
 And motions which o'er things indifferent shed 
 The grace and gentleness from whence they came." 
 
 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. 
 
 " His years but young, but his experience old. " SHAKESPEARE. 
 " He after honor hunts, I after love." Ibid. 
 
 LUMLEY FERRERS was one of the few men in the world who 
 act upon a profound, deliberate, and organized system he had
 
 222 ERNEST MALTR AVERS. 
 
 done so even from a boy. When he was twenty-one, he had 
 said to himself, " Youth is the season for enjoyment ; the 
 triumphs of manhood, the wealth of age, do not compensate for 
 a youth spent in unpleasurable toils." Agreeably to this maxim, 
 he had resolved not to adopt any profession ; and being fond 
 of travel, and of a restless temper, he had indulged abroad in 
 all the gratifications that his moderate income could afford him : 
 that income went farther on the Continent than at home, 
 which was another reason for the prolongation of his travels. 
 Now, when the whims and passions of youth were sated ; and, 
 ripened by a consummate and various knowledge of mankind, 
 his harder capacities of mind became developed and centred 
 into such ambition as it was his nature to conceive, he acted no 
 less upon a regular and methodical plan of conduct, which he 
 carried into details. He had little or nothing within himself to 
 cross his cold theories by contradictory practice ; for he was 
 curbed by no principles, and regulated but by few tastes : and 
 our tastes are often checks as powerful as our principles. Look- 
 ing round the English world, Ferrers saw that at his age and 
 with an equivocal position, and no chances to throw away, it 
 was necessary that he should cast off all attributes of the char- 
 acter of the wanderer and the garfon. 
 
 " There is nothing respectable in lodgings and a cab," said 
 Ferrers to himself that "self" was his grand confidant! 
 "nothing stationary. Such are the appliances of ahere-to-day- 
 gone-to-morrow kind of life. One never looks substantial 
 till one pays rates and taxes, and has a bill with one's 
 butcher ! " 
 
 Accordingly, without saying a word to anybody, Ferrers took 
 a long lease of a large house, in one of those quiet streets that 
 proclaim the owners do not wish to be made by fashionable 
 situations streets in which, if you have a large house, it is 
 supposed to be because you can afford one. He was very par- 
 ticular in its being a respectable street Great George Street, 
 Westminster, was the one he selected. 
 
 No frippery or baubles, common to the mansions of young 
 bachelors no buhl, and marquetrie, and Sevres china, and 
 cabinet pictures, distinguished the large, dingy drawing-rooms 
 of Lumley Ferrers. He bought all the old furniture a bargain 
 of the late tenant tea-colored chintz curtains, and chairs and 
 sofas that were venerable and solemn with the accumulated 
 dust of twenty-five years. The only things about which he was 
 particular were a very long din ing-table that would hold four- 
 and-twenty, and a new mahogany sideboard. Somebody asked
 
 ERNEST MAI.TRAVERS. 223 
 
 him why he cared about such articles. " I don't know," said 
 he, "but! observe all respectable family-men do there must 
 ^e something in it I shall discover the secret by-and-by." 
 
 In this house did Mr. Ferrers ensconce himself with two 
 middle-aged maid-servants, and a man out of livery, whom he 
 chose from a multitude of candidates because the man looked 
 especially well fed. 
 
 Having thus settled himself, and told every one that the lease 
 of his house was for sixty-three years, Lumley Ferrers made a 
 little calculation of his probable expenditure, which he found, 
 with good management, might amount to about one-fourth 
 more than his income. 
 
 " I shall take the surplus out of my capital," said he, " and 
 try the experiment for five years ; if it don't do, and pay me 
 profitably, why then either men are not to be lived upon, or 
 Lumley Ferrers is a much duller dog than he thinks himself ! " 
 
 Mr. Ferrers had deeply studied the character of his uncle, 
 as a prudent speculator studies the qualities of a mine in which 
 he means to invest his capital, and much of his present pro- 
 ceedings was intended to act upon the uncle as well as upon the 
 world. He saw that the more he could obtain for himself, not 
 a noisy, social, fashionable reputation, but a good, sober, sub- 
 stantial one, the more highly Mr. Templeton would consider 
 him, and the more likely he was to be made his uncle's heir. 
 that is, provided Mrs. Templeton did not supersede the nepotal 
 parasite by indigenous olive-branches. This last apprehension 
 died away as time passed and no signs of fertility appeared. 
 And, accordingly, Ferrers thought he might prudently hazard 
 more upon the game he now ventured to rely. There was one 
 thing, however, that greatly disturbed his peace ; Mr. Temple- 
 ton, though harsh and austere in his manner to his wife, was 
 evidently attached to her ; and, above all, he cherished the 
 fondest affection for his daughter-in-law. He was anxious for 
 her health, her education, her little childish enjoyments, as if 
 he had been not only her parent but a ven r doting one. He 
 could not bear her to be crossed or thwarted. Mr. Templeton, 
 who had never spoiled anything before, not even an old pen 
 (so careful, and calculating, and methodical was he), did his 
 best to spoil this beautiful child, whom he could not even have 
 the vain luxury of thinking he had produced to the admiring 
 world. Softiy, exquisitely lovely was that little girl ; and every 
 day she increased in the charm of her person, and in the caress- 
 ing fascination of her childish \rays. Her temper was so sweet 
 and docile that fondness and petting, however injudiciously
 
 224 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 exhibited, only seemed yet more to bring out the colors of a 
 grateful and tender nature. Perhaps the measured kindness of 
 more reserved affection might have been the true way of spoil- 
 ing one whose instincts were all for exactingand returning love. 
 She was a plant that suns less warm might have nipped and 
 chilled. But beneath an uncapricious and unclouded sunshine 
 she sprang up in a luxurious bloom of heart and sweetness of 
 disposition. 
 
 Every one, even those who did not generally like children, de- 
 lighted in this charming creature, excepting only Mr. Lurnley 
 Ferrers. But that gentleman, less mild than Pope's Narcissa, 
 " To make a wash, had gladly stewed the child ! " 
 
 He had seen how very common it is for a rich man, married 
 late in life, to leave everything to a young widow and her chil- 
 dren by her former marriage, when once attached to the latter; 
 and he sensibly felt that he himself had but a slight hold over 
 Templeton by the chain of the affections. He resolved, there- 
 fore, as much as possible, to alienate his uncle from his young 
 wife ; trusting that, as the influence of the wife was weakened, 
 that of the child would be lessened also ; and to raise in Temple- 
 ton's vanity and ambition an ally that might supply to himself 
 the want of love. He pursued his twofold scheme with masterly 
 art and address. He first sought to secure the confidence and 
 regard of the melancholy and gentle mother ; and in this for 
 she was peculiarly unsuspicious and inexperienced, he obtained 
 signal and complete success. His frankness of manner, his def- 
 erential attention, the art with which he warded off from her the 
 spleen or ill-humor of Mr. Templeton, the cheerfulness that his 
 easy gayety threw over a very gloomy house, made the poor lady 
 hail his visits and trust in his friendship. Perhaps she was glad 
 of any interruption to tte-cl-ttes with a severe and ungenial hus- 
 band, who had no sympathy for the sorrows, of whatever nature 
 they might be, which preyed upon her, and who made it a point 
 of morality to find fault wherever he could. 
 
 The next step in Lumley's policy was to arm Templeton's 
 vanity against his wife, by constantly refreshing his conscious- 
 ness of the sacrifices he had made by marriage, and the certainty 
 that he would have attained all his wishes had he chosen more 
 prudently. By perpetually, but most judiciously, rubbing this 
 point, he, as it were, fixed the irritability into Templeton's con- 
 stitution, and it reacted on all his thoughts, aspiring or domes- 
 tic. Still, however, to Lumley's great surprise and resentment, 
 while Templeton cooled to his wife, he only warmed to her child-
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 22$ 
 
 Linnley had not calculated enough upon the thirst and craving 
 for affection in most human hearts ; and Templeton, though not 
 exactly an amiable man, had some excellent qualities ; if he had 
 less sensitively regarded the opinion of the world, he would 
 neither have contracted the vocabulary of cant, nor sickened 
 for a peerage ; both his affectation of saintship, and his gnawing 
 desire of rank, arose from an extraordinary and morbid defer- 
 ence to opinion, and a wish for worldly honors and respect, which 
 he felt that his mere talents could not secure to him. But he 
 was, at bottom, a kindly man charitable to the poor, consider- 
 ate to his servants, and had within him the want to love and 
 be loved, which is one of the desires wherewith the atoms of the 
 universe are cemented and harmonized. Had Mrs. Templeton 
 evinced love to //////, lie might hive defied all Lumley's diplo- 
 macy, been consoled for worldly disadvantages, and been a good 
 and even uxorious husband. But she evidently did not love 
 him, though anadmirable,p.atient, provident wife; and her daugh- 
 ter <//(/love him loved him as well even as she loved her mother; 
 and the hard worldling would not have accepted a kingdom as 
 the price of that little fountain of pure and ever-refreshing ten- 
 derness. Wise and penetrating as Lumley was, he never could 
 thoroughly understand this weakness, as he called .it ; for we 
 never know men entirely, unless we have complete sympathies 
 with men in, all their natural emotions ; and Nature had left the 
 workmanship of Lumley Ferrers unfinished and incomplete, by 
 denying him the possibility of caring for anything but himself 
 
 His plan for winning Templeton's esteem and deference was, 
 hopever, completely triumphant. He took care that nothing in 
 his menage should appear "extravagant;" all was sober, quiet, 
 and well-regulated. He declared that he had so managed as to 
 live within his income : and Templeton, receiving no hint for 
 money, nor aware that Ferrers had -on the Continent consumed 
 a considerable portion of his means, believed him. Ferrers gave 
 a great many . dinners, but he did not go on that foolish plan 
 which has been laid down by persons who pretend .to know life, 
 as a means of popularity he did not profess to give dinners 
 butter than other people. He knew that unless you are a very 
 rich or a, very great man, ; no folly is equal to that of thinking 
 that you soften the hearts of your friends by soups a la bisque, 
 and Johannisberg at a guinea a bottle. They all go away, say- 
 ing, . " What right has that d d fellow to give a better dinner than 
 we do? What horrid taste! What ridiculous presumption!" 
 
 No ; though Ferrers himself was a most scientific epicure, and 
 held the luxury of the palate at the highest possible price, h*
 
 226 ERNEST MALTR AVERS. 
 
 dieted his friends on what he termed "respectable fare." His 
 cook put plenty of flour into the oyster-sauce ; cod's head and 
 shoulders made his invariable fish ; and four entrees, without 
 flavor or pretence, were duly supplied by the pastrycook, and 
 carefully eschewed by the host. Neither did Mr. Ferrers affect 
 to bring about him gay wits and brilliant talkers. He confined 
 himself to men of substantial consideration, and generally took 
 care to be himself the cleverest person present ; while he turned 
 the conversation on serious matters crammed for the occasion 
 politics, stocks, commerce, and the criminal code. Pruning his 
 gayety, though he retained his frankness, he sought to be known 
 as a highly-informed, painstaking man, who would be sure to 
 rise. His connections, and a certain nameless charm about him, 
 consisting chiefly in a pleasant countenance, a bold yet winning 
 candor, and the absence of all hauteur or pretence, enabled him 
 to assemble round this plain table, which, if it gratified no taste, 
 wounded no self-love, a sufficient number of public men of rank, 
 and eminent men of business, to answer his purpose. The situa- 
 tion he had chosen, so near the Houses of Parliament, was con- 
 venient to politicians, and, by degrees, the large, dingy drawing- 
 rooms became a frequent resort for public men to talk over those 
 thousand underplots by which a party is served or attacked. 
 Thus, though not in Parliament himself, Ferrers became insen- 
 sibly associated with Parliament men and things ; and the min- 
 isterial party, whose politics he espoused, praised him highly, 
 made use of him, and meant, some day or other, to do something 
 for him. 
 
 While the career of this able and unprincipled man thus 
 opened and of course the opening was not made in a day 
 Ernest Maltravers was ascending, by a rough, thorny, and en- 
 cumbered path, to that eminence on which the monuments of 
 men are built. His success in public life was not brilliant nor 
 sudden. For though he had eloquence and knowledge, he dis- 
 dained all oratorical devices ; and though he had passion and 
 energy, he could scarcely be called a warm partisan. He met 
 with much envy and many obstacles ; and the gracious and 
 buoyant sociality of temper and manners that had in early youth 
 made him the idol of his contemporaries at school or college 
 had long since faded away into a cold, settled, and lofty though 
 gentle reserve, which did not attract toward him the animal 
 spirits of the herd. But though he spoke seldom, and heard 
 many with half his powers more enthusiastically cheered, he did 
 not fail of commanding attention and respect ; and though no 
 darling pf cliques and parties, yet in that great body of the peo-
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 227 
 
 pie who were ever the audience and tribunal to which, in letters 
 or in politics, Maltravers appealed, there was silently growing 
 up, and spreading wide, a belief in his upright intentions, his 
 unpurchasable honor, and his correct and well-considered views. 
 He felt that his name was safely invested, though the return for 
 the capital was slow and moderate. He was contented to abide 
 his time. 
 
 Every day he grew more attached to that only true philosophy 
 which makes a man, as far as the world will permit, a world to 
 himself ; and from the height of a tranquil and serene self- 
 esteem he felt the sun shine above him when malignant clouds 
 spread sullen and uncongenial below. He did not despise or 
 wilfully shock opinion, neither did he fawn upon or flatter it. 
 Where he thought the world should be humored, he humored 
 where contemned, he contemned it. There are many cases in 
 which an honest, well-educated^ high-hearted individual is a 
 much better judge than the multitude of what is right and what 
 is wrong ; and in these matters he is not worth three straws if 
 he surfer the multitude to bully or coax him out of his judgment. 
 The Public, if you indulge it, is a most damnable gossip, thrust- 
 ing its nose into people's concerns, where it has no right to make 
 or meddle ; and in those things where the Public is impertinent, 
 Maltravers scorned and resisted its interference as haughtily as 
 he would the interference of any insolent member of the inso- 
 lent whole. It was this mixture of deep love and profound re- 
 spect for the eternal PEOPLE, and of calm, passionless disdain 
 forthat capricious charlatan, the momentary PUBLIC, which made 
 Ernest Maltravers an original and solitary thinker ; and an actor, 
 in reality modest and benevolent, in appearance arrogant and 
 unsocial. "Pauperism, in contradistinction to poverty," he was 
 wont to say, "is the dependence upon other people for existence, 
 not on our own exertions; there is a moral pauperism in the man 
 who is dependent on others for that support of moral life self- 
 respect." 
 
 Wrapped in this philosophy, he pursued his haughty and lone- 
 some way, and felt that in the deep heart of mankind, when 
 prejudices and envies should die off, there would be a sympathy 
 with his motives and his career. So far as his own health was 
 concerned, the experiment had answered. No mere drudgery 
 of business late hours and dull speeches can produce the 
 dread exhaustion which follows the efforts of the soul to mount 
 into the higher air of severe thought or intense imagination. 
 Those faculties which had been overstrained now lay fallow 
 and : the frame rapidly regained its tone. Of private comfort and
 
 228 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 inspiration Ernest knew but little. He gradually grew estranged 
 from his old friend Ferrers, as their habits became opposed. 
 Cleveland lived more and more in the country, and was too well 
 satisfied with his quondam pupil's course of life and progressive 
 reputation to trouble him with exhortation or advice. Gesarini 
 had grown a literary lion, whose genius was vehemently lauded 
 by all the reviews, on the same principle as that which induces 
 us to praise foreign singers or dead men, we must praise some- 
 thing, and we don't like to praise those who jostle ourselves. 
 Cesarini had therefore grown prodigiously conceited swore that 
 England was the only country for true merit, and no longer con- 
 cealed his jealous anger at the wider celebrity of Maltravers. 
 Ernest saw him squandering away his substance, and-prostitut- 
 ing his talents to drawing-room trifles, with a compassionate 
 sigh. He sought to warn him, but Cesarini listened to him with 
 such impatience that he resigned the, office of monitor. He wrote 
 to De Montaigne, who succeeded no better. Cesarini was bent 
 on playing his own game. And to one game, without a meta- 
 phor, he had at last come. His craving for excitement vented 
 itself at Hazard, and his remaining guineas melted slowly away. 
 
 But De Montaigne's letters to Maltravers consoled him for the 
 loss ot less congenial friends. The Frenchman was now an emi- 
 nent and celebrated man ; and his appreciation of Maltravers 
 was sweeter to the latter than .would have been the huzzas of 
 crowds. But, all this while,his vanity was pleased and his curiosity 
 roused by the continued correspondence of his unseen Egeria. 
 That correspondence (if so it may be called, being allon one side) 
 had now gone on for a considerable time, and he was still wholly 
 unable to discover the author ; its tone had. of late altered it had 
 .become more sad and subdued it spoke of the hollowness as well 
 as the rewards of fame ; and, with a touch of true womanly sen- 
 timent, often hinted: more, at the rapture of soothing dejection 
 than of sharing triumph. In all these letters there was the un- 
 deniable evidence of high intellect and deep feeling: they ex- 
 cited a- strong and keen interest ,in Maltravers, yet the interest 
 was not that which made him want to discover, in order that he 
 might. love, the writer. They were for the mo^t part top full of 
 the irony and bitterness of a mans spirit, to fascinate one who 
 considered that gentleness was the essence of a woman's strength. 
 Temper spoke in them, no less than mind and heart, and it was 
 not the sort of temper which a man who loves women to be wo- 
 manly could admire. 
 
 "I hear you often spoken of" (ran one of these strange epis- 
 tles)^ "and I am almost equally angry whether fools presume to
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 229 
 
 praise or to blame you.. This miserable world we live in, how I 
 loathe and disdain it! yet I desire you to serve and to master 
 it! Weak contradiction, effeminate paradox! Oh! rather a thou- 
 sand times that you would fly from its mean temptations and poor 
 rewards! if the desert were your dwelling-place and you wished 
 one minister, I could renounce all wealth, flattery, repute, 
 womanhood to serve you. 
 
 ***** 
 
 " I once admired you for your genius. My disease has fast- 
 ened on me, and I now almost worship you for yourself. I have 
 seen you, Ernest Maltravers, >seen you often, and when you 
 never suspected that these eyes were on you. Now that I have 
 seen, I understand you better. We cannot judge men by their 
 books and deeds. Posterity can know nothing of the beings of 
 the past. A thousand books never written a thousand deeds 
 never done are in the eyes and lips of the few greater than the 
 herd. In that cold, abstracted gaze, that pale and haughty brow, 
 I read disdain of obstacles, which is worthy of one who is con- 
 fident of the goal. But my eyes fill with tears when I survey 
 you ! you are sad, you are alone ! If failures do not mortify 
 you, success does not elevate. Oh, Maltravers, I, woman as I 
 am, and living in a narrow circle, I, even I, know at last that 
 to have desires nobler, and ends more august, than others, is but 
 to surrender waking life to morbid and melancholy dreams. 
 
 * * * * * 
 
 " Go more into the world, Maltravers -go more into the world, 
 or quit it altogether. Your enemies must be met ; they accu- 
 mulate, they grow strong you are too tranquil, too slow in your 
 steps towards the prize which should be yours, to satisfy my im- 
 patience, to satisfy your friends. Be less refined in your ambi- 
 tion, that you may be more immediately useful. The feet of 
 clay, after all, are the swiftest in the race. Even Linnley Fer- 
 rers will outstrip you if you do not take heed. 
 
 * * * * * 
 
 "Why do I run on thus ! you you love another, yet you are 
 not less the ideal that I could love if I ever loved any one. You 
 love and yet well no matter."
 
 230 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 "Well, but this is being only an official nobleman. No matter, 'tis still 
 being a nobleman, and that's his aim." Anonymous Writer of 1772. 
 
 " La musique est le seul cles talens qui jouissent de lui-meme; tous les autres 
 veulent des temoins."* MARMONTEL. 
 
 " Thus the slow ox would gaudy trappings claim." HORACE. 
 
 MR. TEMPLETON had not obtained his peerage, and, though 
 he had met with no direct refusal, nor made even a direct ap- 
 plication to headquarters, he was growing sullen. He had great 
 parliamentary influence^not close-borough, illegitimate influence, 
 but very proper orthodox influence of character, wealth, and so 
 forth. He could return one member at least for a city he could 
 almost return one member for a county, and in three boroughs 
 any activity on his part could turn the scale in a close contest. 
 The ministers were strong, but still they could not afford to lose 
 supporters hitherto zealous the example of desertion is con- 
 tagious. In the town which Templeton had formerly repre- 
 sented, and which he now almost commanded, a vacancy sud- 
 denly occurred a candidate started on the opposition side and 
 commenced a canvass; to the astonishment and panic of the Sec- 
 retary of the Treasury, Templeton put forward no one, and his 
 interest remained dormant. Lord Saxingham hurried to Lumley. 
 
 " My dear fellow, what is this ? what can your uncle be about? 
 We shall lose this place one of our strongholds. Bets run even." 
 
 "Why, you see, you have all behaved very ill to my uncle I 
 am really sorry for it, but I can do nothing." 
 
 "What, this confounded peerage ! Will that content him and 
 nothing short of it?" 
 
 "Nothing." 
 
 "He must have it, by Jove '?" 
 
 " And even that may come too late." 
 
 " Ha ! do you think so ? " 
 
 "Will you leave the matter to me?" 
 
 "Certainly you are a monstrous, clever fellow, and we all 
 esteem you." 
 
 "Sit down and write as I dictate, my dear lord." 
 
 "Well," said Lord Saxingham, seating himself at Lumley's 
 enormous writing-table "well, go on." 
 
 " My dear Afr. Templeton " 
 
 "Too familiar," said Lord Saxingham. 
 
 * Music is the sole talent which gives pleasure of ilself ; all the others require witnesses.
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 33! 
 
 "Not a bit ; go on." 
 
 " My dear Mr. Templeton; 
 
 " We are anxious to secure your parliamentary influence in 
 
 C to the proper quarter, namely to your own family, as the 
 
 best defenders of the administration, which you honor by your sup- 
 port. We wish signally, at the same time, to express our confidence 
 in your principles, and our gratitude for your countenance." 
 
 " D d sour countenance ! " muttered Lord Saxingham. 
 
 "Accordingly," continued Ferrers, "as one whose connection 
 with you permits the liberty, allow me to request that you will suffer 
 our joint relation, Mr. Ferrers, tobeputinto immediate nomination." 
 
 Lord Saxingham threw down the pen and laughed for two 
 minutes without ceasing. " Capital, Lumley, capital ! Very 
 odd I did not think of it before." 
 
 " Each man for himself, and God for us all," returned Lumley, 
 gravely : "pray go on, my dear lord." 
 
 " We are sure you could not have a representative that would 
 more faithfully reflect your own opinions and our interests. One 
 word more. A creation of peers will probably take place in the 
 spring, among which I am sure your name would be to his Majesty 
 a gratifying addition; the title will of course be secured to your 
 sons and, failing the latter, to your nephew. 
 
 " With great regard and respect, 
 " Truly yours, 
 
 "SAXINGHAM.'' 
 
 "There, inscribe that. 'Private and confidential,' and send it 
 express to my uncle's villa." 
 
 "It shall be done, my dear Lumley and this contents me as 
 much as it does you. You are really a man to do us credit. 
 You think it will be arranged?" 
 
 " No doubt of it." 
 
 " Well, good-day. Lumley, come to me when all is settled : 
 Florence is always glad to see you ; she says no one amuses her 
 more. And I am sure that is rare praise, for she is a strange 
 girl, quite a Timon in petticoats." 
 
 Away went Lord Saxingham. 
 
 " Florence glad to see me ! " said Lumley, throwing his hands 
 behind him and striding to and fro the room " Scheme the 
 Second begins to smile upon me behind the advancing shadow 
 of Scheme One. If I can but succeed in keeping away other 
 suitors from my fair cousin until I am in a condition to propose 
 myself, why I may carry off the greatest match of the three 
 kingdoms. Courage, mon brave Ferrers, courage ! "
 
 232 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 It was late that evening when Ferrers arrived at his uncle's 
 villa. He found Mrs. Templeton in the drawing-room seated 
 at the piano. He entered gently; she did not hear him, and 
 continued at the instrument. Her voice was so sweet and rich, 
 her taste so pure, that Ferrers, who was a good judge .of music, 
 stood in delighted surprise. Often as-, he had been a visitor; 
 even an inmate, at the house, he had never before heard Mrs. 
 Templeton play any but sacred airs, and this was one of the 
 popular songs of sentiment. He perceived that her feeling at 
 last overpowered her .voice, .and she paused abruptly, and, turn- 
 ing around, her face was so eloquent of emotion, that Ferrers 
 was forcibly struck by its expression. . He was not a man apt 
 to feel curiosity for anything not immediately concerning him- 
 self ; but he did feel curious concerning this melancholy and 
 beautiful woman. There was in her usual aspect that inex- 
 pressible look of profound resignation 1 , which betokens a lasting 
 remembrance of a bitter past; a prematurely blighted heart 
 spoke in her eyes, her -smile, her languid and joyless step. But 
 she performed the routine of her quiet duties with a calm and 
 conscientious regularity which showed that grief rather depressed 
 than disturbed her thoughts. If her burden was heavy, custom 
 seemed to have reconciled her to bear it without repining ; and 
 the emotion which Ferrers now traced in her soft and harmonious 
 features was of a nature he had only once witnessed before 
 viz., on the first night he had seen her, when poetry, which is 
 the key of memory, had evidently opened a chamber haunted 
 by mournful and troubled ghosts. 
 
 "Ah! dear madam," said Ferrers, advancing, as he found 
 himself discovered, "I trust I do not .disturb you. My' visit is 
 unseasonable ; but my uncle where is he?" 
 
 "He has been in town all the morning; he said he should 
 dine out, and I now expect him every minute." 
 
 "You have been endeavoring to charm away the sense of his 
 absence. Dare I ask you to continue 1 to play? It is seldom 
 that I hear a voice so sweet, and skill so . consummated You 
 must have been instructed by the best. Italian masters," 
 
 " No," said Mrs. Templeton, with a very slight color in her 
 delicate cheek "I learned young, and of one who loved music 
 and felt it ; but who .was not a foreigner." 
 
 "Will you sing me that song again ? you give the '"words a 
 beauty I never before discovered in them ; yet they (as well as 
 the music itself) are by my poor friend whom Mr. Templeton 
 does not like Maltravers." 
 
 "Are they his also ? "/said Mrs. Templeton, with emotion;
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 233 
 
 "it is strange I did not know it. I heard the air in the streets^ 
 and it struck me much. I inquired the name of the song and 
 bought it it is very strange ! " 
 
 " What is strange ? " 
 
 "That there is a kind of language in your- friend's music and 
 poetry which comes home to me, like words I have heard years 
 ago Is he young, this Mr. Maltravers?" 
 
 " Yes, he is still young." 
 
 "And, and" 
 
 Here Mrs. Templeton was interrupted by the entrance of her 
 husband. : He held the letter from Lord Saxingham it was 
 yet unopened. He seemed moody ; but that was common with 
 him. He coldly shook hands with Lumley, nodded to his wife, 
 found fault with the fire, and throwing himself into his easy- 
 chair, said, "So, Lumley, I think I was a fool for taking your 
 advice and hanging back about this new election. I see by 
 the evening papers that there is shortly to'be a creation of peers. 
 If I had shown activity on behalf of the government^ I might 
 have shamed them into gratitude." 
 
 "I think I was right, sir," replied Lumley ; " public men are 
 often alarmed into gratitude, seldom shamed into it. Firm 
 votes, like eld friends, are most valued when we think [we are 
 about to lose there ; but what is that letter in your hand?" 
 
 "Oh, some begging petition, I suppose." 
 
 "Pardon me it has an official look." 
 
 Templeton put on his spectacles, raised the letter, examined 
 the address and seal, hastily opened it, and broke into an excla- 
 mation very .much like an oath; when he had concluded 
 " Give me your hand, nephew the thing is settled I am to 
 have the peerage. You were right ha, ha! my dear wife, 
 you will be my lady, think of that aren't you glad?- why don't 
 your ladyship smile ? Where's the child -where is she, I say?" 
 
 "Gone to bed, sir," said Mrs. Templeton, half-frightened. 
 
 " Gone to bed ! I must go and kiss her. Gone to bed, has 
 :she? Light that candle, Lumley." [Here Mr.Templetonrang 
 the bell.] "John, "said he, as the servant entered, " John, 
 tell James to go the first thing in the morning to Baxter's, and 
 tell him not to paint my chariot till he hears from me. I must 
 go kiss the child I -must, really." 
 
 " D the child," mutte-red Lumley, as, after giving the candle 
 to his uncle, he turned to the fire ; "what the deuce has she got 
 to-do with the matter? Charming little girl yours, madam.' 
 how I love her] , My uncle dotes on her no wonder !" 
 
 ".fie is, indeed, very, very fond of her," said Mrs. Temple-
 
 334 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 ton, with a sigh that seemed to come from the depths of her 
 heart. 
 
 " Did he take a fancy to her before you were married ? " 
 
 "Yes, I believe oh yes, certainly." 
 
 " Her own father could not be more fond of her." 
 
 Mrs. Templeton made no answer, but lighted her candle, and, 
 wishing Lumley good-night, glided from the room. 
 
 " I wonder if my grave aunt and my grave uncle took a bite 
 at the apple before they bought the right of the tree. It looks 
 suspicious ; yet no, it can't be ; there is nothing of the seducer 
 or the seductive about the old fellow. It is not likely here 
 he comes." 
 
 In came Templeton, and his eyes were moist, and his brow 
 relaxed. 
 
 "And how is the little angel, sir?" asked Ferrers. 
 
 " She kissed me, though I woke her up ; children are usually 
 cross when wakened." 
 
 " Are they ? little dears ! Well, sir, so I was right, then ; may 
 I see the letter ? " 
 
 "There it is." 
 
 Ferrers drew his chair to the fire, and read his own produc- 
 tion with all the satisfaction of an anonymous author. 
 
 "How kind! how considerate ! how delicately put! a 
 double favor ! But perhaps, after all, it does not express your 
 wishes." 
 
 "In what way ? " 
 
 " Why, why, about myself." 
 
 "'You /is there anything about you in it ? I did not observe 
 that let me see." 
 
 " Uncles never selfish ! mem. for commonplace-book ! " 
 thought Ferrers. 
 
 The uncle knit his brows as he re-perused the letter. " This 
 won't do, Lumley," said he very shortly, when he had done. 
 
 " A seat in Parliament is too much honor for a poor nephew, 
 then, sir ! " said Lumley, very bitterly, though he did not feel 
 at all bitter; but it was the proper tone "I have done all in 
 my power to advance your ambition, and you will not even lend 
 a hand to forward me one step in my career. But forgive me, 
 .sir, I have no right to expect it." 
 
 "Lumley," replied Terapleton kindly, "you mistake me. I 
 think much more highly of you than I did much ; there is a 
 steadiness, a sobriety about you most praiseworthy, and you 
 
 shall go into Parliament if you wish it ; but not for C . I 
 
 will give my interest there to some other friend of the govern-
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 235 
 
 ment, and in return they can give you a treasury borough ! 
 That is the same thing to you." 
 
 Lumleywas agreeably surprised he pressed his uncle's hand 
 warmly, and thanked him cordially; Mr. Templeton proceeded 
 to explain to him that it was inconvenient and expensive sitting 
 for places where one's family was known, and Lumley fully 
 subscribed to all. 
 
 "As for the settlement of the peerage, that is all right," said 
 Templeton ; and then he sunk into a reverie, from which he broke 
 joyously "yes, that is all right. I have projects, objects this 
 may unite them all nothing can be better you will be the 
 next lord what I say, what .title shall we have.?" 
 
 "Oh, take a sounding one you have very little landed prop- 
 perty, I think?" 
 
 "Two thousand a year in shire, bought a. bargain." 
 
 "What's the name of the place?" 
 
 "Grubley." 
 
 "Lord Grubley! Baron Grubley of Grubley atrocious! 
 Who had the place before you ?" 
 
 "Bought it of Mr. Sheepshanks very old family." 
 
 "But surely some old Norman once had the place?" 
 
 "Norman, yes! Henry the Second gave it to his barber 
 Bertram Courval." 
 
 "That's it that's it Lord de Courval singular coinci- 
 dence ! descent from the old line. Heralds' College. soon settle 
 all. that. Lord de Courval ! nothing can sound better. There 
 mustibe a village or hamlet still called Courval about the property." 
 
 "I am afraid not. There is Coddle End ! " 
 
 "Coddle End ! Coddle End ! the very thing, sir the very 
 thing clear corruption from Courval ! Lord de Courval of 
 Courval! Superb! Ha! haL" 
 
 " Ha ! ha ! " laughed Templeton, and he had hardly laughed 
 before since he was thirty. 
 
 The relations sate long and conversed familiarly, Ferrers slept 
 at the villa, and his sleep was sound, for he thought little of 
 plans once formed and half-executed ; it was the hunt that kept 
 him awake, and he slept like a hound when the prey was down. 
 Not so Templeton, who did not close his eyes all night. "Yes, 
 yes," thought he, "I must get the fortune and the title in one 
 line, by a prudent management. Ferrers deserves what I mean 
 to do for him. Steady, good-natured, frank, and will get on 
 yes, yes, I see it all. Meanwhile I did well to prevent his stand- 
 ing for C ; might pick up gossip about Mrs. T., and other 
 
 things that might be unpleasant. Ah, I'm a shrewd fellow!"
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 " Lauzun. There, Marquis, there, I've done it. 
 Montcspan. Done it ! yes ! Nice doings ! " 
 
 The Ducluss de la Valltire. 
 
 LUMLEY hastened to strike while the iron was hot. The next 
 morning he went straight to the Treasury saw the managing 
 secretary, a clever, sharp man, who, like Ferrers, carried off 
 intrigue and manoeuvre by a blunt, careless, bluff manner. 
 
 Ferrers announced that he was to stand for the free, respect- 
 able, open city of C , with an electoral population of 2,500 
 
 a very showy place it was for a member in the old ante-reform 
 times, and was considered a thoroughly independent borough. 
 The secretary congratulated and complimented him. 
 
 "We have had losses lately in our elections among the larger 
 constituencies," said Lumley. 
 
 " We have indeed three towns lost in the last six months. 
 Members do die so very unseasonably." 
 
 "Is Lord Staunch yet provided for?" asked Lumley. Now 
 Lord Staunch was one of the popular show-fight great guns of 
 the administration not in office, but that most useful person to 
 all governments, an out-and-ont supporter upon the most inde- 
 pendent principles who was known to have refused place, and 
 to value himself on independence a man who helped the govern- 
 ment over the stile when it was seized with a temporary lameness, 
 and who carried "great weight with him in the country." Lord 
 Staunch had foolishly thrown up a close borough in order to 
 contest a large city, and had failed in the attempt. His failure 
 was everywhere cited as a proof of the growing unpopularity 
 of ministers. 
 
 "Is Lord Staunch yet provided for?" asked Lumley. 
 
 " Why, he must have his old seat Three-Oaks. Three-Oaks 
 is a nice, quiet little place : most respectable constituency all 
 Staunch's own family." 
 
 "Just the thing for him; yet, 'tis a pity he did not wait to 
 stand for C ; my uncle's interests would have secured him." 
 
 "Ay, I thought so the moment C was vacant. However, 
 
 it is too late now." 
 
 " It would be a great triumph if Lord Staunch could show that 
 a large constituency volunteered to elect him without expense." 
 
 "Without expense! Ah, yes, indeed! It would prove that 
 purity of election still exists that British institutions are stiU 
 upheld."
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 237 
 
 "It might be done, Mr. ." 
 
 " Why, I thought that you " 
 
 "Were to stand that is true and it will be difficult to 
 manage my uncle; but he loves me much you know I am his : 
 heir I believe I could do it; that is, if you think it would be 
 a very great advantage to the party, and a very great service to 
 the government." 
 
 " Why, Mr. Ferrers, it would indeed be both." 
 
 " And in that case I could have Three-Oaks." 
 
 " I see exactly so ; but to give up so respectable a seat 
 really it is a sacrifice." 
 
 " Say no more, it shall be done. A deputation shall wait on 
 Lord Staunch directly. I will see my uncle, and a despatch 
 
 shall be sent down to G- to-night ; at least, I hope so. I 
 
 must not be too confident. My uncle is an old man, nobody 
 but myself can manage him ; I'll go this instant." 
 
 "You may be sure your kindness will be duly appreciated." 
 
 Lumley shook hands cordially with the secretary and retired. 
 The secretary was not " humbugged," nor did Lumley expect 
 he should be. But the secretary noted this of Lumley Ferrers 
 (and that gentleman's object was gained), that Lumley Ferrers 
 was a man who looked out for office, and if he did tolerably 
 well in Parliament, that Lumley Ferrers was a man who ought to 
 be pushed. 
 
 Very shortly afterwards the Gazette announced the election 
 
 of Lord Staunch for C , after a sharp but decisive contest. 
 
 The ministerial journals rang with exulting paeans; the oppo- 
 sition ones called the electors of C all manner of hard names, 
 
 and declared that Mr. Stout, Lord Staunch's opponent, would 
 petition; which he never did. In the midst of the hubbub Mr. 
 Lumley Ferrers quietly and unobservedly crept into the repre- 
 sentation of Three-Oaks. 
 
 On the night of his election he went to Lord Saxingham's; 
 but what there happened deserves another chapter.
 
 238 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 " Je connois des princes du sang, des princes etrangers, des grands sig- 
 neurs, des ministres d'etat, des magistrats, et des philosophes qui fileroierit 
 pour 1'amour de vous. En pouvez-vous demander d'avantage?"* Letlres 
 de Madame de SJvigne". 
 
 " Lindore. I 1 believe it will choke me. I'm in love. * * * 
 
 Now hold your tongue. Hold your tongue, I say. 
 " Dalner. You in love! Ha! ha! 
 " Lind. There, he laughs. 
 " Dal. No ; I am really sorry for you." German Play {False Delicacy). 
 
 * * * "What is here? 
 
 Gold." SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 , 
 
 IT happened that that evening Maltravers had, for the first 
 time, accepted one of many invitations with which Lord Sax- 
 ingham had honored him. His lordship and Maltravers were 
 of different political parties, nor were they in other respects 
 adapted to each other. Lord Saxingham was a clever man in 
 his way, but worldly even to a proverb among worldly people. 
 That "man was born to walk erect and look upon the stars," 
 is an eloquent fallacy that Lord Saxingham might suffice to dis- 
 prove. He seemed born to walk with a stoop ; and if he ever looked 
 upon any stars, they were those which go with a garter. Though 
 of celebrated and historical ancestry, great rank, and some per- 
 sonal reputation, he had all the ambition of & parvenu. He had 
 a strong regard for office; not so much from the sublime affection 
 for that sublime thing power over the destinies of a glorious 
 nation, as because it added to that vulgar thing importance 
 in his own set. He looked on his cabinet uniform as a beadle 
 looks on his gold lace. He also liked patronage, secured good 
 things to distant connections got on his family to the remotest 
 degree of relationship; in short, he was of the earth, earthy. He 
 did not comprehend Maltravers ; and Maltravers, who every day 
 grew prouder and prouder, despised him. Still, Lord Saxingham 
 was told Maltravers was a rising man, and he thought it well to 
 be civil to rising men, of whatever party ; besides, his vanity 
 was flattered by having men who are talked of in his train. He 
 was too busy and too great a personage to think Maltravers 
 could be other than sincere when he declared himself, in his 
 notes, " very sorry," or "much concerned," to forego the honor 
 of dining with Lord Saxingham on the, etc., etc.; and therefore 
 continued his invitations till Maltravers, from that fatality 
 
 * I know princes of the blood, foreign princes, great lords, ministers of state, magistrates, 
 and philosophers who would even spin for love of you. What can you ask more ?
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 239 
 
 which undoubtedly regulates and controls us, at last accepted 
 the proffered distinction. 
 
 He arrived late most of the guests were assembled; and, 
 after exchanging a few words with his host, Ernest fell back 
 into the general group, and found himself in the immediate 
 neighborhood of Lady Florence Lascelles. - This lady had 
 never much pleased Maltravers, for he was not fond of mascu- 
 line or coquettish heroines, and Lady Florence seemed to him 
 to merit both epithets; therefore, though he had met her often 
 since the first day he had been introduced to her, he had usually 
 contented himself with a distant bow or a passing salutation. 
 But now, as he turned round and saw her she was, for a 
 miracle, sitting alone and in her most dazzling and noble coun- 
 tenance there was so evident an appearance of ill health that 
 he was struck and touched by it. In fact, beautiful as she was, 
 both in face and form, there was something in the eye and the 
 bloom of Lady Florence which a skilful physician would have 
 seen with prophetic pain. And, whenever occasional illness 
 paled the roses of the cheek, and sobered the play of the lips, 
 even an ordinary observer would have thought of the old com- 
 monplace proverb " that the brightest beauty has the briefest 
 life." It was some sentiment of this kind, perhaps, that now 
 awakened the sympathy of Maltravers. He addressed her with 
 more marked courtesy than usual, and took a seat by her side. 
 
 " You have been to the House, I suppose, Mr. Maltravers ? " 
 said Lady Florence. 
 
 "Yes, for a short time; it is not one of our field-nights no 
 division was expected; and by this time, I dare say, the House 
 has been counted out." 
 
 "Do you like the life?" 
 
 " It has excitement," said Maltravers, evasively. 
 
 " And the excitement is of a noble character." 
 
 " Scarcely so, I fear it is so made up of mean and malig- 
 nant motives, there is in it so much jealousy of our friends, 
 so much unfairness to our enemies; such readiness to attribute 
 to others the basest objects, such willingness to avail ourselves 
 of the poorest stratagems I The ends may be great, but the 
 means are very ambiguous." 
 
 " I knewjw* would feel this," exclaimed Lady Florence, with 
 a heightened color. 
 
 " Did you ? "said Maltravers, rather interested as welPas sur- 
 prised. " I scarcely imagined it possible that you would deign 
 to divine secrets so insignificant." 
 
 "You did not do me justice, then," returned Lady Florence,
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVEfefc. 
 
 with an arch yet half-painful smile; " for but I was about to 
 be impertinent." 
 
 " Nay, say on." 
 
 " For then I do not imagine you to be one apt to do in- 
 justice to yourself." 
 
 " Oh ! you consider me presumptuous and arrogant; but that 
 is common report, and you do right, perhaps, to believe it." 
 
 " Was there ever any one unconscious of his own merit?" 
 asked Lady Florence proudly. "They who distrust themselves 
 have good reason for it." 
 
 " You seek to cure the wound you inflicted," returned Mal- 
 travers, smiling. 
 
 " No; what I said was an apology for myself, as well as for 
 you. You need no words to 'vindicate you; you are a man, 
 
 "But what triumphs that man can achieve bring so immediate, 
 so palpable a reward as- those won" by a woman, beautiful and 
 admired who finds every room an empire, and every class her 
 subjects ?" 
 "It is a despicable realm." ' 
 
 "What! to command to win to bow to your worship 
 the greatest, and the highest, and the sternest; to own slaves 
 in those whom men recognize as their lords ! Is such power 
 despicable ? If so, what power is to be envied ? " 
 
 Lady Florence turned quickly round to Maltravers, and fixed 
 on him her ktrge dark eyes, as if she would read into his very 
 heart. She turned away with a blush and slight frown " There 
 is mockery on your lip," said she. 
 
 Before Maltravers "could answer, dinner was announced, and 
 a foreign ambassador claimed the hand of Lady Florence. 
 Maltravers saw a young lady, with gold oats in her very light 
 hair, fall to his lot, and descended to the dining-room, thinking 
 more of Lady Florence Lascelles than he had ever done before. 
 
 He happened to sit nearly opposite the young mistress of the 
 house (Lord Saxingham, as the reader knows, was a widower, 
 and Lady Florence was an only child); and Maltravers was 
 that day in one'of those felicitous moods in which our animal 
 spirits search and carry up, as it were, to the surface, our intel- 
 lectual gifts and acquisitions. He conversed generally and 
 happily; but once, when he turned his eyes io appeal to Lady 
 Florence for her opinion on some point in discussion, he caught 
 her gaze fixed upon him with an expression that checked the
 
 MAtTRAVEfcS. 241 
 
 Current of his gayety, and cast him into a curious and bewil- 
 dered reverie. In this gaze there was earnest and cordial 
 admiration; but it was mixed with so much mournfulness that 
 the admiration lost its eloquence, and he who noticed it was 
 rather saddened than flattered. 
 
 After dinner, when Maltravers sought the drawing-rooms, he 
 found them filled with the customary mob of good society. In 
 one corner he discovered Castruccio Cesarini playing on a 
 guitar slung across his breast with a blue riband. The Italian 
 sang well: many young ladies were grouped round him, amongst 
 others Florence Lascelles. Maltravers, fond as'he was of music, 
 looked upon Castruccio's performance as a disagreeable exhi- 
 bition. He had a Quixotic idea of the dignity of talent; and 
 though himself of a musical science and amelody of voice that 
 would have thrown the rooTn into ecstacies, he would as soon 
 have turned juggler or tumbler for polite amusement, as con- 
 tended for the bravos of a drawing-room. It was because he 
 was one of the proudest men in the world, that Maltravers was 
 one of the least vain. He did not care a rush for applause in 
 small things. But Cesarini would have summoned the whole 
 world to see him play at push-pin, if he thought he played it well. 
 
 "Beautiful! divine! charming!" cried the young ladies, as 
 Cesarini ceased; and Maltravers observed that Florence praised 
 more earnestly than the rest, and that Cesatini's dark eyes 
 sparkled, and his pale cheek flushed with unwonted brilliancy. 
 Florence turned to Maltravers, and the Italian, following her 
 eyes, frowned darkly. 
 
 " You know the Signor Cesarini," said Florence, joining 
 Maltravers. "He is an interesting and gifted person." 
 
 " Unquestionably. I grieve to see him wasting his talents 
 upon a soil that may yield a' few short-lived flowers, without 
 one useful plant or productive fruit." 
 
 "He enjoys the passing hour, Mr. Maltravers; and sometimes, 
 when I see the mortification's' that await sterner labor, I think 
 he is right." 
 
 " Hush! "said Maltravers; "his eyes are on us he is listening 
 breathlessly for every word you utter. I fear that you have 
 made an unconscious conquest of a poet's heart; and if so, he 
 purchases the enjoyment of the passing hour at. a fearful price." 
 
 " Nay," said Lady Florence indifferently, " he is one of those 
 to whom fancy supplies the place of the heart. And if I give 
 hirri an inspiration, it will bean equal luxury to him whether his 
 lyre be strung to hope or disappointment. The sweetness of his 
 verses will compensate to him for any bitterness in actual life."
 
 $42 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 " There are two kinds of love," answered Maltravers, "love 
 and self-love; the wounds of the last are often most incurable 
 in those who appear least vulnerable to the first. Ah, Lady 
 Florence, were I privileged to play the monitor, I would ven- 
 ture on one warning, however much it might offend you." 
 
 " And that is " 
 
 " To forbear coquetry." 
 
 Maltravers smiled as he spoke, but it was gravely and at the 
 same time he moved gently away. But Lady Florence laid her 
 hand on his arm, 
 
 " Mr. Maltravers," said she, very softly, and with a kind of 
 faltering in her tone, " am I wrong to say that I am anxious for 
 your good opinion ? Do not judge me harshly. I am soured, 
 discontented, unhappy. I have no sympathy with the world. 
 These men whom I see around me-^-what are they ? the mass of 
 them unfeeling and silken egotists ill-judging, ill-educated, 
 well-dressed: the few who are called distinguished^ how selfish 
 in their ambition, how passionless in their pursuits! Am I to 
 be blamed if I sometimes exert a power over such as these, 
 which rather proves my scorn for them than my own vanity ? " 
 
 " I have no right to argue with you." 
 
 " Yes, argue with me, convince me, guide me Heaven knows 
 that, impetuous and haughty as I am, I need a guide," and 
 Lady Florence's eyes swam with tears. Ernest's prejudices 
 against her were greatly shaken: he was even somewhat daz- 
 zled by her beauty, and touched by her unexpected gentleness; 
 but still, his heart was not assailed, and he replied almost coldly, 
 after a short pause 
 
 " Dear Lady Florence, look round the world who so much 
 to be envied as yourself ? What sources of happiness and pride 
 are open to you! Why, then, make to yourself causes of dis- 
 content? why be scornful of those who cross not your path? 
 Why not look with charity upon God's less endowed children, 
 beneath you as they may seem ? What consolation have you in 
 hurting the hearts or the vanities of others? Do you raise your- 
 self even in your own estimation? You affect to be above your 
 sex yet what character do you despise more in women than 
 that which you assume? Semiramis should not be a coquette. 
 There now, I have offended you I confess I am very rude." 
 
 " I am not offended," said Florence, almost struggling with 
 her tears; and she added inly, "Ah, lam too happy! " There 
 are some lips from which even the proudest women love to hear 
 the censure which appears to disprove indifference. 
 
 It was at this time that Lumley Ferrers, flushed with the sue-
 
 ERNEST tfAVTRAVEkri. 24$ 
 
 cess of his schemes and projects, entered the room; and his 
 quick eye fell upon that corner, in which he detected what ap- 
 peared to him .a very alarming flirtation between his rich cousin 
 and Ernest Maltravers. He advanced to the spot, and, with 
 his customary frankness, extended his hand to each. 
 
 " Ah, my dear and fair cousin, give me your congratulations 
 and ask me for my first frank, to be bound up in a collection of 
 au.tograp.lis by distinguished senators it will. sell high one of 
 these days. .Your most obedient, Mr. MaUravers;- how we 
 shall laugh in .our sleeves at the humbug of politics, when you 
 and I, the best friends in. the world, sit vis-b-vis on opposite 
 benches. But why, Lady Florence, have you never introduced 
 me to your pet Italian? Allans! I am his match in Alfieri, whom, 
 of course, he swears by, and whose verses, by the way, seem cut 
 out of boxwood the hardest material for turning off that sort 
 of machinery that invention. ever hit on." 
 
 Thus saying, Ferrers contrived, as he thought, very cleverly 
 to divide a pair that he much feared were justly formed to meet 
 by nature, and, to his great joy, Maltravers shortly afterwards 
 withdrew. 
 
 Ferr-erSj with the happy ease that belonged to his complacent 
 though plotting . character, soon made Cesarini at home with 
 him; and two or three slighting -expressions which the former 
 dropped with respect to Maltravers, coupled with some out- 
 rageous compliments to the Italian, completely won the heart 
 of the poet. The brilliant Florence was more silent and sub- 
 dued than usual; and her voice was softer, though graver, when 
 she replied to Castruccio's eloquent appeals. Castruccio was 
 one of those men who talk fine. By degrees, Lumley lapsed 
 into silence, and; listened to what took place between Lady 
 Florence and the Italian, while appearing to be deep in " The- 
 Views of the Rhine," which lay on the table. 
 
 "Ah," said the latter, in. his soft native tongue, ; "could you 
 know how I watch every shade of that countenance which 
 makes my heaven! Is it clouded, night is with me! is it radi- 
 ant, I am as the Persian gazing on the sun ! " 
 
 "Why do you speak thus to me? were you not a poet, I might 
 be angry." 
 
 " You were not angry when the English poet, that cold Mal- 
 travers,. spoke to you perhaps as boldly." 
 
 . Lady Florence drew up. her haughty head. "Signer," said 
 she, checking, however, her first impulse, and with mildness, 
 " Mr. Maltravers. neither flatters nor " 
 
 '"Presumes, you were about t6 say," said Cesarini, grinding
 
 244 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 his teeth. " But it is well once you were less chilling to the 
 utterance of my deep devotion." 
 
 "Never, Signer Cesarini, never but when I thought it was but 
 the common gallantry of your nation; let me think so still." 
 
 "No, proud woman," said Cesarini fiercely,"no, hear the truth." 
 
 Lady Florence rose indignantly. 
 
 " Hear me," he continued. "I I, the poor foreigner, the 
 despised minstrel, dare to lift up my eyes to you! I love you! " 
 
 Never had Florence Lascelles been so humiliated and con- 
 founded. However she might have amused herself with the 
 vanity of Cesarini, she had not given him, as she thought, the 
 warrant to address her the great Lady Florence, the prize of 
 dukes and princes in this hardy manner; she almost fancied 
 him insane. But the next moment she recalled the warning of 
 Maltravers, and felt as if her punishment had commenced. 
 
 "You will think and speak more calmly, sir, when we meet 
 again," and so saying she swept away. 
 
 Cesarini remained rooted to the spot, with his dark counten- 
 ance expressing such passions as are rarely seen in the aspect 
 of civilized men. 
 
 "Where do you lodge, Sigrior Cesarini?" asked the bland, 
 familiar voice of Ferrers. "Let .us walk part of the way to- 
 gether that is, when you are tired of these hot rooms." 
 
 Cesarini groaned. "You are ill," continued Ferrers; "the 
 air will revive you come." He glided from the room, and the 
 Italian mechanically followed him. They walked together for 
 some moments in silence, side by side, in a clear, lorely, moon- 
 light night. At length Ferrers said: "Pardon me, my dear Si- 
 gnor, but you may already have observed that I am a very frank, 
 odd sort of fellow. I see you are caught by the charms of my 
 Cruel cousin. Can I serve you in any way?" 
 
 A man at all acquainted with the world in which we live would 
 have been suspicious of such cordiality in the cousin of an 
 heiress, towards a very unsuitable aspirant. But Cesarini, like 
 many indifferent poets (but like few good ones), had no com- 
 mon sense. He thought it quite natural that a man who ad- 
 mired his poetry so much as Lumley had declared he did should 
 take a lively interest in his welfare ; and he therefore replied 
 warmly, " Oh, sir, this is indeed a crushing blow : I dreamed she 
 loved me. She was ever flattering and gentle when she spoke 
 to me, and in verse already I had told her of my love and met 
 with no rebuke." 
 
 " Did your verses really and plainly declare love, and in your 
 own person?"
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 245 
 
 ' Why, the sentiment was veiled, perhaps put into the mouth 
 of a fictitious character, or conveyed in an allegory." 
 
 "Oh!" ejaculated Ferrers, thinking it very likely that the 
 gorgeous Florence, hymned by a thousand bards, had done lit- 
 tle more than cast a glance over the lines that had cost poor 
 Cesarini such anxious toil, and inspired him with such daring 
 hope. " Oh ! and to-night she was more severe ! she is a ter- 
 rible coquette, la belle Florence! But perhaps you have a rival." 
 
 " I feel it I saw it I know it." 
 
 "Whom do you suspect?" 
 
 " That accursed Maltravers ! He crosses me in every path 
 \ny spirit quails beneath his whenever we encounter. I read 
 my doom." 
 
 " If it be Maltravers," said Ferrers, gravely, "the danger can- 
 not be great. Florence has seen but little of him, and he does 
 not admire her much ; but she is a great match, and he is am- 
 bitious. We must guard against this betimes, Cesarini for 
 know that I dislike Maltravers as much as you do, and will 
 cheerfully aid you in any plan to blight his hopes in that quarter." 
 
 " Generous, noble friend! yet he is richer, better born than I." 
 
 "That may be: but to one in Lady Florence's position, all 
 minor grades of rank in her aspirants seem pretty well levelled. 
 Come, I don't tell you that I would not sooner she married a 
 countryman and her equal but I have taken a liking to you, and 
 I detest Maltravers. She is very romantic fond of poetry to 
 a passion writes it herself, I fancy. Oh, you'll just suit her; 
 but, alas! how will you see her?" 
 
 " See her ! What mean you ? " 
 
 " Why, have you not declared love to-night ? I thought I over- 
 heard you. Can you for a moment fancy that, after such an 
 avowal, Lady Florence will again receive you that is, if she 
 mean to reject your suit ?" 
 
 " Fool that I was ! But no she must, she shall." 
 
 " Be persuaded : in this country violence will not do. Take 
 my advice, write an humble apology, confess your fault, invoke 
 her pity ; and, declaring that you renounce forever the character 
 of a lover, implore still to be acknowledged as a friend. Be quiet 
 now, hear me out; I am older than you; I know my cousin; this 
 will pique her; your modesty will soothe, while your coldness will 
 arouse her vanity. Meanwhile you will watch the progress of 
 Maltravers, I will be by your elbow ; and between us, to use a 
 homely phrase, we will do for him. Then you may have your 
 opportunity, clear stage and fair play." 
 
 Cesarini was at first rebellious ; but at length even he saw
 
 246 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 the policy of the advice. But Lumley would not leave him till 
 the advice was adopted. He made Castruc'cio accompany him 
 to a club, dictated the letter to Florence, and undertook its 
 charge. This was not all. 
 
 " Lt is also necessary," said Lumley, after a short but thought- 
 ful silence, "that you should write to Maltravers.'" 
 
 "And for what?" 
 
 " I have my reasons. Ask him, in a frank and friendly spiric, 
 his opinion of Lady Florence ; state your belief that she loves 
 you, and inquire ingenuously what he thinks your chances of 
 happiness in such a union." 
 
 "But why this?" 
 
 "His answer may be useful," returned Lumley, musingly. 
 "Stay, I will dictate the letter." 
 
 Cesarini wondered and hesitated, but there was that about 
 Lumley 'Ferrers which had 'already obtained command over the 
 weak and passionate poet. He wrote, therefore, as Lumley dic- 
 tated, beginning with some commonplace doubts as to the hap- 
 piness of marriage in general, excusing himself for his recent 
 coldness towards Maltravers, and asking him his confidential 
 opinion both as to Lady Florence's character and his own chances 
 of success. 
 
 This letter, like the former one, Lumley sealed and despatched. 
 
 "You perceive," he then said, briefly, to Cesarini, "that it is 
 the object of this letter to entrap Maltravers into some plain and 
 honest avowal of his dislike : of Lady Florence ; we may make 
 good use of such expressions hereafter, if he. should ever prove 
 a rival. And now go. home to rest '; you look exhausted. Adieu, 
 my new friend." 
 
 "I have long had a presentiment," said Lumley to his : coun- 
 sellor SELF, as he walked to Great George Street, "'that that wild 
 girl has conceived a romantic fancy for Maltravers. But I can 
 easily prevent such an accident ripening into misfortune. Mean- 
 while, I have secured a tool, if I want one. By Jove, what an ass 
 that poet is ! But so was Cassro ; yet I a go made use of him. If 
 lago had been born now, and dropped that foolish fancy for re- 
 venge, what a glorious fellow he would have been ! Prime min- 
 ister at least ! " 
 
 Pale, haggard, exhausted, Castfuccio Cesarini, traversing a 
 'length of way, arrived at last at a miserable lodging in the suburb 
 of Chelsea. His fortune was now goiie ; gone in supplying the 
 poorest food to a craving and imbecile vanity; gone, that its 
 owner might seem what Nature never meant him for, the ele- 
 gant Lothario, the graceful man of pleasure, the troubadour ot
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 247 
 
 modern life ! gone in horses, and jewels, and fine clothes, and 
 gaming, and printing unsalable poems on gilt-edged vellum ; 
 gone that he might be not a greater but a more fashionable man 
 than Ernest Maltravers ! Such is the common destiny of those 
 poor adventurers who confine fame to boudoirs and saloons. No 
 matter whether they be poets or dandies, wealthy parvenus or 
 aristocratic cadets, all equally prove the adage that the wrong 
 paths to reputation are strewed with the wrecks of peace, for- 
 tune, happiness, and too often honor ! And yet this poor young 
 man had dared to hope for the hand of Florence Lascelles ! He 
 had the common notion of foreigners, that English girls marry 
 for love, are very romantic ; that, within the three seas, heiresses 
 are as plenty as blackberries ; and for the rest, his ranity had 
 been so pampered that it now insinuated itself into every fibre 
 of his intellectual and moral system. 
 
 Cesarini looked cautiously round, as he arrived at his door : 
 for he fancied that, even in that obscure place, persons might be 
 anxious to catch a glimpse of the celebrated poet, and he con- 
 cealed his residence from all ; dined on a roll when he did not 
 dine out, and left his address at " The Travellers'." He looked 
 round, I say, and he did observe a tall figure, wrapped in a cloak, 
 that had, indeed, followed him from a distant and more popu- 
 lous part of the town. But the figure turned round, and van- 
 ished instantly. Cesarini mounted to his second floor. And 
 about the middle of the next day a messenger left a letter at his 
 door, containing one hundred pounds in a blank envelope. Ce- 
 sarini knew not the writing of the address ; his pride was deeply 
 wounded. Amidst all his penury he had not even applied to his 
 own sister. Could it have come from her from De Montaigne ? 
 He was lost in conjecture. He put the remittance aside for a 
 few days, for he had something fine in him, the poor poet! but 
 bills grew pressing and necessity hath no law. 
 
 Two days afterwards, Cesarini brought to Ferrers the answer 
 he had received from Maltravers. Lumley had rightly foreseen 
 that the high spirit of Ernest would conceive some indignation 
 at the coquetry of Florence in beguiling the Italian into hopes 
 never to be realized that he would express himself openly and 
 warmly. He did so, however, with more gentleness than Lum- 
 ley had anticipated. 
 
 "This is not exactly the thing," said Ferrers, after twice read- 
 ing the letter ; " still it may hereafter be a strong card in our 
 hands we will keep it." 
 
 So saying, he locked up the letter in his desk, and Cesarini 
 soon forgot its existence.
 
 248 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 " She was a phantom of delight, 
 When first she gleamed upon my sight ; 
 A lovely apparition sent, 
 To be a moment's ornament." WORDSWORTH. 
 
 MALTR AVERS did not see Lady Florence again for some weeks; 
 meanwhile Lumley Ferrers made his debut in parliament. Ri- 
 gidly adhering to. his plan of acting on. a deliberate system, and 
 not prone to overrate himself, Mr. Ferrers did not, like most 
 promising new members, try the hazardous ordeal of a great 
 first speech. Though bold, fluent, and ready, he was not elo- 
 quent ; and he knew that on great occasions, when great speeches 
 are wanted, great guns like to have the fire to themselves. Neither 
 did he split upon the opposite rock. of "promising young men," 
 who stick to " the business of the house " like leeches, and quib- 
 ble on details ; in return for which. labor they are generally voted 
 bores, .who can never do anything remarkable. But he -spoke 
 frequently, shortly, courageously, and with a strong dash of 
 good-humored .personality^ He was the man whom a minister 
 could get to say something which other people did not like to 
 say ; and he did so with a frank fearlessness that carried off any 
 seeming violation of good taste. He soon became a very popu- 
 lar speaker in the parliamentary clique ; especially with the gen- 
 tlemen who crowd the bar, and never want to hear the argument 
 of the debate. Between him and Maltravers a visible coldness 
 now existed; for the latter looked upon his old friend (whose 
 principles of logic led him even to republicanism, and who had 
 been accustomed to accuse Ernest of temporizing with plain 
 truths, if he demurred to their application to artificial states of 
 society) as a cold-blooded and hypocritical adventurer; while 
 Ferrers, seeing that. Ernest could now be of no further use to 
 him, was willing enough to drop a profitless intimacy. Nay, he 
 thought it would be wise to pick a quarrel with him,, if possible, 
 as the best means of banishing a supposed rival from the house 
 of his noble relation, Lord Saxingham. But no opportunity for 
 that step presented itself; so Lumley kept a fit of convenient 
 rudeness, or an impromptu sarcasm, in reserve, if ever it should 
 be wanted. 
 
 The season and the session were alike drawing to a close, 
 when Maltravers received a pressing invitation from Cleveland 
 to spend a week at his, villa, which he assured Ernest would 
 be full of agreeable people ; and as all business productive gf
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVF.RS. 2^9 
 
 debate or division was over, MaltraverS' was glad to obtain fresh 
 air and a change of scene. Accordingly, he sent down his 
 luggage and favorite books, and, one afternoon in early August, 
 rode alone towards Temple Grove. He was much dissatisfied, 
 perhaps disappointed, with his experience of public life ; and 
 with his high-wrought and over-refining views of the deficiencies 
 of others more prominent, he was in a humor to mingle also 
 censure of himself, for having yielded too much to the doubts 
 and scruples that often, in the early part of their career, beset 
 the honest and sincere in the turbulent whirl of politics, and 
 ever tend to make the robust hues that should belong to action 
 
 " Sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought." 
 
 His mind was working its way slowly toward those conclusions 
 which sometimes ripen the best practical men out of the most 
 exalted theorists, and perhaps he saw before him the pleasing 
 prospect flatteringly exhibited to another, when he complained 
 of being too honest for party, viz., " of becoming a very pretty 
 rascal in time ! " 
 
 For several weeks he had not heard from his unknown cor- 
 respondent, and the time wascOme when he missed those letters, 
 now continued for more than t\vo years; and which, in their elo- 
 quent mixture of complaint, exhortation, despondent gloom, 
 and declamatory enthusiasm, had often soothed him in dejec- 
 tion, and made him more sensible of triumph. While revolving 
 in his mind thoughts connected with these subjects and, 
 somehow or other, with his more ambitious reveries were always 
 mingled musings of curiosity respecting his correspondent he 
 was struck by the beauty of a little girl, of about eleven years 
 old, who was walking with a female attendant on the footpath 
 that skirted the road. I said that he was struckby her beauty, 
 but that is a wrong expression ; it was rather the charm of her 
 countenance than the perfection of her features which arrested 
 {he gaze of Maltravers a charm that might not have existed 
 for others, but was inexpressibly attractive to him, and was so 
 much apart from the vulgar fascination of mere beauty, that it 
 would "have equally touched a chord at his heart, if coupled with 
 homely features or a bloomless cheek. This charm was in a 
 wonderful innocence and dove-like softness of expression. We 
 aliform to ourselves some beau id&tl of the "fair spirit" we 
 desire as our earthly " minister," and somewhat capriciously 
 gauge and proportion our admiration of living shapes according 
 as the beau id/al is more or less embodied or approached. 
 Beauty, of a stamp that is not familiar to the dreams of our
 
 250 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 fancy, may win the cold homage of our judgment, while a look, 
 a feature, a something that realizes and calls up a boyish vision, 
 and assimilates even distantly to the picture we wear within us, 
 has a loveliness peculiar to our eyes, and kindles an emotion that 
 almost seems to belong to memory. It is this which the Pla- 
 tonists felt when they wildly supposed that souls attracted to 
 each other on earth had been united in an earlier being and a 
 diviner sphere; and there was in the young face on which 
 Ernest gazed precisely this ineffable harmony with his precon- 
 ceived notions of the Beautiful. Many a nightly and noonday 
 reverie was realized in those mild yet smiling eyes of the darkest 
 blue ; in that ingenuous breadth of brow, with its slightly pencilled 
 arches, and the nose, not cut in that sharp and clear symmetry 
 which looks so lovely in marble, but usually gives to flesh and 
 blood a decided and hard character that better becomes the 
 sterner than the gentler sex no ; not moulded in the pure 
 Grecian, nor in the pure Roman, cast; but small, delicate, with 
 the least possible inclination to turn upward, that was only to 
 be detected in one position of the head, and served to give a. 
 prettier archness to the sweet, flexile lips, which, from the 
 gentleness of their repose, seemed to smile unconsciously, but 
 rather from a happy constitutional serenity than from the gid- 
 diness of mirth. Such was the character of this fair child's 
 countenance, on which Maltravers turned and gazed involun- 
 tarily and reverently, with something of the admiring delight 
 with which we look upon the Virgin of a Raffaelle or the sunset 
 landscape of a Claude. The girl did not appear to feel any 
 premature coquetry at the evident, though respectful, admiration 
 she excited. She met the eyes bent upon her, brilliant and 
 eloquent as they were, with a fearless and unsuspecting gaze, 
 and pointed out to her companion, with all a child's quick and un- 
 restraining impulse, the shining and raven gloss, the arched and 
 haughty neck, of Ernest's beautiful Arabian. 
 
 Now there happened between Maltravers and the young 
 object of his admiration a little adventure, which served, per- 
 haps, to fix in her recollection this short encounter with a 
 stranger ; for certain it is that, years after, she did remember 
 both the circumstances of the adventure and the features of 
 Maltravers. She wore one of those large straw hats which look 
 so pretty upon children, and the warmth of the day made her 
 untie the strings which confined it. A gentle breeze arose, as 
 by a turn in the road the country became more open, and sud- 
 denly wafted the hat from its proper post almost to the hoofs 
 of Ernest's horse. The child naturally made a spring forward
 
 ERNEST MALTR AVERS. 25! 
 
 to arrest the deserter, and her foot slipped down the bank, 
 which was rather steeply raised above the road ; she uttered a 
 low cry of pain. To dismount to regain the prize and to 
 restore it to its owner, was, with Ernest, the work of a moment ; 
 the poor girl had twisted her ankle, and was leaning upon her 
 servant for support. But when she saw the anxiety, and almost 
 the alarm, upon the stranger's face (and her exclamation of 
 pain had literally thrilled his heart so much and so unaccount- 
 ably had she excited his interest), she made an effort at self- 
 control, not common at her years, and with a forced smile 
 assured him she was not much hurt that it was nothing that 
 she was just at home. 
 
 " Oh, miss ! " said the servant, " I am sure you are very bad. 
 Dear heart, how angry master will be ! It was not my fault ; 
 was it, sir ?" 
 
 " Oh, no, it was not your fault, Margaret ; don't be fright- 
 ened papa shan't blame you. But I'm much better now." So 
 saying, she tried to walk ; but the effort was vain she turned 
 yet more pale, and though she struggled to prevent a shriek, 
 the tears rolled down her cheeks. 
 
 It was very odd, but Maltravershad never felt more touched 
 the tears stood in his own eyes ; he longed to carry her in his 
 arms, but, child as she was, a strange kind of nervous timidity 
 forbade him. Margaret, perhaps, expected it of him, for she 
 looked hard in his face, before she attempted a burthen to 
 which, being a small, slight person, she was by no means equal. 
 However, after a pause, she took up her charge, who, ashamed 
 of her .tears, and almost overcome with pain, nestled her head 
 in the woman's bosom, and Maltravers walked by her side, while 
 his docile and well-trained horse followed at a distance, every 
 now and then putting its forelegs :on the bank, and cropping 
 away a mouthful of leaves from the hedge-row. 
 
 "Oh,. Margaret !" said the little sufferer, " I cannot bear it 
 indeed I cannot." 
 
 And Maltravers observed that Margaret had permitted the 
 lamed foot to hang down unsupported, so that the pain must 
 indeed have been scarcely bearable. He could restrain him- 
 self no longer. 
 
 "You are not strong enough to carry her," said he, sharply, to 
 the servant ; and the next moment the child was in his arms. 
 Oh, with what anxious tenderness he bore her ! and he was so 
 happy when she turned her face to him and smiled, and told 
 him she now scarcely felt the pain. If;it were possible to be 
 in love with a child of eleven years old, Malt ravers, was almost in
 
 252 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 love. His pulses trembled as he felt her pure breath on his 
 cheek, and her rich, beautiful hair was waved by the breeze 
 across his lips. He hushed his voice to a whisper as he poured 
 forth all the soothing and comforting expressions which give a 
 natural eloquence to persons fond of children and Ernest 
 Maltravers was the idol of children ; he understood and sym- 
 pathized with them ; he had a great deal of the child himself 
 beneath the rough and cold husk of his proud reserve. At 
 length they came to a lodge, and Margaret, eagerly inquiring 
 " whether master and missus were at home," seemed delighted 
 to hear they were not. Ernest, however, insisted on bearing 
 his charge across the lawn to the house, which, like most subur- 
 ban villas, was but a stone's throw from the lodge ; and, receiv- 
 ing the most positive promise that surgical advice should be 
 immediately sent for, he was forced to content himself with 
 laying the sufferer on a sofa in the drawing-room ; and she 
 thanked him so prettily, and assured him she was so much 
 easier, that he would have given the world to kiss her. The 
 child nad completed her conquest over him by being above the 
 child's ordinary littleness of making the worst of things in 
 order to obtain the consequence and dignity of being pitied; 
 she was evidently unselfish and considerate for others. He did 
 kiss her, but it was the hand that he kissed, and no cavalier 
 ever kissed his lady's hand with more respect ; and then, for 
 the first lime, the child blushed then, for the first time, she 
 felt as if the day would come when she should be a child no 
 longer ! Why was this? perhaps because it was an era in 
 life the first sign of a tenderness that inspires respect, not 
 familiarity ! 
 
 " If ever again I could be in love," said Maltravers, as he 
 spurred on his road, " I really think it would be with that ex- 
 quisite child. My feeling is more like that of love at first sight, 
 than any emotion which beauty ever caused in me. Alice 
 Valerie no ; t he first sight of them did not : but what 
 folly is this ! a child of eleven and I verging upon thirty ! " 
 
 Still, however, folly as it might be, the image of that young 
 girl haunted Maltravers for many days ; till change of scene, 
 the distractions of society, the grave thoughts of manhood, 
 and, above all, a series of exciting circumstances about to be 
 narrated, gradually obliterated a strange and most delightful 
 impression. He had learned, however, that Templeton was 
 the proprietor of the villa, which was the child's home. He 
 wrote to Ferrers, to narrate the incident, and to inquire after 
 the sufferer- In due time he heard from that gentleman that
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 the child was recovered, and gone with Mr. and Mrs. Temple- 
 ton to Brighton, for change of air and sea-bathing. 
 
 BOOK VII. 
 
 ical 
 . EURIP. Iphig. in Aul. 1. 1373. 
 
 Whither come Wisdom's queen 
 And the snare-weaving Love. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 " Notitiam primosque gradus vicinia fecit." * OVID. 
 
 CLEVELAND'S villa was full, and of persons usually called 
 agreeable. Amongst the rest was Lady Florence Lascelles. 
 The wise old .man had ever counselled Maltravers not to marry 
 too young ; but neither did he wish him to put off that mo- 
 mentous epoch of life till all the bloom of heart and emotion 
 was passed away. He thought, with the old lawgivers, that 
 thirty was the happy age for forming a connection, in the 
 choice of which, .with the reason of manhood, ought, perhaps, 
 to be blended the passion of youth. And he saw that few men 
 were more capable than Maltravers of the true enjoyments of 
 domestic life. He had long thought, also, that none were 
 more calculated to sympathize with Ernest's views, and appre- 
 ciate his peculiar, character, than the gifted and brilliant Flor- 
 ence Lascelles. Cleveland looked with toleration on her many 
 eccentricities of thought and conduct, eccentricities which he 
 thought would melt away beneath the influence of that attach- 
 ment which usually operates so great a change in women; arid, 
 where it is strongly and intensely felt, moulds even those of the 
 most obstinate Character into, compliance or similitude with the 
 sentiments or habits of its object. 
 
 rr>i 1 r 1 /- T. r 1 1 1 
 
 I he stately self-control of Maltravers was, he conceived, 
 precisely that quality that gives to men an unconscious com- 
 mand .over the very thoughts of the woman whose affection 
 they win : while, on the other hand, he hoped that the fancy 
 
 * Neighborhood caused the acquaintance and 'first .'introduction.
 
 254 ERNEST MALTR AVERS. 
 
 and enthusiasm of Florence would tend to render sharper and 
 more practical an ambition which seemed to the sober man of 
 the world too apt to refine upon the means, and to cui bono 
 the objects, of worldly distinction. Besides, Cleveland was one 
 who thoroughly appreciated the advantages of wealth and 
 station ; and the rank and the dower of Florence were such as 
 would force Maltravers into a position in social life which 
 could not fail to make new exactions upon talents which Cleve- 
 land fancied were precisely those adapted rather to command 
 than to serve. In Ferrers he recognized a man to get into 
 power in Maltravers one. by whom power, if ever attained, 
 would be wielded with dignity, and exerted for great uses. 
 Something, therefore, higher than mere covetousness for the 
 vulgar interests of Maltravers, made Cleveland desire to secure 
 to him the heart and hand of the great heiress ; and he fancied 
 that, whatever might be= the obstacle, it would not be in the 
 will of Lady Florence herself. He prudently resolved, how- 
 ever, to leave matters to their natural : course. He hinted 
 nothing to one party or the other. No place for falling in love 
 like a large country-house, and no time for it, amongst the in- 
 dolent well-born, like the close of a London season, -when, 
 jaded by small cares, and sickened of hollow intimacies, even 
 the coldest may well yearn for the tones of affection-^-the ex- 
 citement of an honest emotion. 
 
 Somehow or other it happened that Florence and Ernest, 
 after the first day or two, were constantly thrown together. 
 She rode on horseback, and Maltravers was by her side ; they 
 made excursions on the river, and they sate on the same bench 
 in the gliding pleasure-boat. In the evenings, the younger 
 guests, with the assistance of the neighboring families, often 
 got up a dance in a temporary pavilion built out of the dining- 
 room. Ernest never danced.: Florence did at first. But once, 
 as she was conversing with Maltravers, when a gay guardsman 
 came to claim her promised hand in the waltz, she seemed 
 struck by a grave change ; ih Ernest's face. 
 
 " Do you never waltz ?" she asked, while the guardsman was 
 searching for a corner wherein safely to deposit his hat. 
 
 'No," said he; "yet there is no impropriety in -my waltzing." 
 
 'And you mean that there is irt : mine ?" 
 
 'Pardon me I did not say so." 
 
 'But you think it." 
 
 'Nay, on consideration, I am glad, perhaps, that you do 
 waltz." 
 
 "You are mysterious."
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 255 
 
 "Well then, I mean that you are precisely the woman I 
 would never fall in love with. And I feel the danger is less- 
 ened when I see you destroy any one of my illusions, or, I 
 ought to say, attack any one of my prejudices." 
 
 Lady Florence colored ; but the guardsman and the music 
 left her no time for reply. However, after that night she 
 waltzed no more. She was unwell she declared she was or- 
 dered not to dance, and so quadrilles were relinquished as well 
 as the waltz. 
 
 Maltravers could not but be touched and flattered by this 
 regard for his opinion ; but Florence contrived to testify it so 
 as to forbid acknowledgment, since another motive had been 
 found for it. The second evening after that commemorated 
 by Ernest's candid rudeness, they chanced to meet in the con- 
 servatory, which was connected with the ball-room ; and 
 Ernest, pausing to inquire after her health, was struck by the 
 listless and dejected sadness which spoke in her tone and coun- 
 tenance as she replied to him. 
 
 "Dear Lady Florence," said he, "I fear you are worse than 
 you will confess. You should shun these draughts. You owe 
 it to your friends to be more careful of yourself." 
 
 "Friends!" said Lady Florence, bitterly "I have no 
 friends! even my poor father would not absent himself from 
 a cabinet dinner a week after I was dead. But that is the con- 
 dition of public life its hot and searing blaze puts out the 
 lights of all lesser but not unholier affections. Friends ! 
 Fate, that made Florence Lascelles the envied heiress, denied 
 her brothers, sisters ; and the hour of her birth lost her even 
 the love of a mother ? Friends ! where shall I find them ?" 
 
 As she ceased, she turned to the open casement, and stepped 
 out into the verandah, and by the trembling of her voice Ernest 
 felt that she had done so to hide or to suppress her tears. 
 
 "Yet," said he, following her, "there is one class of more 
 distant friends, whose interest Lady Florence Lascelles cannot 
 fail to secure, however she may disdain it. Among the hum- 
 blest of that class suffer me to rank myself. Come, I assume 
 the privilege of advice the night-air is a luxury you must not 
 indulge." 
 
 "No, no, it refreshes me it soothes. You misunderstand 
 me, I have no illness that still skies and sleeping flowers can 
 increase." 
 
 Maltravers, as is evident, was not in love with Florence, but 
 he could not fail, brought, as he had lately been, under the 
 direct influence of her rare and prodigal gifts, mental and per-
 
 256 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 sonal, to feel for her a strong and even affect ionate interest ; 
 the very frankness with which he was accustomed to speak to 
 her, and the many links of communion there necessarily were 
 between himself and a mind so naturally powerful and so 
 richly cultivated, had already established their acquaintance 
 upon an intimate footing. 
 
 " I can not restrain you, Lady Florence," said he, half smil- 
 ing, " but my conscience will not let me be an accomplice. I 
 will turn king's evidence, and hunt out Lord Saxingham to send 
 him to you." 
 
 Lady Florence, whose face was averted from his, did not 
 appear to hear him. 
 
 "And you, Mr. Maltravers," turning quickly round "you- 
 have you friends ? Do you feel that there are, I do not say 
 public, but private affections and duties, for which life is made 
 less a possession than a trust ? " 
 
 " Lady Florence no ! I have friends, it is true, and Cleve- 
 land is of the nearest ; but the life within life the second self, 
 in whom we vest the right and mastery over our own being I 
 know; it not But is it," he added, after a pause, " a rare pri- 
 vation ? Perhaps it is a happy one. I have learned to lean 
 on my own soul, and not look elsewhere for the reeds that a 
 wind can break." 
 
 -." Ah, it is a cold philosophy you may reconcile yourself to 
 its wisdom in the world, in the luitn and shock of men : but in 
 solitude, with Nature ah, no.! While the mind alone is occu- 
 pied, you may be contented with the pride of stoicism ; but 
 there are moments when the heart wakens as from a sleep 
 wakens like a frightened child to feel itself alone and in the 
 dark." 
 
 Ernest was silent, and Florence continued, in an altered 
 voice; " This is a strange conversation, and you must think 
 me indeed a wild, romance-reading person, as the world is apt 
 to call me. But if I live J pshaw ! life denies ambition to 
 women." 
 
 " If a woman like you, Lady ..Florence, should ever love, it 
 will be one in whose career you may perhaps find that noblest 
 of all ambitions the ambition women only feel the ambition 
 for another ! " 
 
 " Ah ! but I shall never love," said Lady Florence, and her 
 cheek grew pale as the starlight fell on it ; "still, perhaps," she 
 added, " I may at least know the blessing of friendship. Why 
 now," and .here, approaching Maltravers, she laid her hand with 
 a winning frankness on his arm " why now, should we not be
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 257 
 
 to each other as if love, as you call it, were not a thing for earth 
 and friendship supplied its place ! there is no danger of our 
 falling in love with each other. You are not vain enough to ex- 
 pect it in me, and I, you know, am a coquette; let us be friends, 
 confidants at least till you marry, or I give another the right to 
 control my friendship and monopolize my secrets." 
 
 Maltravers was startled the sentiment Florence addressed 
 to him, he, in words not dissimilar, had once addressed to Valerie. 
 
 " The world," said he, kissing the hand that yet lay on his 
 arm, "the world will " 
 
 "Oh, you men ! the world, the world ; everything gentle, 
 everything pure, everything noble, high-wrought and holy is 
 to be squared, and cribbed, and maimed to the rule and measure 
 of the world ! The world are you too its slave ? Do you not 
 despise its hollow cant its methodical hypocrisy ?" 
 
 " Heartily ! " said Ernest Maltravers, almost with fierceness. 
 " No man ever so scorned its false gods and its miserable creeds 
 its war upon the weak its fawning upon the great its ingrati- 
 tude to benefactors its sordid league with mediocrity against 
 excellence. Yes, in proportion as I love mankind, I despise 
 and detest that worse than Venetian oligarchy which mankind 
 set over them and call 'THE WORLD.' " 
 
 And then it was, warmed by the excitement of released feel- 
 ings, long and carefully shrouded, that this man, ordinarily so 
 calm and self-possessed, poured burningly and passionately 
 forth all those tumultuous and almost tremendous thoughts 
 which, however much we may regulate, control, or disguise them, 
 lurk deep within the souls of all of us, the seeds of the eternal 
 war between the natural man and the artificial : between our 
 wilder genius and our social conventionalities thoughts that 
 from time to time break forth into the harbingers of vain and 
 fruitless revolutions, impotent struggles against destiny; thoughts 
 that good and wise men would be slow to promulge and propa- 
 gate, for they are of a fire which burns as well as brightens, and 
 which spreads from heart to heart as a spark spreads amidst 
 flax ; thoughts which are rifest where natures are most high 
 but belong to truths that Virtue dare not tell aloud. And as 
 Maltravers spoke, with his eyes flashing almost intolerable light 
 his breast heaving, his form dilated, never to the eyes of Flor- 
 ence Lascelles did he seem so great ; the chains that bound the 
 strong limbs of his spirit seemed snapped asunder, and all his 
 soul was visible and towering, as a thing that has escaped slav- 
 ery, and lifts its crest to heaven, and feels that it is free. 
 
 That evening saw a new bond of alliance between these two
 
 258 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 persons ; young, handsome, and of opposite sexes, they agreed 
 to be friends, and nothing more ! Fools ! 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 " Idem velle, et idem nolle, ea demum finna amicitia est." * SALLUST 
 
 " Carlos. That letter. 
 
 Princess Eboli. Oh, I shall die. Return it instantly." 
 
 SCHILLER : Don Carlos. 
 
 IT seemed as if the compact Maltravers and Lady Florence 
 had entered into removed whatever embarrassment and reserve 
 had previously existed. They now conversed with an ease and 
 freedom not common in persons of different sexes before they 
 have passed their grand climacteric. Ernest, in ordinary life, 
 like most men of warm emotions and strong imagination, if not 
 taciturn, was at least guarded. It was as if a weight were taken 
 from his breast when he found one person who could under- 
 stand him best when he was most candid. His eloquence, his 
 poetry, his intense and concentrated enthusiasm found a voice. 
 He could talk to an individual as he would have written to the 
 public a rare happiness to the men of books. 
 
 Florence seemed to recover her health and spirits as by a 
 miracle; yet was she more gentle, more subdued, than of old 
 there was less effort to shine, less indifference whether she 
 shocked. Persons who had not met her before wondered why 
 she was dreaded in society. But at times a great natural irri- 
 tability of temper a quick suspicion of the motives of those 
 around her an imperious and obstinate vehemence of will, 
 were visible to Maltravers, and served, perhaps, to keep him 
 heart-whole. He regarded her through the eyes of the intellect, 
 not those of the passions he thought not of her as a woman 
 her very talents, her very grandeur of idea and power of pur- 
 pose, while they delighted him in conversation, diverted his 
 imagination from dwelling on her beauty. He looked on her 
 as something apart from her sex a glorious creature spoilt 
 by being a woman. He once told her so, laughingly, and Flor- 
 ence considered it a compliment. Poor Florence, her scorn of 
 her sex avenged her sex, and robbed her of her proper destiny ! 
 
 Cleveland silently observed th^ir intimacy, and listened with 
 a quiet smile to the gossips who pointed out tte-h-tles by the 
 terrace, and loiterings by the lawn, and predicted what would 
 
 f To. will the same thing and not to will the same thing, that at length is firm friendship.
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 259 
 
 come of it all. Lord Saxingham was blind. But his daughter 
 was of age, in possession of her princely fortune, and had long 
 made him sensible of her independence of temper. His lord- 
 ship, however, thoroughly misunderstood the character of her 
 pride, and felt fully convinced she would marry no one less 
 than a duke ; as for flirtations, he thought them natural and 
 innocent amusements. Besides, he was very little at Temple 
 Grove. He went to London every morning, after breakfasting in 
 his own room came back to dine, play at whist, and talk good- 
 humored nonsense to Florence in his dressing-room, for the 
 three minutes that took place between his sipping his wine-and- 
 waterand the appearance of his valet. As for the other guests, 
 it was not their business to do more than gossip with each other; 
 and so Florence and Maltravers went on their way unmolested, 
 though not unobserved. Maltravers, not being himself in love, 
 never fancied that Lady Florence loved him, or that she would 
 be in any danger of doing so ; that is a mistake a man often 
 commits a woman never. A woman always knows when she 
 is loved, though she often imagines she is loved when she is not. 
 Florence was not happy, for happiness is a calm feeling. But 
 she was excited with a vague, wild, intoxicating emotion. 
 
 She had learned from Maltravers that she had been misin- 
 formed by Ferrers, and that no other claimed empire over his 
 heart ; and whether or not he loved her, still for the present 
 they seemed all in all to each other ; she lived but for the pres- 
 ent day, she would not think of the morrow. 
 
 Since that severe illness which had tended so much to alter 
 Ernest's mode of life, he had not come before the public as an 
 author. Latterly, however, the old habit had broken out again. 
 With the comparative idleness of recent years, the ideas and 
 feelings which crowd so fast on the poetical temperament, once 
 indulged, had accumulated within him to an excess that de- 
 manded vent. For with some, to write is not a vague desire, but 
 an imperious destiny. The fire is kindled and must break forth; 
 the wings are fledged, and the birds must leave their nest. The 
 communication of thought to man is implanted as an instinct 
 in those breasts to which heaven has intrusted the solemn agen- 
 cies of genius. In the work which Maltravers now composed, 
 he consulted Florence ; his confidence delighted her it was 
 a compliment she could appreciate. Wild, fervid, impassioned 
 was that work a brief and holiday creation the youngest and 
 most beloved of the children of his brain. And as day by day 
 the bright design grew into shape, and thought and imagination 
 found themselves "local habitations," Florence felt as if she were
 
 260 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 admitted into the palace of the genii, and made acquainted with 
 the mechanism of those spells and charms with which the pre- 
 ternatural powers of mind design the witchery of the world. 
 Ah, how different in depth and majesty were those intercom- 
 munications of idea between Ernest Maltravers and a woman 
 scarcely inferior to himself in capacity and requirement, from 
 that bridge of shadowy and dim sympathies which the enthusiastic 
 boy had once built up between his own poetry of knowledge 
 and Alice's poetry of love. 
 
 It was one late afternoon in September, when the sun was 
 slowly going down its western way, that Lady Florence, who 
 had been all that morning in her own room, paying off, as she 
 said, the dull arrears of correspondence, rather on Lord Sax- 
 ingham's account than her own ; for he punctiliously exacted 
 from her the most scrupulous attention to cousins fifty times 
 removed, provided they were rich, clever, well off, or in any 
 way of consequence : it was one afternoon that, relieved from 
 these avocations, Lady Florence strolled through the grounds 
 with Cleveland. The gentlemen were still in the stubble-fields, 
 the ladies were out in barouches and pony phaetons, and Cleve- 
 land and Lady Florence were alone. 
 
 Apropos of Florence's epistolary employment, their con- 
 versation fell upon that most charming species of literature, 
 which joins with the interest of a novel the truth of a history 
 the French memoir and letter-writers. It was a part of litera- 
 ture in which Cleveland was thoroughly at home. 
 
 " Those agreeable and polished gossips," said he, " how well 
 they contrived to introduce Nature into Art ! Everything arti- 
 ficial seemed so natural to them. They even feel by a kind of 
 clockwork, which seems to go better than the heart itself. Those 
 pretty sentiments, those delicate gallantries of Madame de Se- 
 vigne to her daughter, how amiable they are ; but, somehow or 
 other, I can never fancy them the least motherly. What an end- 
 ing for a maternal epistle is that elegant compliment ' Songez 
 que de tons les cceurs ou vous regnez, il n'y en a aucun ou votre 
 empire soit si bien etabli que dans le mien.'* I can scarcely 
 fancy Lord Saxingham writing so to you, Lady Florence." 
 
 " No, indeed," replied Lady Florence, smiling. " Neither 
 papas nor mammas in England are much addicted to compli- 
 ment ; but I confess I like preserving a sort of gallantry even 
 in our most familiar connections- -why should we not carry the 
 imagination into all the affections ? " 
 
 * Think that of all the hearts over which you reign, there is not one in which your em- 
 pire can be so well established as in mine.
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 261 
 
 " I can scarce answer the why," returned Cleveland ; " but 
 I think it would destroy the reality. I am rather of the old 
 school. If I had a daughter, and asked her to get my slippers, 
 I am afraid I should think it a little wearisome if I had, in 
 receiving them, to make des bdles phrases in return." 
 
 While they were thus talking, and Lady Florence continued 
 to press her side of the question, they passed through a little 
 grove that conducted to an arm of the stream which ornamented 
 the grounds, and by its quiet and shadowy gloom was meant to 
 give a contrast to the livelier features of the domain. Here they 
 came suddenly upon Maltravers. He was walking by the side 
 of the brook, and evidently absorbed in thought. 
 
 It was the trembling of Lady Florence's hand as it lay on 
 Cleveland's arm, that induced him to stop short in an animated 
 commentary on Rochefoucauld's character of Cardinal de Retz, 
 and look round. 
 
 " Ha, most meditative Jacques ! " said he ; " and what new 
 moral hast thou been conning in our Forest of Ardennes ? " 
 
 " Oh, I am glad to see you ; I wish to consult you, Cleveland. 
 But first, Lady Florence, to convince you and our host that my 
 rambles have not been wholly fruitless, and that I could not 
 walk from Dan to Beersheba and find all barren, accept my offer- 
 ing a wild rose that I discovered in the thickest part of the wood. 
 It is not a civilized rose. Now, Cleveland, a word with you." 
 
 "And now, Mr. Maltravers, I amd<?/r0/,"said Lady Florence. 
 
 " Pardon me, I have no secrets from you in this matter or 
 rather, these matters; for there are two to be discussed. In 
 the first place, Lady Florence, that poor Cesarini, you know 
 and like him nay, no blushes." 
 
 " Did I blush ? then it was in recollection of an old reproach 
 of yours." 
 
 "At its justice! well, no matter. He is one for whom I 
 always felt a lively interest. His very morbidity of tempera- 
 ment only increases my anxiety for his future fate. I have re- 
 ceived a letter from De Montaigne, his brother-in-law, who 
 seems seriously uneasy about Castruccio. He wishes him to 
 leave England at once, as the sole means of restoring his broken 
 fortunes. De Montaigne has the opportunity of procuring for 
 him a diplomatic situation, which may not again occur and but 
 you know the man ! what shall we do ? I am sure he will not 
 listen to me; he looks on me as an interested rival for fame." 
 
 " Do you think I have any subtler eloquence ? " said Cleveland. 
 " No, I am an author, too. Come, I think your ladyship must 
 be the arch-negotiator."
 
 262 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 " He has genius, he has merit," said Maltravers, pleadingly: 
 " he wants nothing but time and experience to wean him from 
 his foibles. Will you try to save him, Lady Florence ? " 
 
 " Why ! nay, I must not be obdurate ; I will see him when I 
 go to town. It is like you, Mr. Maltravers, to feel this interest in 
 one " 
 
 ' Who does not like me, you would say ; but he will some 
 day or other. Besides, I owe him deep gratitude. In his 
 weaker qualities I have seen many which all literary men might 
 iiu-.ur, without strict watch over themselves ; and let me add, 
 alsc, his family have great claims on me." 
 
 *' You believe in the soundness of his heart, and in the integ- 
 rity of his honor?" said Cleveland, inquiringly. 
 
 <f Indeed I do ; these are, these must be, the redeeming 
 qualities of poets." 
 
 Maltravers spoke warmly; and such at that time was his influ- 
 ence over Florence that his words formed alas, too fatally ! 
 her estimate of Castruccio's character, which had at first been 
 high, but which his own presumption had latterly shaken. She 
 had seen him three or four times in the interval between the 
 receipt of his apologetic letter and her visit to Cleveland, and 
 he had seemed to her rather sullen than humbled. But she felt 
 for the vanity she herself had wounded. 
 
 " And now," continued Maltravers, " for my second subject 
 of consultation. But that is political ; it will weary Lady 
 Florence?" 
 
 "Oh, no ; to politics I am never indifferent : they always in- 
 spire me with contempt or admiration, according to the motives 
 of those who bring the science into action. Pray say on." 
 
 " Well," said Cleveland, " one confidant at a time ; you will 
 forgive me, for I see my guests coming across the lawn, and I 
 may as well make a diversion in your favor. Ernest can consult 
 me at any time." 
 
 Cleveland walked away ; but the intimacy between Maltrav- 
 ers and Florence was of so frank a nature, that there was noth- 
 ing embarrassing in the thought of a tete-&-tete. 
 
 " Lady Florence," said Ernest, " there is no one in the world 
 with whom I can confer so cheerfully as with you. I am almost 
 glad of Cleveland's absence, for, with all his amiable and fine 
 qualities, ' the world is too much with him,' and we do not argue 
 from the same data. Pardon my prelude now to my position. 
 
 I have received a letter from Mr. . That statesman, whom 
 
 none but those acquainted with the chivalrous beauty of his 
 nature can understand or appreciate, sees before him the most
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 263 
 
 brilliant career that ever opened in this country to a public man 
 not born an aristocrat. He has asked me to form one of the 
 new administration that he is about to create : the place of- 
 fered to me is above my merits, nor suited to what I have yet 
 done, though, perhaps, it be suited to what I may yet do. 1 
 make that qualification, for you know," added Ernest, with a 
 proud smile, "that I am sanguine and self -confident." 
 
 "You accept the proposal ? " 
 
 " Nay, should I not reject it ? Our politics are the same 
 only for the moment, our ultimate objects are widely different. 
 
 To serve with Mr. , I must make an unequal compromise 
 
 abandon nine opinions to promote one. Is not this a capitula- 
 tion of that great citadel, one's own conscience? No man will 
 call me inconsistent, for, in public life, to agree with another 
 on a party question is all that is required; the thousand questions 
 not yet ripened, and lying dark and concealed in the future, are 
 not inquired into and divined ; but I own I shall deem myself 
 worse than inconsistent. For this is my dilemma, if I use 
 this noble spirit merely to advance one object, and then desert 
 him where he halts, I am treacherous to him ; if I halt with him, 
 but one of my objects is effected, I am treacherous to myself. 
 Such are my views. It is with pain I arrive at them, for, at 
 first, my heart beat with a selfish ambition." 
 
 " You are right, you are right," exclaimed Florence, with 
 glowing cheeks; "how could I doubt you? I comprehend the 
 sacrifice you make ; for a proud thing it is to soar above 
 the predictions of foes in that palpable road to honor which the 
 world's hard eyes can see, and the world's cold heart can mea- 
 sure ; but prouder is it to feel that you have never advanced 
 one step to the goal, which remembrance would retract. No, 
 my friend, wait your time, confident that it must come, when 
 conscience and ambition can go hand in hand when the broad 
 objects of a luminous and enlarged policy lie before you like a 
 chart, and you can calculate every step of the way without peril 
 of being lost. Ah, let them still call loftiness of purpose and 
 whiteness of soul the dreams of a theorist, even if they be so, 
 the Ideal in this case is better than the Practical. Meanwhile 
 your position is not one to forfeit lightly- Before you is that 
 throne in literature which it requires no doubtful step to win, if 
 you have, as I believe, the mental power to attain it. An ambi- 
 tion that may indeed be relinquished, if a more troubled career 
 can better achieve those public purposes at which both letters 
 and policy should aim, but which is not to be surrendered for 
 the rewards of a placeman or the advancement of a courtier."
 
 264 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 It was while uttering these noble and inspiring sentiments 
 that Florence Lascelles suddenly acquired in Ernest's eyes a 
 loveliness with which they had not before invested her. 
 
 " Oh," he said, as with a sudden impulse he lifted her hand 
 to his lips, " blessed be the hour in which you gave me your 
 friendship ! These are the thoughts I have longed to hear 
 from living lips, when I have been tempted to believe patriot- 
 ism a delusion, and virtue but a name." 
 
 Lady Florence heard, and her whole form seemed changed, 
 she was no longer the majestic sibyl, but the attached, timorous, 
 delighted woman. 
 
 It so happened that in her confusion she dropped from her 
 hand the flower that Maltravers had given her, and, involunta- 
 rily glad of a pretext to conceal her countenance, she stooped 
 to take it from the ground. In so doing, a letter fell from her 
 bosom, and Maltravers, as he bent forward to forestall her own 
 movement, saw that the direction was to himself, and in the 
 handwriting of his unknown correspondent. He seized the 
 letter, and gazed in flattered and entranced astonishment, first 
 on the writing, next on the detected writer. Florence grew 
 deadly pale, and, covering her face with her hands, burst into 
 tears. 
 
 "O fool that I was," cried Ernest, in the passion of the 
 moment, " not to know not to have felt that there were not 
 two Florences in the world ! But if the thought had crossed 
 me, I would not have dared to harbor it." 
 
 " Go, go," sobbed Florence ; " leave me, in mercy leave me ! " 
 
 " Not till you bid me rise," said Ernest, in emotion scarcely 
 less deep than hers, as he sank on his knees at her feet. 
 
 Need I go on ? When they left that spot, a soft confession 
 had been made deep vows interchanged, and Ernest Mal- 
 travers was the accepted suitor of Florence Lascelles.
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 265 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 " A hundred fathers would in my situation tell you that, as you are of noole 
 extraction, you should marry a nobleman. But I do not say so. I will not 
 sacrifice my child to any prejudice." KOTZEBUE : Lover's Vows, 
 
 " Take heed, my lord ; the welfare of us all 
 Hangs on the cutting short that fraudful man." 
 
 SHAKESPEARE : Henry VI. 
 " O, how this spring of love resembleth 
 
 Th' uncertain glory of an April day ; 
 Which now shows all the beauty of the sun, 
 And by-and-by a cloud takes all away ! " 
 
 SHAKESPEARE : The 7'wo Gentlemen of Ve- vna. 
 
 WHEN Maltravers was once more in his solitary apartment, 
 he felt as in a dream. He had obeyed an impulse, irresistible, 
 perhaps, but one with which the conscience of his heart was 
 not satisfied. A voice whispered to him, " Thou hast deceived 
 her and thyself thou dost not love her." In vain he re:alled 
 her beauty, her grace, her genius her singular and enthasias- 
 tic passion for himself the voice still replied, " Thou dost 
 love. Bid farewell to thy fond dreams of a life more biessed 
 than that of mortals. From the stormy sea of the futurs are 
 blotted out eternally for thee Calypso and her Golden Isle. 
 Thou canst no more paint on the dim canvas of thy desire s the 
 form of her with whom thou couldst dwell forever. Thou 
 hast been unfaithful to thine own ideal thou hast given thy- 
 self for ever and for ever to another thou hast renounced 
 hope thou must live as in a prison, with a being with whom 
 thou hast not the harmony of love." 
 
 " No matter," said Maltravers, almost alarmed, and starting 
 from these thoughts. "I am betrothed to one who loves me 
 it is folly and dishonor to repent and to repine. I have gone 
 through the best years of youth without finding the Egeria with 
 whom the cavern would be sweeter than a throne. Why live 
 to the grave a vain and visionary Nympholept ? Out of the real 
 world could I have made a nobler choice ?" 
 
 While Maltravers thus communed with himself, Lady Flor- 
 ence passed into her father's dressing-room, and there awaited 
 his return from London. She knew his worldly views she 
 know also the pride of her affianced, and she felt that she alone 
 could mediate between the two. 
 
 Lord Saxingham at last returned ; busy, bustling, important, 
 and good-humored as usual. " Well, Flory, well ? glad to see 
 you quite blooming, I declare, never saw you with such a
 
 266 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 color monstrous like me, certainly. We always had fine com- 
 plexions and fine eyes in our family. But I'm rather late 
 first bell rung we ci-devant jeunes hommes are rather long dress- 
 ing, and you are not dressed yet, I see." 
 
 " My dearest father, I wished to speak with you on a matter 
 of much importance." 
 
 " Do you ! what, immediately ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Well, what is it ? your Slingsby property, I suppose." 
 
 <; No, my dear father pray sit down and hear me patiently." 
 
 Lord Saxingham began to be both alarmed and curious 
 he seated himself in silence, and looked anxiously in the face 
 of his daughter. 
 
 " You have always been very indulgent to me," commenced 
 Florence, with a half-smile, " and I have had my own way more 
 than most young ladies. Believe me, my dear father, I am 
 most grateful, not only for your affection, but your esteem. I 
 have been a strange, wild girl, but I am now about to reform ; 
 and as the first step, I ask your consent to give myself a pre- 
 ceptor and a guide " 
 
 " A what ! " cried Lord Saxingham. 
 
 " In other words, I am about to to well, the truth must 
 out to marry." 
 
 " Has the Duke of been here to-day ? " 
 
 " Not that I know of. But it is no duke to whom I have 
 promised my hand it is a nobler and rarer dignity that has 
 caught my ambition. Mr. Maltravers has " 
 
 " Mr. Maltravers ! Mr. Devil ! the girl's mad ! don't talk 
 to me, child, I won't consent to any such nonsense. A coun- 
 try gentleman very respectable, very clever, and all that, but 
 it's no use talking my mind's made up. With your fortune, 
 too !" 
 
 " My dear father, I will not marry without your consent, 
 though my fortune is settled on me, and I am of age." 
 
 "There's a good child and now let me dress we shall be late." 
 
 " No, not yet," said Lady Florence, throwing her arm caress- 
 ingly round her father's neck " I shall marry Mr. Maltravers, 
 but it will be with your full approval. Just consider ; if I mar- 
 ried the Duke of , he would expect all my fortune, such as 
 
 it is. Ten thousand a year is at my disposal ; if I marry Mr.. 
 Maltravers, it will be settled on you I always meant it it is a 
 poor return for your kindness, your indulgence but it will show 
 that your own Flory is not ungrateful." 
 
 " I won't hear."
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 267 
 
 " Stop listen to reason. You are not rich you are entitled 
 but to a small pension if you ever resign office ; and your offi- 
 cial salary, I have often heard you say, does not prevent you 
 from being embarrassed. To whom should a daughter give 
 from her superfluities, but to a parent? From whom should a 
 parent receive,|but from a child, who can never repay his love ? 
 Ah, this is nothing ; but you you who have never crossed her 
 lightest whim do not destroy all the hopes of happiness your 
 Florence can ever form." 
 
 Florence wept, and Lord Saxingham, who was greatly 
 moved, let fall a few tears also. Perhaps it is too much to 
 say that the pecuniary part of the proffered arrangement en- 
 tirely won him over ; but still the way it was introduced soft- 
 ened his heart. He possibly thought that it was better to have 
 a good and grateful daughter in a country gentleman's wife, 
 than a sullen and thankless one in a duchess. However that 
 may be, certain it is that before Lord Saxingham began his 
 toilet he promised to make no obstacle to the marriage, and all 
 he asked in return was that at least three months (but that, 
 indeed, the lawyers would require) should elapse before it took 
 place ; and on this understanding Florence left him, radiant 
 and joyous as Flora herself when the sun of spring r^akes the 
 world a garden. Never had she thought so little of her beauty, 
 and never had it seemed so glorious as that happy evening. But 
 Maltravers was pale and thoughtful, and Florence in vain sought 
 his eyes during the dinner, which seemed to her insufferably 
 long. Afterward, however, they met, and conversed apart the 
 rest of the evening ; and the beauty of Florence began to pro- 
 duce upon Ernest's heart its natural effect ; and that evening 
 ah, how Florence treasured the remembrance of every hour, 
 every minute of its annals ! 
 
 It would have been amusing to witness the short conversation 
 between Lord Saxingham and Maltravers, when the latter sought 
 the Earl at night in his lordship's room. To Lord Saxingham's 
 surprise, not a word did Maltravers utter of his own subor- 
 dinate pretensions to Lady Florence's hand. Coldly, dryly, and 
 almost haughtily, did he make the formal proposals, "as if [as 
 Lord Saxingham afterwards said to Ferrers] the man were doing 
 me the highest possible honor in taking my daughter, the beauty 
 of London, with fifty thousand a year, off my hands." But this 
 was quite Maltravers ! if he had been proposing to the daugh- 
 ter of a country curate, without a sixpence, he would have been 
 the humblest of the humble. The Earl was embarrassed and 
 discomposed h? was, almost awed by the Siddorjs-lik.e court'
 
 268 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 tenance and Coriolanus-like air of his future son-in-law he 
 even hinted nothing of the compromise as to time which he 
 had made with his daughter. He chought it better to leave it to 
 Lady Florence to arrange that matter. They shook hands fri- 
 gidly and parted. Maltravers went next into Cleveland's room, 
 and communicated all to the delighted old man, whose con- 
 gratulations were so fervid that Maltravers felt it would be a 
 sin not to fancy himself the happiest man in the world. That 
 night he wrote his refusal of the appointment offered him. 
 
 The next day Lord Saxingham went to his office in Down- 
 ing Street as usual, and Lady Florence and Ernest found an 
 opportunity to ramble through the grounds alone. 
 
 There it was that occurred those confessions, sweet alike to 
 utter and to hear. Then did Florence speak of her early years 
 of her self-formed and solitary mind of her youthful dreams 
 and reveries. Nothing around her to excite interest or admira- 
 tion, or the more romantic, the higher, or the softer qualities of 
 her nature, she turned to contemplation and to books. It is 
 the combination of the faculties with the affections, exiled from 
 action, and rinding no worldly vent, which produces Poetry, the 
 child of passion and of thought. Hence, before the real cares 
 of existence claim them, the young, who are abler yet lonelier 
 than their fellows, are nearly always poets : and Florence was 
 a poetess. In minds like this, the first book that seems to em- 
 body and represent their own most cherished and beloved trains 
 of sentiment and ideas ever creates a reverential and deep 
 enthusiasm. The lonely, and proud, and melancholy soul of 
 Maltravers, which made itself visible in all his creations, be- 
 came to Florence like a revealer of the secrets of her own 
 nature. She conceived an intense and mysterious interest in 
 the man whose mind exercised so pervading a power over her 
 own. She made herself acquainted with his pursuits, his 
 career she fancied she found a symmetry and harmony between 
 the actual being and the breathing genius she imagined she 
 understood what seemed dark and obscure to others. He whom 
 she had never seen grew to her a never-absent friend. His ambi- 
 tion, his reputation, were to her like a possession of her own. So 
 at length, in the folly of her young romance, she wrote to him, 
 and dreaming of no discovery, anticipating no result, the habit 
 once indulged became to her that luxury which writing for the 
 eye of the world is to an author oppressed with the burden of 
 his own thoughts. At length she saw him, and he did not de- 
 stroy her illusion. She might have recovered from the spell if 
 he had found him ready at once to worship at her shrine. The
 
 EfcttfeSt MALtRAVEfeS. 2*9 
 
 mixture of reserve and frankness frankness of language, reserve 
 of manner which belonged to Maltravers, piqued her. Her 
 vanity became the auxiliary to her imagination. At length they 
 met at Cleveland's house ; their intercourse became more unre- 
 strained their friendship was established, and she discovered 
 that she had wilfully implicated her happiness in indulging her 
 dreams ; yet even then she believed that Maltravers loved her, 
 despite his silence upon the subject of love. His manner, his 
 words bespoke his interest in her, and his voice was ever soft 
 when he spoke to women ; for he had much of the old chivalric 
 respect and tenderness for the sex. What was general, it was 
 natural that she should apply individually she who had walked 
 the world but to fascinate and to conquer. It was probable 
 that her great wealth and social position imposed a check on 
 the delicate pride of Maltravers she hoped so she believed 
 it yet she felt her danger, and her own pride at last took alarm. 
 In such a moment she had resumed the character of the un- 
 known correspondent she had written to Maltravers ad- 
 dressed her letter to his own house, and meant the next day to 
 have gone to London and posted it there. In this letter she 
 had spoken of his visit to Cleveland, of his position with her- 
 self. She exhorted him, if he loved her, to confess, and if not, 
 to fly. She had written artfully and eloquently : she was desir- 
 ous of expediting her own fate ; and then, with that letter in her 
 bosom, she had met Maltravers, and the reader has learned the 
 rest. Something of all this the blooming and happy Florence 
 now revealed: and when she ended with uttering the woman's 
 soft fear that she had been too bold, is it wonderful that Mal- 
 travers, clasping her to his bosom, felt the gratitude and the de- 
 lighted vanity which seemed even to himself like love ? And 
 into love those feelings rapidly and deliciously will merge, if 
 fate and accident permit ! 
 
 And now they were by the side of the water ; and the sun was 
 gently setting as on the eve before. It was about the same hour, 
 the fairest of an autumn day ; none were near the slope of the 
 hill hid the house from their view. Had they been in the 
 desert they could not have been more alone. It was not silence 
 that breathed around them, as they sat on that bench with the 
 broad beech spreading over them its trembling canopy of 
 leaves ; but those murmurs of living nature which are sweeter 
 than silence itself the songs of birds the tinkling bell of the 
 sheep on the opposite bank the wind sighing through the trees, 
 and the gentle heaving of the glittering waves that washed the 
 odorous reed and water-lily at their feet. They had both been
 
 iJ6 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 for some moments silent ; and Florence now broke the pause, 
 but in tones more low than usual. 
 
 "Ah !" said she, turning towards him, "these hours are hap- 
 pier than we can find in that crowded world whither your destiny 
 must call us. For me, ambition seems forever at an end. I 
 have found all ; I am no longer haunted with a desire of gain- 
 ing a vague something, a shadowy empire, that we call fame or 
 power. The sole thought that disturbs the calm current of my 
 soul is the fear to lose a particle of the rich possession I have 
 gained." 
 
 " May your fears ever be as idle ! " 
 
 " And you really love me ! I repeat to myself ever and ever 
 that one phrase. I could once have borne to lose you, now, it 
 would be my death. I despaired of ever being loved for my- 
 self ; my wealth was a fatal dower ; I suspected avarice in every 
 vow, and saw the base world lurk at the bottom of every heart 
 that offered itself at my shrine. But you, Ernest you, I feel, 
 never could weigh gold in the balance and you if you love 
 love me for myself." 
 
 " And I shall love thee more with every hour." 
 
 " I know not that : I dread that you will love me less when 
 you know me more. I fear I shall seem to you exacting I am 
 
 jealous already. I was jealous even of Lady T , when I saw 
 
 you by her side this morning. I would have your every look 
 monopolize your every word." 
 
 This confession did not please Maltravers, as it might have 
 done if he had been more deeply in love. Jealousy, in a woman 
 of so vehement and imperious a nature, was indeed a passion to 
 be dreaded. 
 
 " Do not say so, dear Florence," said he with a very grave 
 smile ; "for love should have implicit confidence as its bond and 
 nature and jealousy is doubt, and doubt is the death of love." 
 
 A shade passed over Florence's too expressive face, and she 
 sighed heavily. 
 
 It was at this time that Maltravers, raising his eyes, saw the 
 form of Lumley Ferrers approaching towards them from the 
 opposite end of the terrace : at the same instant a dark cloud 
 crept over the sky, and the waters seemed overcast, and the 
 breeze fell : a chill and strange presentiment of evil shot across 
 Ernest's heart, and, like many imaginative persons, he was un- 
 consciously superstitious as to presentiments. 
 
 "We are no longer alone," said he, rising ; "your cousin has 
 doubtless learned our engagement, and comes to congratulate 
 your suitor."
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 271 
 
 "Tell me," he continued, musingly, as they walked on to meet 
 Ferrers, "are you very partial to Lumley? what think you of 
 his character? it is one that perplexes me ; sometimes I think 
 that it has changed since we parted in Italy sometimes I think 
 that it has not changed, but ripened." 
 
 "Lumley I have known from a child, "replied Florence, "and 
 see much to admire and like in him ; I admire his boldness and 
 candor ; his scorn of the world's littleness and falsehood ; I like 
 his good-nature his gayety and fancy his heart better than it 
 may seem to the superficial observer." 
 
 "Yet he appears to me selfish and unprincipled." 
 
 " It is from a fine contempt of the vices and follies of men that 
 he has contracted the habit of consulting his own resolute will 
 and, believing everything done in this noisy stage of action a 
 cheat, he has accommodated his ambition to the fashion. Though 
 without what is termed genius, he will obtain a distinction and 
 power that few men of genius arrive at." 
 
 "Because genius is essentially honest," said Maltravers. 
 " However, you teach me to look on him more indulgently. I 
 suspect the real frankness of men whom I know to be hypocrites 
 in public life but, perhaps, I judge by too harsh a standard." 
 
 " Third persons," said Ferrers, as he now joined them, "are 
 seldom unwelcome in the country ; and I flatter myself that I 
 am the exact thing wanting to complete the charm of this 
 beautiful landscape." 
 
 "You are ever modest, my cousin." 
 
 " It is my weak side, I know ; but I shall improve with years 
 and wisdom. What say you, Maltravers?" and Ferrers passed 
 his arm affectionately through Ernest's. 
 
 "By-the-by, I am too familiar I am sunk in the world. I 
 am a thing to be sneered at by you old-family people. I am 
 next heir to a bran-new Brummagem peerage. Gad, I feel 
 brassy already ! " 
 
 "What, is Mr. Templeton ?" 
 
 " Mr. Templeton no more ; he is defunct, extinguished out 
 of the ashes rises the phoenix Lord Vargravc. We had thought 
 of a more sounding title ; De Courval has a nobler sound, but 
 my good uncle has nothing of the Norman about him : so we 
 dropped the De as ridiculous Vargrave is euphonious and 
 appropriate. My uncle has a manor of that name Baron 
 Vargrave of Vargrave." 
 
 "Ah I congratulate you." 
 
 "Thank you. Lady Vargrave may destroy all my hopes yet. 
 But nothing venture, nothing have. My uncle will be gazetted
 
 272 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 to-day. Poor man, he will be delighted ; and as he certainly 
 owes it much to me, he will, I suppose, be very grateful or 
 hate me ever afterwards that is a toss-up. A benefit conferred 
 is a complete hazard between the thumb of pride and the fore- 
 finger of affection. Heads gratitude, tails hatred ! There, that's 
 a simile in the fashion of the old writers; 'Well of English 
 undefiled ! ' humph ! " 
 
 "So that beautiful child is Mrs. Templeton's, or rather Lady 
 Vargrave's, daughter by a former marriage?" said Maltravers, 
 abstractedly. 
 
 "Yes, it is astonishing how fond he is of her. Pretty little 
 creature confoundedly artful, though. By the. way, Maltravers, 
 we had an unexpectedly stormy night the last of the session 
 strong division ministers hard pressed. I made quite a good 
 speech for them. I suppose, however, there will be some change 
 the moderates will be taken in. Perhaps by next session I may 
 congratulate you." 
 
 Ferrers looked hard at Maltravers while he spoke. But Ernest 
 replied coldly and evasively, and they were now joined by a 
 party of idlers, lounging along the lawn in expectation of the 
 first dinner bell. Cleveland was in high consultation about the 
 proper spot for a new fountain ; and he summoned Maltravers 
 to give his opinion whether it should spring from the centre of a 
 flower-bed or beneath the drooping shade of a large willow. 
 AVhile this interesting discussion was going on, Ferrers drew 
 aside his cousin, and, pressing her hand affectionately, said, in a 
 soft and tender voice : 
 
 " My dear Florence for in such a time permit me to be 
 familiar I understand from Lord Saxingham, whom I met in 
 London, that you are engaged to Maltravers. Busy as I was, I 
 could not rest without coming hither to offer my best and most 
 earnest wish for your happiness. I may seem a careless, I am 
 considered a selfish, person ; but my heart is warm to those who 
 really interest it. And never did brother offer up for the welfare 
 of a beloved sister prayers more anxious and fond than those 
 that poor Lumley Ferrers breathes for Florence Lascelles." 
 
 Florence was startled and melted the whole tone and manner 
 of Lumley was so different from those he usually assumed. 
 She warmly returned the pressure of his hand, and thanked him 
 briefly, but with emotion. 
 
 "No one is great and good enough for you, Florence," con- 
 tinued Ferrers "no one. But I admire your disinterested and 
 generous choice. Maltravers and I have not been friends lately ; 
 but I respect him, as all must. He has noble qualities, and he
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 273 
 
 has great ambition. In addition to the deep and ardent love 
 that you cannot fail to inspire, he will owe you eternal gratitude. 
 In this aristocratic country your hand secures to him the most 
 brilliant fortunes, the most proud career. His talents will now 
 be measured by a very different standard. His merits will not 
 pass through any subordinate grades, but leap at once into the 
 highest posts ; and, as he is even more proud than ambitious, 
 how he must bless one who raises him, without effort, into posi- 
 tions of eminent command ! " 
 
 "Oh, he does not think of such worldly advantages he, the 
 too pure, the too refined!" said Florence, with trembling eager- 
 ness. " He has no avarice, nothing mercenary in his nature !" 
 
 "No ; there you indeed do him justice, there is not a particle 
 of baseness in his mind I did not say there was. The very 
 greatness of his aspirations, his indignant and scornful pride, 
 lift him above the thought of your wealth, your rank, except 
 as means to an end." 
 
 "You mistake still," said Florence, faintly smiling, but turn- 
 ing pale. 
 
 "No," resumed Ferrers, not appearing to hear her, and as if 
 pursuing his own thoughts. " I always predicted that Mal- 
 travers would make a distinguished connection in marriage. 
 He would not permit himself to love the low-born or poor. 
 His affections are in his pride as much as in his heart. He is 
 a great creature you have judged wisely and may Heaven 
 bless you ! " 
 
 With these words Ferrers left her, and Florence, when she 
 descended to dinner, wore a moody and clouded brow. Ferrers 
 stayed three days at the house. He was peculiarly cordial to 
 Maltravers, and spoke little to Florence. But that little never 
 failed to leave upon her mind a jealous and anxious irritability, 
 to which she yielded with morbid facility. In order perfectly to 
 understand Florence Lascelles, it mnst be remembered that, 
 with all her dazzling qualities, she was not what is called a 
 lovable person. A certain hardness in her disposition, even 
 as a child, had prevented her winding into the hearts of those 
 around her. Deprived of her mother's care having little or 
 no intercourse with children of her own age brought up with 
 a starched governess, or female relations, poor and proud she 
 never had contracted the softness of manner which the recipro- 
 cation of household affections usually produces. With a haughty 
 consciousness of her powers, her birth, her position, advantages 
 always dinned into her ear, she grew up solitary, unsocial, and 
 imperious. Her father was rather proud than fond of her
 
 274 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 her servants did not love her she had too little consideration 
 for others, too little blandness and suavity to be loved by in- 
 feriors she was too learned and too stern to find pleasure in 
 the conversation and society of young ladies of her own age : 
 she had no friends. Now, having really strong affections, she 
 felt all this, but rather with resentment than grief she longed 
 to be loved, but did not seek to be so she felt as if it was her 
 fate not to be loved she blamed fate, not herself. 
 
 When, with all the proud, pure, and generous candor of her 
 nature, she avowed to Ernest her love for him, she naturally 
 expected the most ardent and passionate return ; nothing less 
 could content her. But the habit and experience of all the 
 past made her eternally suspicious that she was not loved ; it 
 was wormwood and poison for her to fancy that Maltravers had 
 ever considered her advantages of fortune, except as a bar to 
 his pretensions and a check on his passion. It was the same 
 thing to her whether it was the pettiest avarice or the loftiest 
 aspirations that actuated her lover, if he had been actuated in 
 his heart by any sentiment but love ; and Ferrers, to whose eyes 
 her foibles were familiar, knew well how to make his praises of 
 Ernest arouse against Ernest all her exacting jealousies and 
 irritable doubts. 
 
 "It is strange," said he, one evening, as he was conversing 
 with Florence, "how complete and triumphant a conquest you 
 have effected over Ernest ! Will you believe it ? he conceived 
 a prejudice against you when he first saw you he even said 
 that you were made to be admired, not to be loved." 
 
 " Ha ! did he so ? true, true he has almost said the same 
 thing to me." 
 
 "But now how he must love you! Surely he has all the 
 signs." 
 
 "And what are the signs, most learned Lumley ?" said Flor- 
 ence, forcing a smile. 
 
 '* Why, in the first place, you will doubtless observe that he 
 never takes his eyes from you with whomsoever he converses, 
 whatever his occupation, those eyes, restless and pining, wan- 
 der around for one glance from you." 
 
 Florence sighed, and looked up ; at the other end of the room 
 her lover was conversing with Cleveland, and his eyes never 
 wandered in search of her. 
 
 Ferrers did not seem to notice this practical contradiction of 
 his theory, but went on. 
 
 " Then surely his whole character is changed that brow has 
 lost its calm majesty, that deep voice its assured and tranquil
 
 MALTRAVERS. 275 
 
 tone. Has he not become more humble, and embarrassed, and 
 fretful, living only on your smile, reproachful if you look upon 
 another sorrowful if your lip be less smiling a thing of doubt 
 and dread, and trembling agitation slave to a shadow no 
 longer lord of the creation ? Such is love, such is the love you 
 should inspire, such is the love Maltravers is capable of for I 
 have seen him testify it to another. But," added Lumley, 
 quickly, and as if afraid he had said too much, " Lord Saxing- 
 ham is looking out for me to make up his whist-table. I go 
 to-morrow when shall you be in town ? " 
 
 " In the course of the week," said Florence, mechanically ; 
 and Lumley walked away. 
 
 In another moment, Maltravers, who had been more obser- 
 vant than he seemed, joined her where she sat. 
 
 "Dear Florence," said he, tenderly, "you look pale I fear 
 you are not well this evening." 
 
 "No affectation of an interest you do not feel, pray," said 
 Florence, with a scornful lip but swimming eyes. 
 
 " Do not feel, Florence ! " 
 
 " It is the first time, at least, that you have observed whether 
 I am well or ill. But it is no matter." 
 
 " My dear Florence, why this tone ? how have I offended 
 you ? Has Lumley said " 
 
 " Nothing but in your praise. Oh, be not afraid, you are one 
 of those of whom all speak highly. But do not let me detain 
 you here ! let us join our host you have left him alone." 
 
 Lady Florence waited for no reply, nor did Maltravers attempt 
 to detain her. He looked pained, and when she turned round 
 to catch a glance, that she hoped would be reproachful, he was 
 gone. Lady Florence became nervous and uneasy, talked she 
 knew not what, and laughed hysterically. She, however, de- 
 ceived Cleveland into the notion that she was in the best possi- 
 ble spirits. 
 
 By-and-by she rose, and passed through the suite of rooms : 
 her heart was with Maltravers still he was not visible. At 
 length she entered the conservatory, and there she observed 
 him, through the open casement/walking slowly, and with folded 
 arms, upon the moonlit lawn. There was a short struggle in 
 her breast between woman's pride and woman's love ; the last 
 conquered, and she joined him. 
 
 " Forgive me, Ernest," she said, extending her hand, " I was 
 to blame." 
 
 Ernest kissed the fair hand, and answered touchingly : 
 
 " Florence, you have the power to wound me ; be forbearing
 
 276 fcRNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 in its exercise. Heaven knows that I would not, from the vain 
 desire of showing command over you, inflict upon you a single 
 pang. Ah ! do not fancy that in lover's quarrels there is any 
 sweetness that compensates the sting." 
 
 " I told you I was too exacting, Ernest. I told you, you Would 
 not love me so well when you knew me better." 
 
 " And were a false prophetess. Florence, every day, every 
 hour I love you more better than I once thought I could." 
 
 "Then," cried this wayward girl, anxious to pain herself, 
 " then once you did not love me ? " 
 
 " Florence, I will be candid I did not. You are now rapidly 
 obtaining an empire over me, greater than my reason should 
 allow. But, beware : if my love be really a possession you 
 desire, beware how you arm my reason against you. Florence, 
 I am a proud man. My very consciousness of the more splen- 
 did alliances you could form renders me less humble a lover 
 than you might find in others. I were not worthy of you if I 
 were not tenacious of my self-respect." 
 
 "Ah ! " said Florence, to whose heart these words went home, 
 "forgive me but this once. I shall not forgive myself so soon." 
 
 And Ernest drew her to his heart, and felt that ,with all her 
 faults, a woman whom he feared he could not render as happy 
 as her sacrifices to him deserved was becoming very dear to 
 him. In his heart he knew that she was not formed to render 
 him happy ; but that was not his thought, his fear. Her love 
 had rooted out all thought of self from that generous breast. 
 His only anxiety was to requite her. 
 
 They walked along the sward, silent, thoughtful ; and Flor- 
 ence melancholy, yet blessed. 
 
 " That serene heaven, those lovely stars," said Maltravers at 
 last, "do they'not preach to us the Philosophy of Peace ? Do 
 they not tell us how much of calm belongs to the dignity of 
 man and the sublime essence of the soul ? Petty distractions 
 and self-wrought cares are not congenial to our real nature ; 
 their very disturbance is a proof that they are at war with our 
 natures. Ah, sweet Florence, let us learn from yon skies, over 
 which, in the faith of the Poets of old, brooded the wings of 
 primeval and serenest Love, what earthly love should be, a 
 thing pure as light and peaceful as immortality, watching over 
 the stormy world, that it shall survive, and high above the clouds 
 and vapors that roll below. Let little minds introduce into 
 the holiest of affections all the bitterness and tumult of common 
 life ! Let us love as beings who will one day be inhabitants of 
 the stars ! "
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS, 277 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 " A slippery and subtle knave ; a finder-out of occasions; that has an eye 
 can stamp and counterfeit advantages." Othello. 
 
 " Knavery's plain face is never seen till used." Ibid. 
 
 "You see, my dear Lumley," said Lord Saxingham, as the 
 next day the two kinsmen were on their way to London in the 
 Earl's chariot, "you see that, at the best, this marriage of Flory's 
 is a cursed bore." 
 
 " Why, indeed, it has its disadvantages. Maltravers is a gentle- 
 man and a man of genius; but gentlemen are plentiful, and his 
 genius only tells against us, since he is not even of our politics." 
 
 " Exactly, my own son-in-law voting against me ! " 
 
 "A practicable, reasonable man would change: not so Mal- 
 travers and all the estates, and all the parliamentary influence, 
 and all the wealth that ought to go with the family and with the 
 party, go out of the family and against the party. You are quite 
 right, my dear lord it is a cursed bore." 
 
 "And she might have had the Duke of , a man with a 
 
 rental of ^100,000 a year. It is too ridiculous. This Mal- 
 travers, d d disagreeable fellow, too, eh?" 
 
 "Stiff and stately much changed for the worse of late 
 years grown conceited and set up." 
 
 "Do you know, Lumley, I would rather, of the two, have 
 had you for my son-in-law." 
 
 Lumley half started. "Are you serious, my lord? I have 
 not Ernest's fortune I cannot make such settlements : my 
 lineage too, at least on my mother's side, is less ancient." 
 
 " Oh, as to settlements, Flory's fortune ought to be settled on 
 herself, and as compared with that fortune, what could Mal- 
 travers pretend to settle ? Neither she nor any children she may 
 have could want his^4,ooo a year,if he settled it all. Asfor family, 
 connections tell more nowadays than Norman descent, and for 
 the rest, you are likely to be old Templeton's heir, to have a peer- 
 age (a large sum of ready money is always useful) are rising in 
 the House one of our own set will soon be in office and, flat- 
 tery apart, a devilish good fellow into the bargain. Oh, I would 
 sooner a thousand times that Flory had taken a fancy to you ! " 
 
 Lumley Ferrers bowed his head, but said nothing. He fell 
 into a reverie, and Lord Saxingham took up his official red box, 
 became deep in its contents, and forgot all about the marriage 
 of his daughter. 
 
 pulled the check-string as the carriage entered Pall
 
 278 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 Mall, and desired to be set down at "The Travellers'." While 
 Lord Saxingham was borne on to settle the affairs of the nation, 
 not being able to settle those of his own household, Ferrers was 
 inquiring the address of Castruccio Cesarini. The porter was 
 unable to give it him. The Signer generally called every day 
 for his notes, but no one at the club knew where he lodged. 
 Ferrers wrote, and left with the porter, a line requesting Cesarini 
 to call on him as soon as possible, and bent his way to his house 
 in Great George Street. He went straight into his library, un- 
 locked his escritoire, and took out that letter which, the reader will 
 remember, Maltravers had written to Cesarini, and which Lumley 
 had secured ; carefully did he twice read over this effusion, and the 
 second time his face brightened and his eyes sparkled. It is now 
 time to lay this letter before the reader : it ran thus : 
 
 "Private and Confidential." 
 "MY DEAR CESARINI: 
 
 "The assurance of your friendly feelings is most welcome to 
 me. In much of what you say of marriage, I am inclined, though 
 with reluctance, to agree. As to Lady Florence herself, few per- 
 sons are more calculated to dazzle, perhaps to fascinate. But is 
 she a person to make a home happy to sympathize where she 
 has been accustomed to command to comprehend, and to yield 
 to the waywardness and irritability common to our fanciful and 
 morbid race to content herself with the homage of a single 
 heart ? I do not know her enough to decide the question; but 
 I know uer enough to feel deep solicitude and anxiety for your 
 happiness, if centred in a nature so imperious and so vain. But 
 you will remind me of my fortune, her station. You will say 
 that such are the sources from which, to an ambitious mind, 
 happiness may well be drawn ! Alas ! I fear that the man who 
 marries Lady Florence must indeed confine his dreams of 
 felicity to those harsh and disappointing realities. But, Cesarini, 
 these are not the words which, were we more intimate, I would 
 address to you. I doubt the reality of those affections which 
 you ascribe to her, and suppose devoted to yourself. She is 
 evidently fond of conquest. She sports with the victims she 
 makes. Her vanity dupes others, perhaps to be duped itself 
 at last. I will not say more to you. 
 "Yours, 
 
 "E. MALTRAVERS." 
 
 "Hurrah I" cried Ferrers, as he threw down the letter, and 
 rubbed his hands with delight. " I little thought, when I 
 gchemed for this letter, that chance would make it so inestim,-
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 279 
 
 ably serviceable. There is less to alter than I thought for 
 the clumsiest botcher in the world could manage it. Let me 
 look again. Hem, hem the first phrase to alter is this: ^1 
 know her enough to feel deep solicitude and anxiety for your 
 happiness, if centred in a nature so imperious and vain ' 
 scratch out 'your,' and put 'my.' All the rest good, good 
 till we come to ' affections which you ascribe to her, and sup- 
 pose devoted to yourself for * yourself write '///yself the 
 rest will do. Now, then, the date we must change it to the 
 present month, and the work is done. I wish that Italian block- 
 head would come. If I can but once make an irreparable 
 breach between her and Maltravers, I think I cannot fail of 
 securing his place ; her pique, her resentment, will hurry her 
 into taking the first who offers, by way of revenge. And, by 
 Jupiter, even if I fail (which I am sure I shall not), it will be 
 something to keep Flory as lady paramount for a duke of our 
 own party. I shall gain immensely by such a connection ; but 
 I lose everything and gain nothing by her marrying Maltravers 
 of opposite politics too whom I begin to hate like poison. 
 But no duke shall have her Florence Ferrers, the only allitera- 
 tion I ever liked yet it would sound rough in poetry." 
 
 LumJ^y then deliberately drew towards him his inkstand 
 " No penknife ! Ah, true, I never mend pens sad waste 
 must send out for one." He rang the bell, ordered a penknife 
 to be purchased, and the servant was still out when a knock at 
 the door was heard, and in a minute more Cesarini entered. 
 
 "Ah," said Lumley, assuming a melancholy air, "I am glad 
 that you are arrived; you will excuse my having written to you 
 so unceremoniously. You received my note sit down, pray 
 and how are you ? you look delicate can I offer you anything ?" 
 
 "Wine," said Cesarini, laconically, "wine; your climate 
 requires wine." 
 
 Here the servant entered with the penknife, and was ordered 
 to bring wine and sandwiches. Lumley then conversed lightly 
 on different matters till the wine appeared ; he was rather sur- 
 prised to observe Cesarini pour out and drink off glass upon 
 glass, with an evident craving for the excitement. When he 
 had satisfied himself, he turned his dark eyes to Ferrers, and 
 said, " You have news to communicate, I see it in your brow. 
 I am now ready to hear all." 
 
 " Well, then, listen to me ; you were right in your suspicions; 
 jealousy is ever a true diviner. I make no doubt Othello was 
 quite right, and Desdemona was no better than she should be. 
 Maltravers has proposed to my cousin and been accepted,"
 
 280 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 Cesarini's complexion grew perfectly ghastly ; his whole frame 
 shook like a leaf for a moment he seemed paralyzed. 
 
 " Curse him ! " said he, at last, drawing a deep breath, and 
 betwixt his grinded teeth " curse him, from the depths of the 
 heart he has broken !" 
 
 "And after such a letter to you! do you remember it? 
 here it is. He warns you against Lady Florence, and then 
 secures her to himself is this treachery ?" 
 
 " Treachery, black as hell ! I am an Italian," cried Cesarini, 
 springing to his feet, and with all the passions of his climate in 
 his face, "and I will be avenged ! Bankrupt in fortune, ruined 
 in hopes, blasted in heart I have still the godlike consolation 
 of the desperate I have revenge." 
 
 " Will you call him out ? " asked Lumley, musingly and calmly. 
 "Are you a dead shot ? If so, it is worth thinking about ; if not, 
 it is a mockery your shot misses, his goes in the air, seconds 
 interpose, and you both walk away devilish glad to get off so 
 well. Duels are humbug." 
 
 "Mr. Ferrers," said Cesarini, fiercely, "this is not a matter 
 of jest." 
 
 "I do not make it a jest; and what is more, Cesarini," said 
 Ferrers, with a concentrated energy far more commanding than 
 the Italian's fury, "what is more, I so detest Maltravers, I am 
 so stung by his cold superiority, so wroth with his success, so 
 loathe the thought of his alliance, that I would cut off this hand 
 to frustrate that marriage ! I do not jest, man ; but I have 
 method and sense in my hatred it is our English way." 
 
 Cesarini stared at the speaker gloomily, clenched his hand, 
 muttered, and strode rapidly to and fro the room. 
 
 "You would be avenged, so would I. Now what shall be the 
 means?" said Ferrers. 
 
 " I will stab him to the heart I will " 
 
 "Cease these tragic flights. Nay, frown and stamp not ; but 
 sit down and be reasonable, or leave me, and act for yourself." 
 
 "Sir," said Cesarini, with an eye that might have alarmed a 
 man less resolute than Ferrers," "have a care how you presume 
 on my distress." 
 
 " You are in distress, and refuse relief ; you are bankrupt in 
 fortune, and you rave like a poet, when you should be devising 
 and plotting for the attainment of boundless wealth. Revenge 
 and ambition may both be yours ; but they are prizes never won 
 but by a cautious foot as well as a bold hand." 
 
 " What would you have me do ? and what but his life would 
 content me?"
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 28l 
 
 " Take his life if you can I have no objection go and take 
 it ; only just observe this, if you miss your aim, or he, being the 
 stronger man, strike you down, you will be locked up in a mad- 
 house for the next year or two, at least ; and that ic not the 
 place in which I should like to pass the winter but as you will." 
 
 "You! you! But what are you to me? I will go. Good 
 day, sir." 
 
 "Stay a moment," said Ferrers, when he sawCesarini about 
 to leave the room ; " stay, take this chair, and listen to me 
 you had better " 
 
 Cesarini hesitated, and then, as it were, mechanically obeyed. 
 
 " Read that letter, whicli Maltravers wrote to you. You have 
 finished well now observe if Florence sees that letter, she 
 will not and cannot marry the man who wrote it you must 
 show it to her.* 
 
 "Ah, my guardian angel, I see it all! Yes, there are words 
 in this letter no woman so proud could ever pardon. Give it to 
 me again, I will go at once." 
 
 "Pshaw ! you are too quick; you have not remarked that this 
 letter was written five months ago, before Maltravers knew much 
 of Lady Florence. He himself has confessed to her that he did 
 not then love her so much the more would she value the con- 
 quest she has now achieved. Florence would smile at this letter 
 and say, 'Ah, he judges me differently now.' " 
 
 " Are you seeking to madden me ? What do you mean ? Did 
 you not just say that, did she see that letter, she would never 
 marry the writer?" 
 
 " Yes, yes, but the letter must be altered. We must erase the 
 date ; we must date it from to-day ; to-day Maltravers re- 
 turns to-day. We must suppose it written, not in answer to a 
 letter from you, demanding his advice and opinion as to your 
 marriage with Lady Florence, but in answer to a letter of yours 
 in which you congratulate him on his approaching marriage to 
 her. By the substitution of one pronoun for another, in two 
 places, the letter will read as well one way as another. Read it 
 again, and see ; or stop, I will be the lecturer." 
 
 Here Ferrers read over the letter, which, by the trifling 
 substitutions he proposed, might indeed bear the character he 
 wished to give it. 
 
 "Does the light break upon you now ? " said Ferrers. "Are 
 you prepared to go through a part that requires subtlety, deli- 
 cacy, address, and, above all, self-control? qualities that are 
 the common attributes of your countrymen." 
 
 "I will do all, fear me not. It may be villainous, it may be
 
 282 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 base ; but I cafe not, Maltravers shall not rival, master, eclipse 
 me in all things." 
 
 "Where are you lodging?" 
 
 "Where? out of town a little way." 
 
 " Take up your home with me for a few days. I cannot trust 
 you out of my sight. Send for your luggage ; I have a room at 
 your service." 
 
 Cesarini at first refused ; but a man who resolves on a crime 
 feels the awe of solitude and the necessity of a companion. He 
 went himself to bring his effects and promised to return to dinner. 
 
 " I must own," said Lumley, resettling himself at his desk, " this 
 is the dirtiest trick that ever I played ; but the glorious end 
 sanctifies the paltry means. After all, it is the mere prejudice 
 of gentlemanlike education." 
 
 A few seconds, and with the aid of the knife to erase, and the 
 pen to rewrite, Ferrers completed his task, with the exception 
 of the change of date, which on second thoughts, he reserved 
 as a matter to be regulated by circumstances. 
 
 " I think I have hit off his m's and ys tolerably," said he, 
 " considering I was not brought up to this sort of thing. But 
 the alteration- would be visible on close inspection. Cesarini 
 must read the letter to her, then if she glances over it herself it 
 will be with bewildered eyes and a dizzy brain. Above all, he 
 must not leave it with her, and must bind her to the closest se- 
 crecy. She is honorable, and will keep her word ; and so now 
 that matter is settled. I have just time before dinner to canter 
 down to my uncle's and wish the old fellow joy." 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 " And then my lord has much that he would state 
 All good to you." CRABBE : Tales of the Heart. 
 
 LORD VARGRAVE was sitting alone in his library, with his ac- 
 count-books before him. Carefully did he cast up the various 
 sums which, invested in various speculations, swelled his in- 
 come. The result seemed satisfactory and the rich man threw 
 down his pen with an air of triumph. " I will invest \ 20,000 in 
 land only ^120,000. I will not be tempted to sink more. I 
 will have a fine house a house fitting for a nobleman a fine 
 old Elizabethan house a house of historical interest. I must 
 have woods and lakes and a deer-park, above all. Deer are 
 very gentlemanlike things, very. De Clifford's place is to be 
 sold, I know; they ask too much for it, but ready money
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 283 
 
 is tempting. I can bargain bargain, I am a good hand at a 
 bargain. Should I be now Lord Baron Vargrave if I had always 
 given people what they asked ? I will double my subscriptions 
 to the Bible Society and the Philanthropic, and the building of 
 new churches. The world shall not say Richard Templeton 
 does not deserve his greatness. I will Come in. Who's 
 there come in." 
 
 The door gently opened the meek face of the new peeress 
 appeared. " I disturb you I beg your pardon I " 
 
 " Come in, my dear, come in I want to talk to you I want 
 to talk to your ladyship sit down, pray." 
 
 Lady Vargrave obeyed. 
 
 "You see," said the peer, crossing his legs and caressing his 
 left foot with both hands, while he see-sawed his stately person 
 to and fro in his chair "You see that the honor conferred upon 
 me will make a great change in our mode of life, Mrs. Temple 
 I mean Lady Vargrave. This villa is all very well my country 
 house is not amiss for a country gentleman but now we must 
 support our rank. The landed estate I already possess will go 
 with the title go to Lumley I shall buy another at my own 
 disposal, one that I can feel thoroughly mine it shall be a splen- 
 did place, Lady Vargrave." 
 
 " This place is splendid to me," said Lady Vargrave timidly. 
 
 "This place ! nonsense you must learn loftier ideas, Lady 
 Vargrave ; you are young, you can easily contract new habits, 
 more easily, perhaps, than myself you are naturally ladylike, 
 though I say it you have good taste, you don't talk much, you 
 don't show your ignorance quite right. You must be presented 
 at court, Lady Vargrave we must give great dinners, Lady Var- 
 grave. Balls are sinful, so is the opera, at least I fear so yet 
 an opera-box would be a proper appendage to your rank, Lady 
 Vargrave." 
 
 " My dear Mr. Templeton " 
 
 " Lord Vargrave, if your ladyship pleases." 
 
 "I beg your pardon. May you livelong to enjoy your honors; 
 but I, my dear lord I am not fit to share them : it is only in our 
 quiet life that I can forget what what I was. You terrify me, 
 when you talk of court of " 
 
 " Stuff, Lady Vargrave ! stuff; we accustom ourselves to these 
 things. Do I look like a man who has stood behind a counter? 
 rank is a glove that stretches to the hand that wears it. And 
 the child, dear child, dear Evelyn, she shall be the admiration 
 of London, the beauty, the heiress, the oh, she will do me 
 honor!"
 
 284 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 " She will, she will ! " said Lady Vargrave, and the tears 
 gushed from her eyes. 
 
 Lord Vargrave was softened. 
 
 " No mother ever deserved more from a child than you from 
 Evelyn." 
 
 "I would hope I have done my duty," said Lady Vargrave, 
 drying her tears. 
 
 " Papa, papa ! " cried an impatient voice, tapping at the win- 
 dow, " come and play, papa come and play at ball, papa ! " 
 
 And there by the window stood that beautiful child, glowing 
 with health and mirth her light hair tossed from her forehead, 
 her sweet mouth dimpled with smiles. 
 
 *' My darling, go on the lawn, don't over-exert yourself you 
 have not quite recovered that horrid sprain I will join you im- 
 mediately bless you ! " 
 
 "Don't be long, papa nobody plays as nicely as you do ;" 
 and, nodding and laughing from very glee, away scampered the 
 young fairy. Lord Vargrave turned to his wife. 
 
 " What do you think of my nephew of Lumley ? " said he 
 abruptly. 
 
 " He seems all that is amiable, frank, and kind." 
 
 Lord Vargrave's brow became thoughtful. "I think so too," 
 he said, after a short pause ; "and I hope you will approve of 
 what I mean to do. You see Lumley was brought up to regard 
 himself as my heir I owe something to him, beyond the poor 
 estate which goes with, but never can adequately support, my 
 title. Family honors, hereditary rank, must be properly re- 
 garded. But that dear girl I shall leave her the bulk of my 
 fortune. Could we not unite the fortune and the title? It 
 would secure the rank to her, it would incorporate all my de- 
 sires all my duties." 
 
 "But," said Lady Vargrave, with evident surprise, "if I 
 understand you rightly, the disparity of years " 
 
 " And what then, what then, Lady Vargrave ? Is there no 
 disparity of age between us a greater disparity than between 
 Lumley and that tall girl? Lumley is a mere youth, a youth 
 still, five and thirty he will be little more than forty when 
 they marry ; I was between fifty and sixty when I married you, 
 Lady Vargrave. I don't like boy-and-girl marriages ; a man 
 should be older than his wife. But you are so romantic, Lady 
 Vargrave. Besides, Lumley is so gay and good-looking, and 
 wears so well. He has been very nearly forming an- 
 other attachment ; but that, I trust, is out of his head now. 
 They must like each other. You will not gainsay me,
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 285 
 
 Lady Vargrave, and if anything happens to me life is un- 
 certain." 
 
 " Oh, do not speak so my friend, my benefactor ! " 
 
 "Why, indeed," resumed his lordship, mildly, "thank 
 Heaven, I am very well feel younger than I ever did but 
 still, life is uncertain ; and if you survive me, you will not 
 throw obstacles in the way of my grand scheme ?" 
 
 " I no, no of course you have the right in all things over 
 her destiny ; but so young, so soft-hearted, if she should love 
 one of her own years " 
 
 " Love ! pooh ! love does not come into girls' heads unless 
 it is put there. We will bring her up to love Lumley. I have 
 another reason a cogent one our secret ! to him it can be 
 confided it should not go out of our family. Even in my 
 grave I could not rest if a slur were cast on my respectability 
 my name." 
 
 Lord Vargrave spoke solemnly and warmly ; then, muttering 
 to himself, "Yes, it is for the best," he took up his hat and 
 quitted the room. He joined his stepchild on the lawn. He 
 romped with her he played with her that stiff, stately man ! 
 he laughed louder than she did, and ran almost as fast. And 
 when she was fatigued and breathless, he made her sit down 
 beside him, in a little summer-house, and, fondly stroking down 
 her disordered tresses, said, " You tire me out, child ; I am 
 growing too old to play with you. Lumley must supply my 
 place. You love Lumley ?" 
 
 "Oh, dearly, he is so good-humored, so kind; he has given 
 me such a beautiful doll, with such eyes ! " 
 
 " You shall be his little wife you would like to be his little 
 wife?" 
 
 " Wife ! why, poor mamma is a wife, and she is not so happy 
 as I am." 
 
 "Your mamma has bad health, my dear," said Lord Var- 
 grave, a little discomposed. "But it is a fine thing to be a 
 wife and have a carriage of your own, and a fine house, and 
 jewels, and plenty of money, and be your own mistress; and 
 Lumley will love you dearly." 
 
 " Oh, yes, I should like all that." 
 
 "And you would have a protector, child, when I am no 
 more !" 
 
 The tone, rather than the words, of her stepfather struck a 
 damp into that childish heart. Evelyn lifted her eyes, gazed 
 at him earnestly, and then, throwing her arms round him, 
 burst into tears.
 
 286 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 Lord Vargrave wiped his own eyes, and covered her with 
 kisses. 
 
 " Yes, you shall be Lumley's wife, his honored wife, heiress 
 to my rank as to my fortunes." 
 
 "I will do all that papa wishes." 
 
 " You will be Lady Vargrave then, and Lumley will be your 
 husband," said the stepfather, impressively. " Think over 
 what I have said. Now let us join mamma. But, as I live, 
 here is Lumley himself. However, it is not yet the time to 
 sound him : I hope that he has no chance with that Lady 
 Florence." 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 * * "Fair encounter 
 Of two most rare affections." Tempest. 
 
 MEANWHILE the Betrothed were on their road to' London. 
 The balmy and serene beauty of the day had induced them to 
 perform that short journey on horseback. It is somewhere 
 said that lovers are never so handsome as in each other's com- 
 pany, and neither Florence nor Ernest ever looked so well as 
 on horseback. There was something in the stateliness and grace 
 of both, something even in the aquiline outline of their features 
 and the haughty bend of the neck, that made a sort of likeness 
 between these young persons, although there was no comparison 
 as to their relative degrees of personal advantage ; the beauty 
 of Florence defied all comparison. And as they rode from 
 Cleveland's porch, where the other guests yet lingering were 
 assembled to give the farewell greeting, there was a general 
 conviction of the happiness destined to the affianced ones, a 
 general impression that both in mind and person they were 
 eminently suited to each other. Their position was that which 
 is ever interesting, even in more ordinary people, and at that 
 moment they were absolutely popular with all who gazed on 
 them ; and when the good old Cleveland turned away with 
 tears in his eyes, and murmured, "Bless them !" there was not 
 one of the party who would have hesitated to join the prayer. 
 
 Florence felt a nameless dejection as she quitted a spot so 
 consecrated by grateful recollections. 
 
 "When shall we be again so happy ?" said she softly, as she 
 turned back to gaze upon the landscape, which, gay with 
 flowers and shrubs and the bright English verdure, smiled 
 behind them like a garden,
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 287 
 
 " We will try and make my old hall, and its gloomy shades, 
 remind us of these fairer scenes, my Florence." 
 
 "Ah ! describe to me the character of your place. We shall 
 live there principally, shall we not? I am sure I shall hke it 
 much better than Marsden Court, which is the name of that 
 huge pile of arches and columns in Vanbrugh's heaviest taste, 
 which will soon be yours." 
 
 " I fear we shall never dispose of all your mighty retinue, 
 grooms of the chamber, and Patagonian footmen, and Heaven 
 knows who besides, in the holes and corners of Burleigh,'' said 
 Ernest, smiling. And then he went on to describe the old 
 place with something of a well-born country gentleman's not 
 displeasing pride ; and Florence listened, and they planned, 
 and altered, and added, and improved, and laid out a map for 
 the future. From that topic they turned to another, equally 
 interesting to Florence. The work in which Maltravers had 
 been engaged was completed, was in the hands of the printer, 
 and Florence amused herself with conjectures as to the criti- 
 cisms it would provoke. She was certain that all that had most 
 pleased her would be caviare to the multitude. She never 
 would believe that any one could understand Maltravers but 
 herself. Thus time flew on till they passed that part of the 
 road in which had occurred Ernest's adventure with Mrs. Tem- 
 pleton's daughter. Maltravers paused abruptly in the midst of 
 his glowing periods, as the spot awakened its associations and 
 reminiscences, and looked round anxiously and inquiringly. 
 But the fair apparition was not again visible ; and whatever 
 impression the place produced, it gradually died away as they 
 entered the suburbs of the great metropolis. Two other gentle- 
 men and a young lady of thirty-three (I had almost forgotten 
 them) were of the party, but they had the tact to linger a little 
 behind during the greater part of the road, and the young lady, 
 who was a wit and a flirt, found gossip and sentiment for both 
 the cavaliers. 
 
 "Will you come to us this evening?" asked Florence timidly. 
 
 " I fear I shall not be able. I have several matters to ar- 
 range before I leave town for Burleigh, which I must do next 
 week. Three months, dearest Florence, will scarcely suffice to 
 make Burleigh put on its best looks to greet its new mistress ; 
 and I have already appointed the great modern magicians of 
 draperies and ormolu to consult how we may make Aladdin's 
 palace fit for the reception of the new princess. Lawyers, too ! 
 in short, I expect to be fully occupied. But to-morrow, at 
 three, I shall be with you, and we can vide out if the day be fine,"
 
 288 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 "Surely," said Florence, "yonder is Signor Cesarini how 
 haggard and pale he appears ! " 
 
 Maltravers, turning his eyes towards the spot to which Flor- 
 ence pointed, saw Cesarini emerging from a lane, with a porter 
 behind him carrying some books and a trunk. The Italian, 
 who was talking and gesticulating as to himself, did not per- 
 ceive them. 
 
 " Poor Castruccio ! he seems leaving his lodging," thought 
 Maltravers. " By this time I fear he will have spent the last 
 sum I conveyed to him I must remember to find him out and 
 replenish his stores. Do not forget," said he, aloud, "to see 
 Cesarini, and urge him to accept the appointment we spoke of." 
 
 " I will not forget it I will see him to-morrow before we 
 meet. Yet it is a painful task, Ernest." 
 
 " I allow it. Alas ! Florence, you owe him some reparation. 
 He undoubtedly once conceived himself entitled to form 
 hopes, the vanity of which his ignorance of our English world 
 and his foreign birth prevented him from suspecting." 
 
 "Believe me, I did not give him the right to form such ex- 
 pectations." 
 
 " But you did not sufficiently discourage them. Ah, Flor- 
 ence, never underrate the pangs of hope crushed, of love con- 
 temned." 
 
 " Dreadful ! " said Florence, almost shuddering. " It is 
 strange, but my conscience never so smote me before. It is 
 since I love, that I feel, for the first time, how guilty a crea- 
 ture is " 
 
 " A coquette ! " interrupted Maltravers. "Well, let us think 
 of the past no more ; but if we can restore a gifted man, whose 
 youth promised much, to an honorable independence and a 
 healthful mind, let us do so. Me, Cesarini never can forgive ; 
 he will think I have robbed him of you. But we men the 
 woman we have once loved, even after she rejects us, ever has 
 some power over us, and your eloquence, which has so often 
 roused me, cannot fail to impress a nature yet more excit- 
 able." 
 
 Maltravers, on quitting Florence at her own door, went home, 
 summoned his favorite servant, gave him Cesarini's address at 
 Chelsea, bade him find out where he was, if he had left his 
 lodgings; and leave at his present home, or (failing its dis- 
 covery) at the "Travellers'," a cover which he made his servant 
 address, enclosing a bank-note of some amount. If the reader 
 wonder why Maltravers thus constituted himself the unknown 
 benefactor of the Italian, I must tell him that he does not un-
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVEKS. 289 
 
 derstand Maltravers. Cesarini was not the only man of letters 
 whose faults he pitied, whose wants he relieved. Though his 
 name seldom shone in the pompous list of public subscrip- 
 tions though he disdained to affect the Maecenas and the 
 patron, he felt the brotherhood of mankind, and a kind of grati- 
 tude for those who aspired to raise or to delight their species. 
 An author himself, he could appreciate the vast debt which the 
 world owes to authors, and pays but by calumny in life and bar- 
 ren laurels after death. He whose profession is the Beautiful 
 succeeds only through the Sympathies. Charity and Compas- 
 sion are virtues taught with difficulty to ordinary men ; to true 
 Genius they are but the instincts which direct it to the Destiny 
 it is born to fulfill, viz., the discovery and redemption of new 
 traits in our common nature. Genius the Sublime Missionary 
 goes forth from the serene Intellect of the Author to live in 
 the wants, the griefs, the infirmities of others, in order that it 
 may learn their language : and as its highest achievement is 
 Pathos, so its most absolute requisite is Pity ! 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 " Don John. How canst thou cross this marriage ? 
 
 Borachio. Not honestly, my lord ; but so covertly, that no dishonesty 
 shall appear in me, my lord." Much Ado about Nothing. 
 
 FERRERS and Cesarini were sitting over their wine, and both 
 had sunk into silence, for they had only one subject in common, 
 when a note was brought to Lumley from Lady Florence. 
 " This is lucky enough ! " said he, as he read it. " Lady Flo- 
 rence wishes to see you, and encloses me a note for you, which 
 she asks me to address and forward to you. There it is." 
 
 Cesarini took the note with trembling hands : it was very 
 short, and merely expressed a desire to see him the next day at 
 tsvo o'clock. 
 
 "What can it be ? " he exclaimed ; "can she want to apol- 
 ogize, to explain ?" 
 
 "No, no, no! Florence will not do that; but, from certain 
 words she dropped in talking with me, I guess that she has 
 some offer to your worldly advantage to propose to you. Ha ! 
 by the way, a thought strikes me." 
 
 Lumley eagerly rang the bell. "Is Lady Florence's servant 
 waiting for an answer? " 
 
 "Yes, sir." 
 
 " Very well detain him."
 
 290 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 " Now, Cesarini, assurance is made doubly sure. Come into 
 the next room. There, sit down at my desk, and write, as I 
 shall dictate, to Maltravers." 
 
 "I!" 
 
 "Yes, now do put yourself in my hands write, write. When 
 you have finished, I will explain." 
 
 Cesarini obeyed, and the letter was as follows : 
 
 "DEAR MALTRAVERS: 
 
 " I have learned your approaching marriage with Lady Flor- 
 ence Lascelles. Permit me to congratulate you. For myself, 
 I have overcome a vain and foolish passion; and can contem- 
 plate your happiness without a sigh. 
 
 "I have reviewed all my old prejudices against marriage, and 
 believe it to be a state which nothing but the most perfect con- 
 geniality of temper, pursuits, and minds, can render bearable. 
 How rare is such congeniality! in your case it may exist. 
 The affections of that beautiful being are doubtless ardent 
 and they are yours ! 
 
 " Write me a line by the bearer to assure me of your belief in 
 my sincerity. 
 
 " Yours, 
 
 " C. CESARINI." 
 
 " Copy out this letter, I want its ditto quick. Now seal and 
 direct the duplicate," continued Ferrers; "that's right; go into 
 the hall, give it yourself to Lady Florence's servant, and beg 
 him to take it to Seamore Place, wait for an answer, and bring 
 it here ; by which time you will have a note ready for Lady 
 Florence. Say I will mention this to her ladyship, and give 
 the man half-a-crown. There, begone." 
 
 "I do not understand a word of this," said Cesarini, when he 
 returned: " will you explain ? " 
 
 " Certainly ; the copy of the note you have despatched to 
 Maltravers I shall show to Lady Florence this evening, as a 
 proof of your sobered and generous feelings ; observe, it is so 
 written, that the old letter of your rival may seem an exact 
 reply to it. To-morrow a reference to this note of yours will 
 bring out our scheme more easily; and if you follow my instruc- 
 tions you will not seem to volunteer showing our handiwork, as 
 we at first intended; but rather to yield it to her eyes from a 
 generous impulse, from an irresistible desire to save her from 
 an unworthy husband and a wretched fate. Fortune has been 
 dealing our cards for us, and has turned up the ace. Three to 
 one now t on the odd trick. Maltravers, too, is at home. I called
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 291 
 
 at his house on returning from my uncle's, and learned that 
 he would not stir out the whole evening." 
 
 In due time came the answer from Ernest: it was short and 
 hurried; but full of all the manly kindness of his nature ; it 
 expressed admiration and delight at the tone ofCesarini's letter; 
 it revoked all former expressions derogatory to Lady Florence; 
 it owned the harshness and error of his first impressions ; it 
 used every delicate argument that could soothe and reconcile 
 Cesarini; and concluded by sentiments of friendship and de- 
 ire of service, so cordial, so honest, so free from the affectation 
 of patronage, that even Cesarini himself, half insane as he was 
 with passion, was almost softened. Lumley saw the change in 
 his countenance snatched the letter from his hand read it 
 threw it into the fire and saying, " We must guard against ac- 
 cidents," clapped the Italian affectionately on the shoulder, and 
 added, " Now you can have no remorse; for a more Jesuitical 
 piece of insulting, hypocritical cant I never read. Where's youi 
 note to Lady Florence ? Your compliments, you will be with 
 her at two. There, now the rehearsal's over, the scenes ar- 
 ranged, and I'll dress, and open the play for you with a pro 
 logue." 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 "^Estuat ingens 
 
 Imo in corde pudor, mixtoque insania luctu, 
 Et furiis agitatuS amor, et conscia virtus."* VIRGIL. 
 
 THE next day, punctual to his appointment, Cesarini repaired 
 to his critical interview with Lady Florence. Her countenance, 
 which, like that of most persons whose temper is not under 
 their command, ever too faithfully expressed what was within, 
 was unusually flushed. Lumley had dropped words and hints 
 which had driven sleep from her pillow, and repose from her 
 mind. 
 
 She rose from her seat with nervous agitation as Cesarini 
 entered and made his grave salutation. After a short and em- 
 barrassed pause, she recovered, however, her self-possession, 
 and with all a woman's delicate and dexterous tact, urged upon 
 the Italian the expediency of accepting the offer of honorable 
 independence now extended to him. 
 
 " You have abilities," she said, in conclusion, " you have 
 
 * Deep in her inmost heart is stirred the immense shame, and madness with'commingled 
 grief, and Ipve agitated by rage, and conscious virtue.
 
 2Q* ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 friends, you have youth; take advantage of these gifts of nature 
 and fortune, and fulfil such a career as," added Lady Florence, 
 with a smile, " Dante did not consider incompatible with 
 poetry." 
 
 "I cannot object to any career," saidCesarini, with an effort, 
 " that may serve to remove me from a country that has no 
 longer any charms for me. I thank you for your kindness, I 
 will obey you. May you be happy; and yet no, ah! no 
 happy you must be! Even he, sooner or later, must see you 
 with my eyes." 
 
 "I know," replied Florence falteringly, " that you have wisely 
 and generously mastered a past illusion. Mr. Ferrers allowed me 
 to see the letter you wrote to Er Mr. Maltravers; it was 
 worthy of you it touched me deeply; but I trust you will out- 
 live your prejudices against " 
 
 "Stay," interrupted Cesarini, "did Ferrers communicate to 
 you the answer to that letter?" 
 
 ' No, indeed." 
 
 1 1 am glad of it." 
 
 'Why?" 
 
 'Oh, no matter. Heaven bless you ; farewell." 
 
 ' No ; I implore you, do not go yet ; what was there in that let- 
 ter that it could pain me to see ? Lumley hinted darkly, but 
 would not speak out : be more frank." 
 
 "I cannot it would be treachery to Maltravers cruelty to 
 you yet would it be cruel ? " 
 
 " No, it would not it would be kindness and mercy; show me 
 the letter you have it with you." 
 
 " You could not bear it ; you would hate me for the pain it 
 would give you. Let me depart." 
 
 "Man, you wrong Maltravers. I see it now. You would 
 darkly slander him whom you cannot openly defame. Go ; I was 
 wrong to listen to you go ! " 
 
 "Lady Florence, beware how you taunt me into undeceiving 
 you. Here is the letter, it is his handwriting will you read it? 
 I warn you not." 
 
 " I will believe nothing but the evidence of my own eyes; give 
 it me." 
 
 "Stay, then ; on two conditions. First, that you promise me 
 sacredly that you will not disclose to Maltravers, without my 
 consent, that you have seen this letter. Think not I fear his 
 anger. No ! but in the mortal encounter that must ensue, if you 
 thus betray me your character would be lowered in the world's 
 eyes, and even I (my excuse unknown) might not appear to have
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 293 
 
 acted with honor in obeying your desire, and warning you, while 
 there is yet time, of bartering love for avarice. Promise me." 
 
 "I do, most solemnly." 
 
 " Secondly, assure me that you will not ask to keep the letter, 
 but will immediately restore it to me." 
 
 "I promise it. Now then." 
 
 " Take the letter." 
 
 Florence seized and rapidly read the fatal and garbled docu- 
 ument: her brain was dizzy her eyes clouded her ears rang as 
 with the sound of water she was sick and giddy with emotion; 
 but she read enough. This letter was written, then, in answer 
 to Castruccio's of last night ; it avowed dislike of her character; 
 it denied the sincerity of her love ; it more than hinted the mer- 
 cenary nature of his own feelings. Yes, even there, where she 
 had garnered up her heart, she was not Florence the lovely and 
 beloved woman; but Florence the wealthy and high-born heiress. 
 The world which she had built upon the faith and heart of 
 Maltravers crumbled away at her feet. The letter dropped 
 from her hand her whole form seemed to shrink and shrivel 
 up ; her teeth were set, and her cheek was as white as marble. 
 
 " Oh, God ! " cried Cesarini, stung with remorse. " Speak to 
 me, speak to me, Florence ! I did wrong ; forget that hateful let- 
 ter ! I have been false false ! " 
 
 " Ah, false say so again no, no, I remember he told me 
 he, so wise, so deep a judge of human character, that he would 
 be sponsor for your faith that your honor and heart were 
 incorruptible. It is true; I thank you you have saved me from 
 a terrible fate." 
 
 " O Lady Florence, dear too dear yet, would that alas ! 
 she does not listen to me," muttered Castruccio, as Florence 
 pressing her hands to her temples, walked wildly to and fro the 
 room ; at length she paused opposite to Cesarini, looked him full 
 in the face, returned him the letter without a word, and pointed 
 to the door. 
 
 "No, no, do not bid me leave you yet," said Cesarini, trem- 
 bling with repentant emotion yet half beside himself with jeal- 
 ous rage at her love for his rival. 
 
 " My friend, go," said Florence, in a tone of voice singularly 
 subdued and soft. " Do not fear me ; I have more pride in me 
 than even affection ; but there are certain struggles in a wo- 
 man's breast which she could never betray to any one any 
 one but a mother. God help me, I have none ! Go ; when 
 next we meet I shall be calm." 
 
 She held out her hand as she spoke ; the Italian dropped on
 
 294 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 his knee, kissed it convulsively, and, fearful of trusting himself 
 further, vanished from the room. 
 
 He had not been long gone before Maltravers was seen riding 
 through the street. As he threw himself from his horse he looked 
 up at the window, and kissed his hand at Lady Florence, who 
 stood there watching his arrival with feelings indeed far differ- 
 ent from those he anticipated. He entered the room lightly and 
 gayly. 
 
 Florence stirred not to welcome him. He approached and 
 took her hand ; she withdrew it with a shudder. 
 
 " Are you not well, Florence ? " 
 
 " I am well, for I have recovered." 
 
 " What do you mean ? Why do you turn from me ? " 
 
 Lady Florence fixed her eyes upon him, eyes that literally 
 blazed her lip quivered with scorn. 
 
 " Mr. Maltravers, at length I know you. I understand the 
 feelings with which you have sought a union between us. O 
 God ! why, why was I thus cursed with riches why made a thing 
 of barter ? Take my wealth, take it, Mr. Maltravers, since that is 
 what you prize. Heaven knows I can cast it willingly away; but 
 leave the wretch whom you long deceived, and who now, 
 wretch though she be, renounces and despises you ! " 
 
 " Lady Florence, do I hear aright ! Who has accused me to 
 you?" 
 
 "None, sir, none I would have believed none. Let it suffice 
 that I am convinced that our union can be happy to neither : 
 question me no further all intercourse between us is forever 
 over ! " 
 
 "Pause," said Maltravers, with cold and grave solemnity ; 
 "another word, and the gulf will become impassable. Pause." 
 
 "Do not," exclaimed the unhappy lady, stung by what she 
 considered the assurance of a hardened hypocrisy " do not af- 
 fect this haughty superiority; it dupes me no longer. I was your 
 slave while I loved you: the tie is broken. I am free, and I hate 
 and scorn you. Mercenary and sordid as you are, your base- 
 ness of spirit revives the differences of our rank. Henceforth, 
 Mr. Maltravers, I am Lady Florence Lascelles, and by that title 
 alone will you know me. Begone, sir ! " 
 
 As she spoke, with passion distorting every feature of her 
 face, all her beauty vanished away from the eyes of the proud 
 Maltravers as if by witchcraft the angel seemed transformed 
 into the fury; and cold, bitter, and withering was the eye which 
 he fixed upon that altered countenance. 
 
 "Mark me, Lady Florence Lascelles," said he, very calmly,
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 295 
 
 " you have now said what you can never recall. Neither in man 
 nor in woman did Ernest Maltravers ever forget or forgive a 
 sentence which accused him of dishonor. Ibid you farewell for 
 ever ; and with my last words I condemn you to the darkest of 
 all dooms the remorse that comes too late ! " 
 
 Slowly he moved away ; and as the door closed upon that tow- 
 ering and haughty form, Florence already felt that his curse was 
 working to its fulfilment. She rushed to the window she caught 
 one last glimpse of him as his horse bore him rapidly away. Ah ! 
 when shall they meet again * 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 " And now I live O wherefore do I live? 
 And with that pang I prayed to be no more. " WORDSWORTH. 
 
 IT was about' nine o'clock that evening, and Maltravers was 
 alone in the room. His carriage was at the door his servants 
 were arranging the luggage he was going that night to Burleigh. 
 London society the world were grown hateful to him. His 
 galled and indignant spirit demanded solitude. At this time, 
 Lumley Ferrers abruptly entered. 
 
 "You will pardon my intrusion," said the latter, with his usual 
 frankness " but " 
 
 "But what, sir I am engaged." 
 
 " I shall be very brief. Maltravers, you are my old friend. I 
 retain regard and affection for you, though our different habits 
 have of late estranged us. I come to you from my cousin from 
 Florence there has been some misunderstanding between you. 
 I called on her to-day after you left the house. Her grief af- 
 fected me. I have just quitted her. She had been told by some 
 gossip or other, some story or other women are credulous, fool- 
 ish creatures ; undeceive her, and, I dare say, all may be settled." 
 
 " Ferrers, if a man had spoken to me as Lady Florence did, 
 his blood or mine must have flowed. And do you think that 
 words that might have plunged me into the guilt of homicide if 
 uttered by a man, I could ever pardon in one whom I had 
 dreamed of for a wife ? Never ! " 
 
 " Pooh, pooh women's words are wind. Don't throw away 
 so splendid a match for such a trifle." 
 
 " Do you too, sir, mean to impute mercenary motives to me." 
 
 " Heaven forbid ! You know I am no coward, but I really 
 don't want to fight you. Come, be reasonable." 
 
 " I dare say you mean well, but the breach is final all re-
 
 296 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 currence to it is painful and superfluous. I must wish you good 
 evening." 
 
 " You have positively decided ? " 
 
 "I have." 
 
 " Even if Lady Florence made the amende honorable!" 
 
 " Nothing on the part of Lady Florence could alter my reso- 
 lution. The woman whom an honorable man an English gen- 
 tleman makes the partner of his life, ought never to listen to a 
 syllable against his fair name: his honor is hers, and if her lips, 
 that should breathe comfort in calumny, only serve to retail the 
 lie she may be beautiful, gifted, wealthy, and high-born, but 
 he takes a curse to his arms. That curse I have escaped." 
 
 " And this I am to say to my cousin ?" 
 
 " As you will. And now stay, Lumley Ferrers, and hear me. 
 I neither accuse nor suspect you, I desire not to pierce your 
 heart, and in this case I cannot fathom your motives; but if it 
 should so have happened that you have, in any way, ministered 
 to Lady Florence Lascelles' injurious opinions of my faith and 
 honor, you will have much to [answer for, and sooner or later 
 there will come a day of reckoning between you and me." 
 
 " Mr. Maltravers, there can be no quarrel between us, with 
 my cousin's fair name at stake, or else we should not now part 
 without preparations for a more hostile meeting. I can bear 
 your language. /, too, though no philosopher, can forgive. 
 Come, man, you are heated it is very natural; let us part 
 friends your hand." 
 
 " If you can take my hand, Lumley, you are innocent, and I 
 have wronged you." 
 
 Lumley smiled, and cordially pressed the hand of his old friend. 
 
 As he descended the stairs, Maltravers followed, and just as 
 Lumley turned into Curzon Street, the carriage whirled rapidly 
 past him, and by the lamps he saw the pale and stern face of 
 Maltravers. 
 
 It was a slow, drizzling rain, one of those unwholesome nights 
 frequent in London towards the end of autumn. Ferrers, how- 
 ever, insensible to the weather, walked slowly and thoughtfully 
 towards his cousin's house. He was playing for a mighty stake, 
 and hitherto the cast was in his favor, yet he was uneasy and 
 perturbed. His conscience was tolerably proof to all com- 
 punction, as much from the levity as from the strength of his 
 nature; and (Maltravers removed) he trusted in his knowledge 
 of the hun.an heart, and the smooth speciousness of his manner, 
 to win, at last, in the hand of Lady Florence, the object of his 
 ambition. It was not on her affection, it was on her pique, her
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 297 
 
 resentment, that he relied. " When a woman fancies herself 
 slighted by the man she loves, the first person who proposes 
 must be a clumsy wooer indeed, if he does not carry her away." 
 So reasoned Ferrers, but yet he was ruffled and disquieted; the 
 truth must be spoken able, bold, sanguine, and scornful as he 
 was, his spirit quailed before that of Maltravers; he feared the 
 lion of that nature when fairly aroused: his own character had 
 in it something of a woman's an unprincipled, gifted, aspiring, 
 and subtle woman's, and in Maltravers stern, simple, and mas- 
 culine he recognized the superior dignity of the "lords of 
 the creation"; he was overawed by the anticipation of a wrath 
 and revenge which he felt he merited, and which he feared 
 might be deadly. 
 
 While gradually, however, his spirit recovered its usual elas- 
 ticity, he came in the vicinity of Lord Saxingham's house, and 
 suddenly, by a corner of the street, his arm was seized: to his 
 inexpressible astonishment he recognized, in the muffled figure 
 that accosted him, the form of Florence Lascelles. 
 
 " Qood heavens! " he cried, " is it possible ? You, alone in the 
 streets, at this hour, in such a night, too! How very wrong 
 how very imprudent!" 
 
 " Do not talk to me I am almost mad as it is: I could not 
 rest I could not brave quiet, solitude, still less, the face of 
 my father I could not! but quick, what says he? What 
 excuse has he? Tell me everything I will cling to a straw." 
 
 "And is this the proud Florence Lascelles?" 
 
 "No, it is the humbled Florence Lascelles. I have done 
 with pride speak to me ! " 
 
 " Ah, what a treasure is such a heart! How can he throw it 
 away ? " 
 
 " Does he deny ? " 
 
 " He denies nothing he expresses himself rejoiced to have 
 escaped such was his expression a marriage in which his 
 heart never was engaged. He is unworthy of you forget him." 
 
 Florence shivered, and as Ferrers drew her arm in his own, her 
 ungloved hand touched his, and the touch was like that of ice. 
 
 " What will the servants think ? what excuse can we make ? " 
 said Ferrers, when they stood beneath the porch. 
 
 Florence did not reply; but as the door opened, she said 
 softly 
 
 " I am ill ill," and clung to Ferrers with that unnerved and 
 heavy weight which betokens faintness. 
 
 The light glared on her the faces of the lacqueys betokened 
 their undisguised astonishment. With a violent effort Florence
 
 298 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 recovered herself, for she had not yet done with pride, swept 
 through the hall with her usual stately step, slowly ascended 
 the broad staircase, and gained the solitude of her own room, 
 to fall senseless on the floor. 
 
 BOOK IX. 
 
 'A.x&povri wfifyevaw. SOPH. Antigone. 
 I go, the bride of Acheron. 
 Mf^Aovra ravra. Ib. 1333. 
 These things are in the future. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 * * " There the action lies 
 In its true nature * * * * 
 
 * * What then? What rests? 
 Try what repentance can ! " Hamlet. 
 
 " I doubt he will be dead or ere I come. King John. 
 
 IT was a fine afternoon in December, when Lumley Ferrers 
 turned from Lord Saxingham's door. The knockers were 
 muffled the windows on the third story were partially closed. 
 There was sickness in that house. 
 
 Lumley's face was unusually grave ; it was even sad. " So 
 young so beautiful," he muttered. " If ever I loved woman, I 
 do believe I loved her, that love must be my excuse. ... I 
 repent of what I have done but I could not foresee that a mere 
 lover's stratagem was to end in such effects the metaphysician 
 was very right when he said, 'We only sympathize with feel- 
 ings we know ourselves.' A little disappointment in love could 
 not have hurt me much it is d d odd it should hurt her 
 so. I am altogether out of luck; old Templeton I beg his 
 pardon, Lord Vargrave (by the by, he gets heartier every day 
 what a constitution he has!) seems cross with me. He did not 
 like the idea that I should marry Lady Florence and when I 
 thought that vision might have been realized, hinted that I was 
 disappointing some expectations he had formed; I can't make 
 out what he means. Then, too, the government have offered 
 that place to Maltravers instead of to me, Jn fact, my star is
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 299 
 
 not in the ascendant. Poor Florence, though I would really 
 give a great deal to know her restored to health! I have done 
 a villainous thing, but I thought it only a clever one. However, 
 regret is a fool's passion. By Jupiter! talking of fools, here 
 comes Cesarini." 
 
 Wan, haggard, almost spectral, his hat over his brows, his dress 
 neglected, his air reckless and fierce, Cesarini crossed the way, 
 and thus accosted Lumley: 
 
 " We have murdered her, Ferrers ; and her ghost will haunt 
 us to our dying day ! " 
 
 " Talk prose : you know I am no poet. What do you mean !" 
 
 " She is worse to-day," groaned Cesarini, in a hollow voice. 
 " I wander like a lost spirit round the house ; I question all who 
 come from it. Tell me oh, tell me, is there hope ? " 
 
 "I do, indeed, trust so," replied Ferrers, fervently. "The 
 illness has only of late assumed an alarming appearance. At 
 first it was merely a severe cold, caught by imprudent exposure 
 one rainy night. Now they fear it has settled on the lungs ; 
 but if we could get her abroad, all might be well." 
 
 "You think so, honestly ?" 
 
 " I do. Courage, my friend ; do not reproach yourself ; it 
 has nothing to do with us. She was taken ill of a cold, not of 
 a letter, man ! " 
 
 " No, no ; I judge her heart by my own. Oh, that I could 
 recall the past! " Look at me ; I am the wreck of what I was ; 
 day and night the recollection of my falsehood haunts me with 
 remorse." 
 
 " Pshaw ! we will go to Italy together, and in your beautiful 
 land, love will replace love." 
 
 " I am half resolved, Ferrers." 
 
 "Ha! to do what?" 
 
 " To write to reveal all to her." 
 
 The hardy complexion of Ferrers grew livid ; his brow be- 
 came dark with a horrible expression. 
 
 " Do so, and fall the next day by my hand ; my aim, in 
 slighter quarrel, never erred." 
 
 " Do you dare to threaten me?" 
 
 "Do you dare to betray me? Betray one who, if he sinned, 
 sinned on your account in your cause ; who would have se- 
 cured to you the loveliest bride and the most princely dower 
 in England ; and whose only offence against you is that he can- 
 not command life and health ?" 
 
 " Forgive me," said the Italian, with great emotion, " forgive 
 me, and do not misunderstand; I would not have betrayedjw*
 
 300 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 there is honor among villains. I would have confessed only 
 my own crime ; I would never have revealed yours why should 
 I? It is unnecessary." 
 
 " Are you in earnest ? are you sincere ? " 
 
 " By my soul ! " 
 
 "Then, indeed, you are worthy of my friendship. You will 
 assume the whole forgery an ugly word, but it avoids c"irc tun- 
 locution to be your own ?" 
 
 ; I will." 
 
 Ferrers paused a moment, and then stopped suddenly short. 
 
 "You will swear this ?" 
 
 "By all that is holy." 
 
 "Then, mark me, Cesarini ; if to-morrow Lady Florence be 
 worse, I will throw no obstacle in the way of your confession, 
 should you resolve to make it ; I will even use that influence 
 which you leave me, to palliate your offence, to win your par- 
 don. And yet to resign your hopes to surrender one so loved 
 to the arms of one so hated it is magnanimous it is noble 
 it is above my standard ! Do as you will." 
 
 Cesarini was about to reply, when a servant on horseback 
 abruptly turned the corner, almost at full speed. He pulled 
 in his eye fell upon Lumley he dismounted. 
 
 "Oh, Mr. Ferrers," said the man, breathlessly, "I have been 
 to your house ; they told me I might find you at Lord Saxing- 
 ham's I was just going there " 
 
 " Well, well, what is the matter ? " 
 
 " My poor master ; sir my lord, I mean " 
 
 "What of him?" 
 
 " Had a fit, sir, the doctors are with him my mistress for 
 my lord can't speak sent me express for you." 
 
 " Lend me your horse there, just lengthen the stirrups." 
 
 While the groom was engaged at the saddle, Ferrers turned 
 to Cesarini. "Do nothing rashly," said he; "I would say, if 
 I might, nothing at all, without consulting me ; but mind, I 
 rely, at all events, on your promise your oath." 
 
 "You may," said Cesarini, gloomily. 
 
 "Farewell, then," said Lumley, as he mounted ; and in a few 
 moments he was out of sight.
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 301 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 " O world, thou wast the forest to this ha 
 ***** 
 
 Dost thou here lie ? " -Julius Casar. 
 
 As Lumley leapt from his horse at his uncle's door, the disorder 
 and bustle of these demesnes, in which the severe eye of the 
 master usually preserved a repose and silence as complete as if 
 the affairs of life were carried on by clockwork, struck upon 
 him sensibly. Upon the trim lawn, the old women employed 
 in cleaning and weeding the walks were all assembled in a clus- 
 ter, shaking their heads ominously in concert, and carrying on 
 their comments in a confused whisper. In the hall, the house- 
 maid (and it was the first housemaid whom Lumley had ever 
 seen in that house, so invisibly were the wheels of the domestic 
 machine carried on) was leaning on her broom, " swallowing 
 with open mouth a footman's news." It was as if, with the first 
 slackening of the rigid rein, human nature broke loose from 
 the conventual stillness in which it had ever paced its peaceful 
 path in that formal mansion. 
 
 "How is he?" 
 
 " My lord is better, sir ; he has spoken, I believe." 
 
 At this moment a young face, swollen and red with weeping, 
 looked down from the stairs ; and presently Evelyn rushed 
 breathlessly into the hall. 
 
 "Oh, come up come up, Cousin Lumley; he cannot, cannot 
 die in your presence ; you always seem so full of life ! He 
 cannot die ; you don't think he will? Oh, take me with you, 
 they won't let me go to him ! " 
 
 " Hush, my dear little girl, hush ; follow me lightly that is 
 right." 
 
 Lumley reached the door, tapped gently entered ; and the 
 child also stole in unobserved, or at least unprevented. Lumley 
 drew aside the curtains ! the new lord was lying on his bed, 
 with his head propped by pillows, his eyes wide open, with a 
 glassy but not insensible stare, and his countenance fearfully 
 changed. Lady Vargrave was kneeling on the other side of the 
 bed, one hand clasped in her husband's, the other bathing his 
 temples, and her tears falling, without sob or sound, fast and 
 copiously down her pale, fair cheeks. 
 
 Two doctors were conferring in the recess of the window ; 
 an apothecary was mixing drugs at a table ; and two of the old-
 
 302 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 est female servants of the house were standing near the physi- 
 cians, trying to overhear what was said. 
 
 "My dear, dear uncle, how are you?" asked Lumley. 
 
 " Ah, you are come then, "said the dying man, in a feeble yet 
 distinct voice ; " that is well I have much to say to you." 
 
 " But not now not now you are not strong enough," said 
 the wife, imploringly. 
 
 The doctors moved to the bedside. Lord Vargrave waved 
 his hand, and raised his head. 
 
 " Gentlemen," said he, " I feel as if death were hastening upon 
 me ; I have much need, while my senses remain, to confer with 
 my nephew. Is the present a fitting time ? if I delay, are you 
 sure that I shall have another?" 
 
 The doctors looked at each other. 
 
 " My lord," said one, " it may perhaps settle and relieve your 
 mind to converse with your nephew ; afterwards you may more 
 easily compose yourself to sleep." 
 
 " Take this cordial, then," said the other doctor. 
 
 The sick man obeyed. One of the physicians approached 
 Lumley, and beckoned him aside. 
 
 " Shall we send for his lordship's lawyer ? " whispered the leech. 
 
 " I am his heir-at-law," thought Lumley. "Why, no, my dear 
 sir no, I think not, unless he expresses a desire to see him ; 
 doubtless, my poor uncle has already settled his worldly affairs. 
 What is his state ! " 
 
 The doctor shook his head. "I will speak to you, sir, after 
 you have left his lordship." 
 
 " What is the matter there ? " cried the patient, sharply and 
 querulously. "Clear the room I would be alone with my 
 nephew." 
 
 The doctors disappeared ; the old women reluctantly fol- 
 lowed ; when, suddenly, the little Evelyn sprang forward and 
 threw herself on the breast of the dying man, sobbing as if her 
 heart would break. 
 
 " My poor child ! my sweet child ! my own, own darling !" 
 gasped out Lord Vargrave, folding his weak arms round her ; 
 "bless you bless you ! and God will bless you. My wife," he 
 added, with a voice far more tender than Lumley had ever be- 
 fore heard him address to Lady Vargrave, " if these be the last 
 words I utter to you, let them express all the gratitude I feel for 
 you, for duties never more piously discharged : you did not love 
 me, it is true ; and in health and pride that knowledge often 
 made me unjust to you. I have been severe you have had 
 much to bear forgive me."
 
 MALTRAVERS. 36$ 
 
 " Oh ! do not talk thus ; you have been nobler, kinder than 
 my deserts. How much I owe you ! how little I have done 
 in return ! " 
 
 " I cannot bear this ; leave me, my dear, leave me. I may 
 live yet I hope I may I do not want to die. The cup may 
 pass from me. Go go and you, my child." 
 
 " Ah, let me stay." 
 
 Lord Vargrave kissed the little creature, as she clung to his 
 neck with passionate affection, and then, placing her in her 
 mother's arms, fell back exhausted on his pillow. Lumley,with 
 handkerchief to his eyes, opened the door to Lady Vargrave, 
 who sobbed bitterly, and, carefully closing it, resumed his sta- 
 tion by his uncle. 
 
 When Lumley Ferrers left the room, his countenance was 
 gloomy and excited rather than sad. He hurried to the room 
 which he usually occupied, and remained there for some hours 
 while his uncle slept a long and sound sleep. But the mother 
 and the stepchild (now restored to the sick room) did not 
 desert their watch. 
 
 It wanted about an hour to midnight when the senior phy- 
 sician sought the nephew. 
 
 " Your uncle asks for you, Mr. Ferrers ; and I think it right 
 to say that his last moments approach. We have done all that 
 can be done." 
 
 " Is he fully aware of his danger ? " 
 
 " He is ; and has spent the last two hours in prayer it is a 
 Christian's deathbed, sir." 
 
 " Humph ! " said Ferrers, as he followed the physician. 
 
 The room was darkened a single lamp, carefully shaded, 
 burned on a table, on which lay the Book of Life in Death : 
 and, with awe and grief on their faces, the mother and the child 
 were kneeling beside the bed. 
 
 " Come here, Lumley," faltered forth the fast-dying man. 
 " There are none here but you three nearest and dearest to 
 me? that is well. Lumley, then, you know all my wife, he 
 knows all. My child, give your hand to your cousin so you 
 are now plighted. When you grow up, Evelyn, you will know 
 that it is my last wish and prayer that you should be the wife 
 of Lumley Ferrers. In giving you this angel, Lumley, I atone 
 to you for all seeming injustice. And to you, my child, I 
 secure the rank and honors to which I have painfully climbed, 
 and which I am forbidden to enjoy. Be kind to her, Lumley 
 you have a good and frank heart let it be her shelter she 
 has never known a harsh word. God bless you all, and God
 
 304 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 forgive me pray for me. Lumley, to-morrow you will be Lord 
 Vargrave, and by-and-by " (here a ghastly, but exultant smile 
 flitted over the speaker's countenance) " you will be my Lady 
 
 Lady Vargrave. Lady so so Lady Var " 
 
 The words died on his trembling lips ; he turned round, and, 
 though he continued to breathe for more than an hour, Lord 
 Vargrave never uttered another syllable. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 * ' ' Hopes and fears 
 
 Start up alarmed, and o'er life's narrow verge 
 Look down on what ? a fathomless abyss." YOUNG. 
 
 Contempt, farewell, and maiden pride, adieu ! " 
 
 Much Ado about Nothing. 
 
 THE wound which Maltravers had received was peculiarly 
 severe and rankling. It is true that he had never been what 
 is called violently in love with Florence Lascelles ; but from 
 the moment in which he had been charmed and surprised into 
 the character of a declared suitor, it was consonant with his 
 scrupulous and loyal nature to view only the bright side of 
 Florence's gifts and qualities, and to seek to enamour his grate- 
 ful fancy with her beauty, her genius, and her tenderness for 
 himself. He had thus forced and formed his thoughts and hopes 
 to centre all in one object ; and Florence and the Future had 
 grown words which conveyed the same meaning to his mind. 
 Perhaps he felt more bitterly her sudden and stunning accu- 
 sations, couched as they were in language so unqualified, 
 because they fell upon his pride rather than his affection, and 
 were not softened away by the thousand excuses and remem- 
 brances which a passionate love would have invented and re- 
 called. It was a deep, concentrated sense of injury and insult, 
 that hardened and soured his whole nature wounded vanity, 
 wounded pride, and wounded honor. And the blow, too, came 
 upon him at a time when he was most dissatisfied with all other 
 prospects. He was disgusted with the littleness of the agents 
 and springs of political life he had formed a weary contempt 
 of the barrenness of literary reputation. At thirty years of age 
 he had necessarily outlived the sanguine elasticity of early 
 youth, and he had already broken up many of those later toys 
 in business and ambition which afford the rattle and the hobby- 
 horse to our maturer manhood. Always asking for something 
 too refined and too exalted for human life, every new proof of
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 305 
 
 unworthiness in men and things saddened or revolted a mind 
 still too fastidious for that quiet contentment with the world as 
 it is, which we must all learn before we can make our philosophy 
 practical, and our genius as fertile of the harvest as it may be 
 prodigal of the blossom. Haughty, solitary, and unsocial, the 
 ordinary resources of mortified and disappointed men were not 
 for Ernest Maltravers. Rigidly secluded in his country retire- 
 ment, he consumed the days in moody wanderings ; and in the 
 evenings he turned to books with a spirit disdainful and fatigued. 
 So much had he already learned, that books taught him little 
 that he did not already know. And the biographies of Authors, 
 those ghost-like beings who seem to have had no life but in 
 the shadow of their own haunting and imperishable thoughts, 
 dimmed the inspiration he might have caught from their pages. 
 Those Slaves of the Lamp, those Silkworms of the Closet, how 
 little had they enjoyed, how little had they lived ! Condemned 
 to a mysterious fate by the wholesale destinies of the world, 
 they seemed born but to toil and to spin thoughts for the com- 
 mon crowd and, their task performed in drudgery and in 
 darkness, to die when no further service could be wrung from 
 their exhaustion. Names had they been in life, and as names 
 they lived forever, in life as in death, airy and unsubstantial 
 phantoms. It pleased Maltravers at this time to turn a curious 
 eye toward the obscure and half-extinct philosophies of the 
 ancient world. He compared the Stoics with the Epicureans 
 those Epicureans who had given their own version to the simple 
 and abstemious utilitarianism of their master. He asked which 
 was the wiser, to sharpen pain or to deaden pleasure to bear 
 all or to enjoy all and, by a natural reaction which often 
 happens to us in life, this man, hitherto so earnest, active- 
 spirited, and resolved on great things, began to yearn for the 
 drowsy pleasures of indolence. The Garden grew more tempt- 
 ing than the Porch. He seriously revolved the old alternative 
 of the Grecian demi-god might it not be wiser to abandon the 
 grave pursuits to which he had been addicted, to dethrone the 
 august but severe Ideal in his heart to cultivate the light loves 
 and voluptuous trifles of the herd and to plant the brief space 
 of youth yet left to him with the myrtle and the rose? As 
 water flows over water, so new schemes rolled upon new 
 sweeping away every momentary impression, and leaving the 
 surface facile equally to receive and to forget. Such is a com- 
 mon state with men of imagination in those crises of life when 
 some great revolution of designs and hopes unsettles elements 
 too susceptible of every changing wind. And thus the weak
 
 306 ERNEST MALTRAVEfcg. 
 
 are destroyed, while the strong relapse, after terrible but un- 
 known convulsions, into that solemn harmony and order from 
 which Destiny and God draws their uses to mankind. 
 
 It was from this irresolute contest between antagonist princi- 
 ples that Maltravers was aroused by the following letter from 
 Florence Lascelles : 
 
 " For three days and three sleepless nights I have debated 
 with myself whether or not I ought to address you. Oh, Ernest, 
 were I what I was, in health, in pride, I might fear that, gener- 
 ous as you are, you would misconstrue my appeal ; but that is 
 now impossible. Our union never can take place, and my hopes 
 bound themselves to one sweet and melancholy hope, that you 
 will remove from my last hours the cold and dark shadow of 
 your resentment. We have both been cruelly deceived and 
 betrayed. Three days ago I discovered the perfidy that has 
 been practised against us. And then, ah ! then, with all the 
 weak human anguish of discovering it too late (your curse is 
 fulfilled, Ernest), I had at least one moment of proud, of ex- 
 quisite rapture. Ernest Maltravers, the hero of my dreams, 
 stood pure and lofty as of old a thing it was not worthy to 
 love, to mourn, to die for. A letter in your handwriting had 
 been shown me, garbled and altered, as it seems but I de- 
 tected not the imposture it was yourself, yourself alone, 
 brought in false and horrible witness against yourself ! And 
 could you think that any other evidence, the words, the oaths of 
 others, would have convicted you in my eyes ! There you 
 wronged me. But I deserved it I had bound myself to secrecy 
 the seal is taken from my lips in order to be set upon my 
 tomb. Ernest, beloved Ernest beloved till the last breath is 
 extinct till the last throb of this heart is stilled ! write me 
 one word of comfort and of pardon. You will believe what I 
 have imperfectly written, for you ever' trusted my faith, if you 
 have blamed my faults. I am now comparatively happy a 
 word from you will make me blest. And Fate has, perhaps, 
 been more merciful to both, than in our short-sighted and 
 querulous human vision we might, perhaps, believe ; for now 
 that the frame is brought low, and in the solitude of my 
 chamber I can duly and humbly commune with mine own 
 heart, I see the aspect of those faults which I once mistook for 
 virtues, and feel that, had we been united, I, loving you ever, 
 might not have constituted your happiness, and so have known 
 the misery of losing your affection. May He who formed you 
 for glorious and yet all-unaccomplished purposes, strengthen 
 you when these eyes can no longer sparkle at your triumphs
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 307 
 
 nor weep at your lightest sorrow. You will go on in your broad 
 and luminous career. A few years, and my remembrance will 
 have left but the vestige of a dream behind. But, but I can 
 write no more. God bless you ! " 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 " Oh, stop the headlong current of your goodness ; 
 It comes too fast upon a feeble soul. " 
 
 DRYDEN : Sebastian and Dorcs. 
 
 THE smooth physician had paid his evening visit ; Lord 
 Saxingham had gone to a cabinet dinner, for Life must ever walk 
 side by side with Death : and Lady Florence Lascelles was 
 alone. It was a room adjoining her sleeping-apartment a room 
 in which, in the palmy days of the brilliant and way ward heiress, 
 she had loved to display her fanciful and peculiar taste. There 
 had she been accustomed to muse, to write, to study there had 
 she first been dazzled by the novel glow of Ernest's undiurnal 
 and stately thoughts there had she first conceived the romance 
 of girlhood, which had led her to confer with him, unknown 
 there had she first confessed to herself that fancy had begotten 
 love there had she gone through love's short and exhausting 
 progress of lone emotion ; the doubt, the hope, the ecstasy ; 
 the reverse, the terror ; the inanimate despondency, the agonized 
 despair ! And there now, sadly and patiently, she awaited the 
 gradual march of inevitable decay. And books and pictures, 
 and musical instruments, and marble busts, half-shadowed by 
 classic draperies and all the delicate elegancies of womanly 
 refinement still invested the chamber with a grace as cheerful 
 as if youth and beauty were to be the occupants for ever and 
 the dark and noisome vault were not the only lasting residence 
 for the things of clay ! 
 
 Florence Lascelles was dying ; but not indeed wholly of that 
 common, if mystic malady, a broken heart. Her health, always 
 delicate, because always preyed upon by a nervous, irritable, 
 and feverish spirit, had been gradually and invisibly undermined, 
 even before Ernest confessed his love. In the singular lustre of 
 those large-pupilled eyes in the luxuriant transparency of that 
 glorious bloom, the experienced might long since have traced 
 the seeds which cradle death. In the night when her restless 
 and maddened heart so imprudently drove her forth to forestall 
 the communication of Lumley (whom she hadsenttoMaltravers, 
 she scarce knew for what object, or with what hope), in that
 
 308 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 night she was already in a high state of fever. The rain and the 
 chill struck the growing disease within her excitement gave it 
 food and fire delirium succeeded, and in that most fearful and 
 fatal of all medical errors, which robs the frame, when it most 
 needs strength, of the very principle of life, they had bled her 
 into a temporary calm, and into permanent and incurable weak- 
 ness. Consumption seized its victim. The physicians who 
 attended her were the most renowned in London, and Lord 
 Saxingham was firmly persuaded that there was no danger. It 
 was not in his nature to think that death would take so great a 
 liberty with Lady Florence Lascelles, when there were so many 
 poor people in the world whom there would be no impropriety 
 in removing from it. But Florence knew her danger, and her 
 high spirit did not quail before it. Yet, when Cesarini, stung 
 beyond endurance by the horrors of his remorse, wrote and con- 
 fessed all his own share of the fatal treason, though, faithful to 
 his promise, he concealed that of his accomplice, then, ah then, 
 she did indeed repine at her doom, and long to look once more 
 with the eyes of love and joy upon the face of the beautiful 
 world. But the illness of the body usually brings out a latent 
 power and philosophy of the soul which health never knows; 
 and God has mercifully ordained it as the customary lot of 
 nature, that in proportion as we decline into the grave, the 
 sloping path is made smooth and easy to our feet ; and every 
 day, as the films of clay are removed from our eyes, Death loses 
 the false aspect of the spectre, and we fall at last into its arms 
 as a wearied child upon the bosom of its mother. 
 
 It was with a heavy heart that Lady Florence listened to the 
 monotonous clicking of the clock that announced the departure 
 of moments few, yet not precious, still spared to her. Her face 
 buried in her hands, she bent over the small table beside her 
 sofa, and indulged her melancholy thoughts. Bowed was the 
 haughty crest, unnerved the elastic shape that had once seemed 
 born for majesty and command no friends were near, for 
 Florence had never made friends. Solitary had been her youth, 
 and solitary were her dying hours. 
 
 As she thus sat and mused, a sound of carriage wheels in the 
 street below slightly shook the room it ceased the carriage 
 stopped at the door. Florence looked up. " No, no, it cannot 
 be," she muttered ; yet, while she spoke, a faint flush passed 
 over her sunken and faded cheek, and the bosom heaved beneath 
 the robe, " a world too wide for its shrunk "proportions. There 
 was a silence which to her seemed interminable, and she turned 
 away with a deep sigh and a chill sinking of the heart.
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 309 
 
 At this time her woman entered with a meaning and flurried 
 look. 
 
 " I beg your pardon, my lady but " 
 
 " But what ? " 
 
 " Mr. Maltravers has called, and asked for your ladyship 
 so, my lady, Mr. Burton sent for me, and I said, my lady is too 
 unwell to see anyone ; but Mr. Maltravers would not be denied, 
 and he is waiting in my lord's library, and insisted on my coin- 
 ing up and 'nouncing him, my lady." 
 
 Now Mrs. Shinfield's words were not euphonistic, nor her 
 voice mellifluous ; but never had eloquence seemed to Florence 
 so effective. Youth, love, beauty, all rushed back upon her at 
 once, brightening her eyes, her cheek, and filling up ruin with 
 sudden and deceitful light. 
 
 " Well," she said, after a pause, "let Mr. Maltravers come up." 
 
 "Come up, my lady? Bless me'! let me just 'range your 
 hair your ladyship is really in such dish-a-bill." 
 
 " Best as it is, Shinfield he will excuse all Go." 
 
 Mrs. Shinfield shrugged her shoulders, and departed. A few 
 moments more a step on the stairs, the creaking of the door, 
 and Maltravers and Florence were again alone. He stood mo- 
 tionless on the threshold. She had involuntarily risen, and so 
 they stood opposite to each other, and the lamp fell full upon 
 her face. Oh, heaven ! when did that sight cease to haunt the 
 heart of Maltravers ! When shall that altered aspect not pass 
 as a ghost before his eyes! there it is, faithful and reproachful, 
 alike in solitude and in crowds it is seen in the glare of noon 
 it passes dim and wan at night, beneath the stars and the earth 
 it looked into his heart, and left its likeness there for ever and 
 for ever ! Those cheeks, once so beautifully rounded, now 
 sunken into lines arid hollows the livid darkness between the 
 eyes the whitened lip the sharp, anxious, worn expression, 
 which had replaced that glorious and beaming regard, from 
 which all the life of genius, all the sweet pride of womanhood 
 had glowed forth, and in which not only the intelligence, but 
 the eternity, of the soul seemed visibly wrought ! 
 
 There he stood, aghast and appalled. At length a low groan 
 broke from his lips he rushed forward, sank on his knees be- 
 side her, and, clasping both her hands, sobbed aloud as he cov- 
 ered them with kisses. All the iron of his strong nature was 
 broken down, and his emotions, long silenced, and now uncon- 
 trollable and resistless, were something terrible to behold ! 
 
 " Do not do not weep so," murmured Lady Florence, fright- 
 ened by his vehemence ; " I am sadly changed, but the fault is
 
 3IO ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 mine Ernest, it is mine ; best, kindest, gentlest, how could I 
 have been so mad ! and you forgive me ? I am yours again 
 a little while yours. Ah, do not grieve while I am so blessed! " 
 
 As she spoke, her tears tears from a source how different 
 from that whence broke the scorching and intolerable agony 
 of his own, fell soft upon his bended head, and the hands that 
 still convulsively strained hers. Maltravers looked wildly up 
 into her countenance, and shuddered as he saw her attempt to 
 smile. He rose abruptly, threw himself into a chair, and cov- 
 ered his face. He was seeking by a violent effort to master him- 
 self, and it was only by the heaving of his chest, and now and 
 then a gasp as for breath, that he betrayed the stormy struggle 
 within. 
 
 Florence gazed at him a moment in bitter, in almost selfish, 
 penitence. " And this was the man who seemed to me so cal- 
 lous to the softer sympathies this was the heart I trampled 
 upon this the nature I distrusted ! " 
 
 She came near him, trembling and with feeble steps she laid 
 her hand upon his shoulder, and the fondness of love came over 
 her, and she wound her arms around him. 
 
 " It is our fate it is my fate," said Maltravers at last, awak- 
 ing as from a hideous dream, and in a hollow but calm voice 
 "we are the things of destiny, and the wheel has crushed us. 
 It is an awful state of being, this human life ! What is wisdom 
 virtue faith to men piety to heaven all the nurture we be- 
 stow on ourselves all our desire to win a loftier sphere, when 
 we are thus the tools of the merest chance the victims of the 
 pettiest villainy; and our very existence our very senses almost, 
 at the mercy of every traitor and every fool ? " 
 
 There was something in Ernest's voice, as well as in his re- 
 flections, which appeared so unnaturally calm and deep that it 
 startled Florence with a fear more acute than his previous vio- 
 lence had done. He rose, and, muttering to himself, walked to 
 and fro, as if insensible of her presence in fact he was so. At 
 length he stopped short, and, fixing his eyes upon Lady Flor- 
 ence, said, in a whispered and thrilling tone, 
 
 " Now, then, the name of our undoer?" 
 
 " No, Ernest, no never, unless you promise me to forego the 
 purpose which I read in your eyes. He has confessed he is 
 penitent I have forgiven him you will do so too ! " 
 
 " His name ! " repeated Maltravers, and his face, before very 
 flushed, was unnaturally pale. 
 
 "Forgive him promise me." 
 
 " His name, I say his name ? "
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 31! 
 
 " Is this kind ? you terrify me you will kill me ! ' faltered 
 out Florence, and she sank on the sofa exhausted : her nerves, 
 now so weakened, were perfectly unstrung by his vehemence, 
 and she wrung her hands and wept piteously. 
 
 " You will not tell me his name ? " said Maltravers softly. 
 " Be it so. I will ask no more. I can discover it myself. Fate 
 the Avenger will reveal it." 
 
 At that thought he grew more composed ; and as Florence 
 wept on, the unnatural concentration and fierceness of his mind 
 again gave way, and, seating himself beside her, he uttered all 
 that could soothe and comfort and console. And Florence 
 was soon soothed ! And there, while over their heads the grim 
 skeleton was holding the funeral pall, they again exchanged 
 their vows, and again, with feelings fonder than of old, spoke 
 of love. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 * * * " Erichtho, then, 
 
 Breathes her dire murmurs which enforce him bear 
 
 Her baneful secrets to the spirits of horror." MARLOW. 
 
 WITH a heavy step Maltravers ascended the stairs of his 
 lonely house that night, and heavily, with a suppressed groan, 
 did he sink upon the first chair that proffered rest. 
 
 It was intensely cold. During his long interview with Lady 
 Florence, his servant had taken the precaution to go to Sea- 
 more Place and make some hasty preparations for the owner's 
 return. But the bedroom looked comfortless and bare, the 
 curtains were taken down, the carpets were taken up (a single 
 man's housekeeper is wonderfully provident in these matters : 
 the moment his back is turned, she bustles, she displaces, she 
 exults ; "things can be put a little to rights ! "). Even the fire 
 would not burn clear, but gleamed sullen and fitful from the 
 smothering fuel. It was a large chamber, and the lights imper- 
 fectly filled it. On the table lay parliamentary papers, and 
 pamphlets, and bills, and presentation-books from younger 
 authors, evidences of the teeming business of that restless 
 machine, the world. But of all this Maltravers was not sensi- 
 ble : the winter frost numbed not his feverish veins. His ser- 
 vant, who loved him, as all who saw much of Maltravers did, 
 fidgeted anxiously about the room and plied the sullen fire, and 
 laid out the comfortable dressing-robe, and placed wine on the 
 table, and asked questions which were not answered, and pressed
 
 312 ERNEST MALTR AVERS. 
 
 service which was not heeded. The little wheels of life go 
 on, even when the great wheel is paralyzed or broken. Mal- 
 travers was, if I may so express it, in a kind of mental trance. 
 His emotions had left him thoroughly exhausted. He felt that 
 torpor which succeeds, and is again the precursor of, great woe. 
 At length he was alone, and the solitude half-unconsciously re- 
 stored him to the sense of his heavy misery. For it may be ob- 
 served that, when misfortune has stricken us home, the pres- 
 ence of any one seems to interfere between the memory and 
 the heart. Withdraw the intruder, and the lifted hammer falls 
 at once upon the anvil ! He rose as the door closed on his at- 
 tendant rose with a start, and pushed the hat from his gathered 
 brows. He walked for some minutes to and fro, and the air of 
 the room, freezing as it was, oppressed him. 
 
 There are times when the arrow quivers within us in which 
 all space seems too confined. Like the wounded hart we could 
 fly on for ever ; there is a vague desire of escape a yearning, 
 almost insane, to get out from our own selves : the soul strug- 
 gles to flee away and take the wings of the morning. 
 
 Impatiently, at last, did Maltravers throw open his window ; 
 it communicated upon a balcony, built out to command the 
 wide view which, from a certain height, that part of the park 
 affords. He stept into the balcony and bared his breast to 
 the keen air. The uncomfortable and icy heavens looked down 
 upon the hoar-rime that gathered over the grass, and the ghostly 
 boughs of the death-like trees. All things in the world without 
 brought the thought of the grave, and the pause of being, and 
 the withering up of beauty, closer and closer to his soul. In 
 the palpable and griping winter, death itself seemed to wind 
 around him its skeleton and joyless arms. And as thus he stood, 
 and, wearied with contending against, passively yielded to, the 
 bitter passions that wrung and gnawed his heart, he heard not 
 a sound at the door below nor the footsteps on the stairs nor 
 knew he that a visitor was in his room till he felt a hand upon 
 his shoulder, and, turning round, he beheld the white and livid 
 countenance of Castruccio Cesarini. 
 
 " It is a dreary night and a solemn hour, Maltravers," said 
 the Italian, with a distorted smile, " a fitting night and time 
 for my interview with you." 
 
 " Away ! " said Maltravers, in an impatient tone. " I am not 
 at leisure for these mock heroics." 
 
 " Ay, but you shall hear me to the end. I have watched your 
 arrival I have counted the hours in which you remained 
 with her I have followed you home. If you have human pas-
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 313 
 
 sions, humanity itself must be dried up within you, and the wild 
 beast in his cavern is not more fearful to encounter. Thus, 
 then, I seek and brave you. Be still. Has Florence revealed 
 to you the name of him who belied you, and who betrayed her- 
 self to the death ? " 
 
 " Ha ! " said Maltravers, growing very pale, and fixing his 
 eyes on Cesarini, " you are not the man my suspicions lighted 
 elsewhere." 
 
 "I am the man. Do thy worst." 
 
 Scarcely were the words uttered, when, with a fierce cry, 
 Maltravers threw himself on the Italian ; he tore him from 
 his footing he grasped him in his arms as a child he literally 
 whirled him around and on high ; and in that maddening par- 
 oxysm, it was, perhaps, but the balance of a feather, in the con- 
 flicting elements of revenge and reason, which withheld Mal- 
 travers from hurling the criminal from the fearful height on 
 which they stood. The temptation passed Cesarini leaned, 
 safe, unharmed, but half senseless with mingled rage and fear, 
 against the wall. 
 
 He was alone Maltravers had left him had fled from him- 
 self fled into the chamber fled for refuge from human pas- 
 sions to the wing of the All-Seeing and All-Present. "Father," 
 he groaned, sinking on his knees, " support me, save me : with- 
 out Thee I am lost ! " 
 
 Slowly Cesarini recovered himself, and re-entered the apart- 
 ment. A string in his brain was already loosened, and, sullen 
 and ferocious, he returned again to goad the lion that had 
 spared him. Maltravers had already risen from his brief prayer. 
 With locked and rigid countenance, with arms folded on his 
 breast, he stood confronting the Italian, who advanced towards 
 him with a menacing brow and arm, but halted involuntarily at 
 the sight of that commanding aspect. 
 
 " Well, then," said Maltravers at last, with a tone preternat- 
 urally calm and low, "you then are the man. Speak on what 
 arts did you employ ? " 
 
 "Your own letter ! When, many months ago, I wrote to tell 
 you of the hopes it was mine to conceive, and to ask your 
 opinion of her I loved, how did you answer me ? With doubts, 
 with depreciation, with covert and polished scorn, of the very 
 woman whom, with a deliberate treachery, you afterwards 
 wrested from my worshipping and adoring love. That letter I 
 garbled I made the doubts you expressed of my happiness 
 seem doubts of your own. I changed the dates I made the 
 letter itself appear written, not on your first acquaintance with
 
 314 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 her, but subsequent to your plighted and accepted vows. Your 
 own handwriting convicted you of mean suspicion and of sordid 
 motives. These were my arts." 
 
 " They were most noble. Do you abide by them or re- 
 pent?" 
 
 " For what I have done to thee I have no repentance. Nay, 
 I regard thee still as the aggressor. Thou hast robbed me of 
 her who was all the world to me and, be thine excuses what 
 they may, I hate thee with a hate that cannot slumber that 
 abjures the abject name of remorse ! I exult in the very agonies 
 thou endurest. But for her the stricken the dying|! O God, 
 
 God ! The blow falls upon mine own head ! " 
 
 " Dying ! " said Maltravers, slowly and with a shudder. " No, 
 no not dying or what art thou ? Her murderer ! And what 
 must I be ? Her avenger ! " 
 
 Overpowered with his own passions, Cesarini sank down, 
 and covered his face with his clasped hands. Maltravers stalked 
 gloomily to and fro the apartment. There was silence for some 
 moments. 
 
 At length, Maltravers paused opposite Cesarini, and thus 
 addressed him : 
 
 "You have come hither, not so much to confess the basest 
 crime of which man can be guilty, as to gloat over my anguish, 
 and to brave me to revenge my wrongs. Go, man, go for the 
 present you are safe. While she lives, my life is not mine to 
 hazard if she recover, I can pity you and forgive. To me 
 your offence, foul though it be, sinks below contempt itself. It 
 is the consequences of that crime as they relate to to that noble 
 and suffering woman, which can alone raise the despicable into 
 the tragic, and make your life a worthy and a necessary offer- 
 ing not to revenge, but justice : life for life victim for 
 victim ! 'Tis the old law 'tis a righteous one." 
 
 "You shall not, with your accursed coldness, thus dispose of 
 me as you will, and arrogate the option to smite or save ! No," 
 continued Cesarini, stamping his foot " no ; far from seeking 
 forbearance at your hands I dare and defy you ! You think 
 
 1 have injured you I, on the other hand, consider that the 
 wrong has come from yourself. But for you, she might have 
 loved me have been mine. Let that pass. But for you, at 
 least, it is certain that I should neither have sullied my soul with 
 a vile sin, nor brought the brightest of human beings to the 
 grave. If she dies, the murder may be mine, but you were the 
 cause the devil that tempted to the offence. I defy and spit 
 upon you I have no softness left in me my veins are fire
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 31$ 
 
 my heart thirsts for blood. You you have still the privilege 
 to see to bless to tend her : and I I, who loved her so who 
 could have kissed the earth she trod on I well, well, no 
 matter, I hate you I insult you I call you villain and das- 
 tard I throw myself on the laws of honor, and I demand that 
 conflict you defer or deny ! " 
 
 " Home, doter home fall on thy knees, and pray to Heaven 
 for pardon make up thy dread account repine not at the 
 days yet thine to wash the black spot from thy soul. For, while 
 I speak, I foresee too well that her days are numbered, and with 
 her thread of life is entwined thine own. Within twelve hours 
 from her last moment, we shall meet again : but now I am as 
 ice and stone, thou canst not move me. Her closing life shall 
 not be darkened by the aspect of blood by the thought of the 
 sacrifice it demands. Begone, or menials shall cast thee from 
 my door : those lips are too base to breathe the same air as 
 honest men. Begone, I say, begone ! " 
 
 Though scarce a muscle moved in the lofty countenance of 
 Maltravers though no frown darkened the majestic brow 
 though no fire broke from the steadfast and scornful eye there 
 was a kingly authority in the aspect, in the extended arm, the 
 stately crest, and a power in the swell of the stern voice, which 
 awed and quelled the unhappy being whose own passions ex- 
 hausted and unmanned him. He strove to fling back scorn 
 to scorn, but his lips trembled and his voice died in hollow mur- 
 murs within his breast. Maltravers regarded him with a crush- 
 ing and intense disdain. The Italian with shame and wrath 
 wrestled against himself, but in vain : the cold eye that was 
 fixed upon him was as a spell, which the fiend within him could 
 not rebel against or resist. Mechanically he moved to the door, 
 then turning round he shook his clenched hand at Maltravers, 
 and with a wild, maniacal laugh rushed from the apartment. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 " On some fond breast the parting soul relies." GRAY. 
 
 NOT a day passed in which Maltravers was absent from the 
 side of Florence. He came early, he went late. He subsided 
 into his former character of an accepted suitor without a word 
 of explanation with Lord Saxingham. That task was left to 
 Florence. She doubtless performed it well, for his lordship 
 seemed satisfied, though grave, and, almost for the first time in
 
 jl6 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 his life, sad. Maltravers never reverted to the cause of their 
 unhappy dissension. Nor from that night did he once give way 
 to whatever might be his more agonized and fierce emotions 
 he never affected to reproach himself he never bewailed with 
 a vain despair their approaching separation. Whatever it cost 
 him, he stood collected and stoical in the intense power of his 
 self-control. He had but one object one desire one hope 
 to save the last hours of Florence Lascelles from every pang 
 to brighten and smooth the passage across the Solemn Bridge. 
 His forethought, his presence of mind, his care, his tenderness, 
 never forsook him for an instant ; they went beyond the attri- 
 butes of men, they went into all the fine, the indescribable 
 minutiae by which woman makes herself in "pain and anguish" 
 the " ministering angel." It was as if he had nerved and braced 
 his whole nature to one duty as if that duty was more felt than 
 affection itself as if he were resolved that Florence should not 
 remember that she had no mother ! 
 
 And oh, then, how Florence loved him ! how far more luxu- 
 rious, in its grateful and clinging fondness, was that love, than 
 the wild and jealous fire of their earlier connection ! Her own 
 character, as is often the case in lingering illness, became in- 
 calculably more gentle and softened down as the shadows 
 closed around it. She loved to make him read and talk to 
 her and her ancient poetry of thought now grew mellowed, as 
 it were, into religion, which is indeed poetry with a stronger 
 wing. . . . There was a world beyond the grave there was 
 life out of the chrysalis sleep of death they would yet be united. 
 And Maltravers, who was a solemn and intense believer in the 
 GREAT HOPE, did not neglect the purest and highest of all the 
 fountains of solace. 
 
 Often in that quiet room, in that gorgeous mansion which 
 had been the scene of all vain or worldly schemes of 'flirta- 
 tions and feastings, and political meetings and cabinet dinners, 
 and all the bubbles of the passing wave often there did these 
 persons, whose position to each other had been so suddenly 
 and so strangely changed converse on those matters 
 daring and divine which "make the bridal of the earth 
 and sky." 
 
 "How fortunate am I," said Florence, one day, "that my 
 choice fell on one who thinks as you do ! How your words 
 elevate and exalt me ! yet once I never dreamt of asking your 
 creed on these questions. It is in sorrow or sickness that we 
 learn why Faith was given as a soother to man Faith, which 
 is Hope with a holier name hope that knows neither deceit
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 317 
 
 nor death. Ah, how wisely do you speak of the philosophy of 
 belief ! It is, indeed, the telescope through which the stars 
 grow large upon our gaze. And to you, Ernest, my beloved 
 comprehended and known at last to you I leave, when I am 
 gone, that monitor that friend ; you will know yourself what 
 you teach to me. And when you look not on the heaven alone 
 but in all space on all the illimitable creation, you will know 
 that I am there ! For the home of a spirit is wherever spreads 
 the Universal Presence of God. And to what numerous stages 
 of being, what paths, what duties, what active and glorious tasks 
 in other worlds may we not be reserved perhaps to know and 
 share them together, and mount age after age higher in the 
 scale of being. For surely in heaven there is no pause or torpor 
 we do not lie down in calm and unimprovable repose. Move- 
 ment and progress will remain the law and condition of exist- 
 ence. And there will be efforts and duties for us above as there 
 have been below." 
 
 It was in this theory, which Maltravers shared, that the 
 character of Florence, her overflowing life and activity of 
 thought, her aspirations, her ambition, were still displayed. It 
 was not so much to the calm and rest of the grave that she ex- 
 tended her unreluctant gaze, as to the light and glory of a re- 
 newed and progressive existence. 
 
 It was while thus they sate, the low voice of Ernest, tranquil 
 yet half trembling with the emotions he sought to restrain 
 sometimes sobering, sometimes yet more elevating, the thoughts 
 of Florence, that Lord Vargrave was announced, and Lumley 
 Ferrers, who had now succeeded to that title, entered the room. 
 It was the first time that Florence had seen him since the death 
 of his uncle the first time Maltravers had seen him since the 
 evening so fatal to Florence. Both started Maltravers rose 
 and walked to the window. Lord Vargrave took the hand of 
 his cousin and pressed it to his lips in silence, while his looks 
 betokened feelings that for once were genuine. 
 
 " You see, Lumley, I am resigned," said Florence, with a sweet 
 smile. " I am resigned and happy." 
 
 Lumley glanced at Maltravers, and met a cold, scrutinizing, 
 piercing eye, from which he shrank with some confusion. He 
 recovered himself in an instant. 
 
 "I am rejoiced, my cousin, I am rejoiced," said he, very 
 earnestly, "to see Maltravers here again. Let us now hope the 
 best." 
 
 Maltravers walked deliberately up to Lumley, "Will you take 
 my hand turn 1 , too?" said he, with deep meaning in his tone.
 
 318 ERNEST MALTR AVERS. 
 
 "More willingly than ever," said Lumley ; and he did not 
 shrink as he said it. 
 
 " I am satisfied," replied Maltravers, after a pause, and in a 
 voice that expressed more than his words. 
 
 There is in some natures so great a hoard of generosity, that 
 it often dulls their acuteness. Maltravers could not believe 
 that frankness could be wholly a mask it was an hypocrisy he 
 knew not of. He himself was not incapable, had circum- 
 stances so urged him, of great crimes ; nay, the design of one 
 crime lay at that moment deadly and dark within his heart, for 
 he had some passions which in so resolute a character could 
 produce should the wind waken them into storm dire and 
 terrible effects. Even at the age of thirty, it was yet uncertain 
 whether Ernest Maltravers might become an exemplary or an 
 evil man. But he could sooner have strangled a foe than taken 
 the hand of a man he had once betrayed. 
 
 "I love to think you friends," said Florence, gazing at them 
 affectionately, "and to you, at least, Lumley, such friendship 
 should be a blessing. I always loved you much and dearly, 
 Lumley loved you as a brother, though our characters often 
 jarred." 
 
 Lumley winced. "For Heaven's sake," he cried, "do not 
 speak thus tenderly to me I cannot bear it, and look on you 
 and think " 
 
 "That I am dying. Kind words become us best, when our 
 words are approaching to the last. But enough of this I 
 grieved for your loss." 
 
 " My poor uncle ! " said Lumley, eagerly changing the con- 
 versation "the shock was sudden; and melancholy duties 
 have absorbed me so till this day, that I could not come even 
 to you. It soothed me, however, to learn, in answer to my 
 daily inquiries, that Ernest was here. For my part," he added 
 with a faint smile, " I have had duties as well as honors de- 
 volved on me. I am left guardian to an heiress, and betrothed 
 to a child." 
 
 " How do you mean ?" 
 
 "Why, ray poor uncle was so fondly attached to his wife's 
 daughter, that he has left her the bulk of his property ; a very 
 small estate not ^2,000 a year goes with the title (a new 
 title, too, which requires twice as much to carry it off and 
 make its pinchbeck pass for gold). In order, however, to serve 
 a double purpose, secure to his protigfa his own beloved peer- 
 age, and atone to his nephew for the loss of wealth he has 
 left it a last request that I should marry the young lady over
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 319 
 
 whom I am appointed guardian, when she is eighteen alas ! 
 I shall then be at the other side of forty ! If she does not take 
 to so mature a bridegroom, she loses thirty only thirty, of the 
 ^200,000 settled upon her, which goes to me as a sugar-plum 
 after the nauseous draught of the young lady's "No." Now 
 you know all. His widow, really an exemplary young woman, 
 has a jointure of ,1,500 a year, and the villa. It is not much, 
 but she is contented." 
 
 The lightness of the new peer's tone revolted Maltravers, 
 and he turned impatiently away. But Lord Vargrave, resolv- 
 ing not to suffer the conversation to glide back to sorrowful 
 subjects, which he always hated, turned round to Ernest, and 
 said: "Well, my dear Ernest, I see by the papers that you are 
 
 to have N 's late appointment it is a very rising office. I 
 
 congratulate you." 
 
 " I have refused," said Maltravers dryly. 
 
 " Bless me ! indeed ! why ?" 
 
 Ernest bit his lip and frowned ; but, his glance wandering 
 unconsciously at Florence, Lumley thought he detected the 
 true reply to his question, and became mute. 
 
 The conversation was afterwards embarrassed and broken 
 up ; Lumley went away as soon as he could, and Lady Florence 
 that night had a severe fit, and could not leave her bed the 
 next day. That confinement she had struggled against to the 
 last ; and now, day by day, it grew more frequent and inev- 
 itable. The steps of Death became accelerated. And Lord 
 Saxingham, wakened at last to the mournful truth, took his 
 place by his daughter's side, and forgot that he was a cabinet 
 minister. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 "Away, my friends, why take such pains to know. 
 What some brave marble soon in church shall show ? " CRABBE. 
 
 IT may seem strange, but Maltravers had never loved Lady 
 Florence as he did now. Was it the perversity of human nature 
 that makes the things of mortality dearer to us in proportion 
 as they fade from our hopes, like birds whose hues are only 
 unfolded when they take wing and vanish amidst the skies ; or 
 was it that he had ever doted more on loveliness of mind than 
 that of form, and the first bloomed out the more, the more the 
 last decayed ? A thing to protect, to soothe, to shelter oh, 
 how dear it is to the pride of man ! The haughty woman who
 
 32O ERNEST MALTRAVKRS. 
 
 can stand alone and requires no leaning-place in our heart, 
 loses the spell of her sex. 
 
 1 pass over those stages of decline gratuitously painful to 
 record ; and which, in this case, mine cannot be the cold and 
 technical hand to trace. At length came that time when phy- 
 sicians could define within a few days the final hour of release. 
 And latterly the mockfng pruderies of rank had been laid 
 aside, and Maltravers had, for some hours at least in the day, 
 taken his watch beside the couch to which the admired and 
 brilliant Florence Lascelles was now almost constantly reduced. 
 But her high and heroic spirit was with her to the last. To the 
 last she could endure, love, and hope. One day when Mal- 
 travers left his post, she besought him, with more solemnity 
 than usual, to return that evening. She fixed the precise hour, 
 and she sighed heavily when he departed. Maltravers paused 
 in the hall to speak to the physician, who was just quitting 
 Lord Saxingham's library. Ernest spoke to him for some mo- 
 ments calmly, and when he heard the fiat, he betrayed no other 
 emotion than a slight quiver of the lip ! " I must not weep for 
 her yet," he muttered, as he turned from the door. He went 
 thence to the house of a gentleman of his own age, with whom 
 he had formed that kind of acquaintance which never amounts 
 to familiar friendship, but rests upon mutual respect, and is 
 often more ready than professed friendship itself to confer 
 mutual service. Colonel Danvers was a man who usually sat 
 next to Maltravers in Parliament ; they voted together, and 
 thought alike on principles both of politics and honor : they 
 would have lent thousands to each other without bond or 
 memorandum ; and neither ever wanted a warm and indignant 
 advocate when he was abused behind his back in the presence 
 of the other. Yet their tastes and ordinary habits were not 
 congenial ; and when they met in the streets, they never said, 
 as they would to companions they esteemed less, " Let us 
 spend the day together ! " Such forms of acquaintance are not 
 uncommon among honorable men who have already formed 
 habits and pursuits of their own, which they cannot surrender even 
 to friendship. Colonel Danvers was not at home they be- 
 lieved he was at his club, of which Ernest also was a member. 
 Thither Maltravers bent his way. On arriving, he found that 
 Danvers had been at the club an hour ago, and left word that 
 he should shortly return. Maltravers entered and quietly sat 
 down. The room was full of its daily loungers ; but he did 
 not shrink from, he did not even heed, the crowd. He felt 
 not the desire of solitude there was solitude enough within
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 321 
 
 him. Several distinguished public men were there, grouped 
 around the fire, and many of the hangers-on and satellites of 
 political life ; they were talking with eagerness and animation, 
 for it was a season of great party-conflict. Strange as it may 
 seem, though Maltravers was then scarcely sensible of their 
 conversation, it all came back vividly and faithfully on him 
 afterwards, in the first hours of reflection on his own future 
 plans, and served to deepen and consolidate his disgust of the 
 world. They were discussing the character of a great states- 
 man whom, warmed but by the loftiest and purest motives, they 
 were unable to understand. Their gross suspicions, their coarse 
 jealousies, their calculations of patriotism by place all that 
 strips the varnish from the face of that fair harlot, Political 
 Ambition, sank like caustic into his spirit. A gentleman, see- 
 ing him sit silent, with his hat over his moody brows, civilly 
 extended to him the paper he was reading. 
 
 " It is the second edition ; you will find the last French 
 express." 
 
 "Thank you," said Maltravers; and the civil man started 
 as he heard the brief answer ; there was something so inex- 
 pressibly prostrate and broken-spirited in the voice that ut- 
 tered it. 
 
 Maltravers's eyes fell mechanically on the columns, and 
 caught his own name. That work which, in the fair retirement 
 of Temple Grove, it had so pleased him to compose in every 
 page and every thought of which Florence had been consulted 
 which was so inseparably associated with her image, and glorified 
 by the light of her kindred genius was just published. It had 
 been completed long since ; but the publisher had, for some 
 excellent reason of the craft, hitherto delayed its appearance. 
 Maltravers knew nothing of its publication ; he had meant, 
 after his return to town, to have sent to forbid its appearance ; 
 but his thoughts of late had crushed everything else out of his 
 memory he had forgotten its existence. And now, in all the 
 pomp and parade of authorship, it was sent into the world ! 
 JV0u>, now, when it was like an indecent mockery of the Bed of 
 Death a sacrilege, an impiety ! There is a terrible discon- 
 nection between the author and the man the author's life and 
 the man's life the eras of visible triumph may be those of the 
 most intolerable, though unrevealed and unconjectured anguish. 
 The book that delighted us to compose may first appear in the 
 hour when all things under the sun are joyless. This had been 
 Ernest Maltravers's most favored work. It had been conceived 
 in a happy hour of great ambition it had been executed with
 
 322 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 that desire of truth which, in the mind of genius, becomes ART 
 How little, in the solitary hours stolen from sleep, had he thought 
 of self, and that laborer's hire called "fame!" How had he 
 dreamed that he was promulgating secrets to make his kind 
 better, and wiser, and truer to the great aims of life ! How 
 had Florence, and Florence alone, understood the beatings of 
 his heart in every page ! And now! it so chanced that the 
 work was reviewed in the paper he read it was not only a 
 hostile criticism, it was a personally abusive diatribe, a virulent 
 invective. All the motives that can darken or defile were 
 ascribed to him. All the mean spite of some mean mind was 
 sputtered forth. Had the writer known the awful blow that 
 awaited Maltravers at that time, it is not in man's nature but 
 that he would have shrunk from this petty gall upon the wrung 
 withers ; but, as I have said, there is a terrible disconnection 
 between the author and the man. The first is always at our 
 mercy of the last we know nothing. At such an hour Mal- 
 travers could feel none of the contempt that proud none of 
 the wrath that vain minds feel at these stings. He could 
 feel nothing but an undefined abhorrence of the world, and of 
 the aims and objects he had pursued so long. Yet that even 
 he did not then feel. He was in a dream ; but as men remem- 
 ber dreams, so when he awoke did he loathe his own former 
 aspirations, and sicken at their base rewards. It was the first 
 time since his first year of inexperienced authorship, that abuse 
 had had the power even to vex him for a moment. But here, 
 when the cup was already full, was the drop that overflowed. 
 The great column of his past world was gone, and all else 
 seemed crumbling away. 
 
 At length Colonel Danvers entered. Maltravers drew him 
 aside, and they left the club. 
 
 "Danvers," said the latter, "the time in which I told you I 
 should need your services is near at hand ; let me see you, if 
 possible, to-night." 
 
 "Certainly I shall be at the House till eleven. After that 
 hour you will find me at home." 
 
 " I thank you." 
 
 " Cannot this matter be arranged amicably ? " 
 
 " No, it is a quarrel of life and death." 
 
 " Yet the world is really growing too enlightened for these 
 old mimicries of single combat." 
 
 " There are some cases in which human nature and its deep 
 wrongs will be ever stronger than the world and its philosophy. 
 Duels and wars belong to the same principle ; both are sinful
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 323 
 
 on light grounds and poor pretexts. But it is not sinful for a 
 soldier to defend his country from invasion, nor for man with 
 a man's heart to vindicate truth and honor with his life. The 
 robber that asks me for money I am allowed to shoot. Is the 
 robber that tears from me treasures never to be replaced,- to go 
 free? These are the inconsistencies of a pseudo-ethics which, 
 as long as we are made of flesh and blood, we can never sub- 
 scribe to." 
 
 "Yet the ancients," said Danvers with a smile, "were as 
 passionate as ourselves, and they dispensed with duels." 
 
 "Yes, because they resorted to assassination!" answered 
 Maltravers, with a gloomy frown. "As in revolutions all law is 
 suspended, so are there stormy events and mighty injuries 
 in life, which are as revolutions to individuals. Enough of 
 this it is no time to argue like the school-men. When we 
 meet you shall know all, and you will judge like me. Good- 
 day ! " 
 
 " What, are you going already ? Maltravers, you look ill, 
 your hand is feverish you should take advice." 
 
 Maltravers smiled but the smile was not like his own 
 shook his head, and strode rapidly away. 
 
 Three of the London clocks, one after the other, had told 
 the hour of nine, as a tall and commanding figure passed up 
 the street towards Saxingham House. Five doors before 
 you reach that mansion there is a crossing, and at this spot 
 stood a young man in whose face youth itself looked sapless 
 and blasted. It was then March, the third of March ; the 
 weather was unusually severe and biting, even for that angry 
 month. There had been snow in the morning, and it lay white 
 and dreary in various ridges along the street. But the wind 
 was not still in the keen but quiet sharpness of frost ; on the 
 contrary, it howled almost like a hurricane through the deso- 
 late thoroughfares, and the lamps flickered unsteadily in the 
 turbulent gusts. Perhaps it was these blasts which increased 
 the haggardness of aspect in the young man I have mentioned. 
 His hair, which was much longer than is commonly worn, was 
 tossed wildly from cheeks preternaturally shrunken, hollow, 
 and livid : and the frail, thin form seemed scarcely able to 
 support itself against the rush of the winds. 
 
 As the tall figure, which, in its masculine stature and propor- 
 tions, and a peculiar and nameless grandeur of bearing, strongly 
 contrasted that of the younger man, now came to the spot 
 where the streets met, it paused abruptly. 
 
 " You are here once more, Castruccio Cesarini it is well ! "
 
 324 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 said the low but ringing voice of Ernest Maltravers. " This, I 
 believe, will not be our last interview to-night." 
 
 " I ask you, sir," said Cesarini, in a tone in which pride strug- 
 gled with emotion " I ask you to tell me how she is whether 
 you know I cannot speak " 
 
 "Your work is nearly done," answered Maltravers. "A few 
 hours more, and your victim, for she is yours, will bear her tale 
 to the Great Judgment-Seat. Murderer as you are, tremble, for 
 your own hour approaches!" 
 
 " She dies and I cannot see her ! and you are permitted that 
 last glimpse of human perfectness you who never loved her as 
 I did you ! hated and detested ! you " 
 
 Cesarini paused, and his voice died away, choked in his own 
 convulsive gaspings for breath. 
 
 Maltravers looked at him from the height of his erect and 
 lofty form, with a merciless eye ; for in this one quarter Mal- 
 travers had shut out pity from his soul. 
 
 " Weak criminal ! " said he, " hear me. You received at my 
 hands forbearance, friendship, fostering and anxious care. When 
 your own follies plunged you into penury, mine was the unseen 
 hand that plucked you from famine or the prison. I strove to 
 redeem, and save, and raise you, and endow your miserable spirit 
 with the thirst and the power of honor and independence. The 
 agent of that wish was Florence Lascelles you repaid us well! 
 base and fraudulent forgery, attaching meanness tome, fraught 
 with agony and death to her. Your conscience at last smote 
 you you revealed to her your crime one spark of manhood 
 made you reveal it also to myself. Fresh as I was, in that mo- 
 ment, from the contemplation of the ruin you had made, I 
 curbed the impulse that would have crushed the life from your 
 bosom. I told you to live on while life was left to her. If she 
 recovered I could forgive, if she died I must avenge. We en- 
 tered into that solemn compact, and in a few hours the bond 
 will need the seal it is the blood of one of us. Castruccio 
 Cesarini, there is justice in heaven. Deceive yourself not you 
 will fall by my hand. When the hour comes, you will hear 
 from me. Let me pass I have no more now to say." 
 
 Every syllable of this speech was uttered with that thrilling 
 distinctness which seems as if the depth of the heart spoke in 
 the voice. But Cesarini did not appear to understand its im- 
 port. He seized Maltravers by the arm, and looked in his face 
 with a wild and menacing glare. 
 
 " Did you tell me she was dying ? " he said. " I ask you that 
 question, why do you not answer me ? Oh, by the way, you
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 325 
 
 threaten me with your vengeance. Know you not that I long to 
 meet you front to front and to the death ? Did I not tell you 
 so did I not try to move your slow blood to insult you into 
 a conflict in which I should have gloried ? Yet then you were 
 marble." 
 
 "Because my wrong I could forgive, and hers there was then 
 a hope that hers might not need the atonement. Away ! " 
 
 Maltravers shook the hold of the Italian from his arm, and 
 passed on. A wild, sharp yell of despair rang after him, and 
 echoed in his ear as he strode the long, dim, solitary stairs that 
 led to the deathbed of Florence Lascelles. 
 
 Maltravers entered the room adjoining that which contained 
 the sufferer, the same room, still gay and cheerful, in which had 
 been his first interview with Florence since their reconciliation. 
 
 Here he found the physician dozing in a fauteuil. Lady Flor- 
 ence had fallen asleep during the last two or three hours. Lord 
 Saxingham was in his own apartment, deeply and noisily affect- 
 ed, for it was not thought that Florence could survive the night. 
 
 Maltravers sate himself quietly down. Before him, on a table, 
 lay several manuscript books gayly and gorgeously bound ; he 
 mechanically opened them. Florence's fair, noble, Italian cha- 
 racters met his eye in every page. Her rich and active mind 
 her love for poetry her thirst for knowledge her indulgence 
 of deep thought spoke from those pages like the ghosts of her- 
 self. Often, underscored with the marks of her approbation, 
 he chanced upon extracts from his own works, sometimes upon 
 reflections by the writer herself, not inferior in truth and depth 
 to his own ; snatches of wild verse never completed, but of a 
 power and energy beyond the delicate grace of lady-poets ; 
 brief, vigorous criticisms on books above the common holiday 
 studies of the sex ; indignant and sarcastic aphorisms on the 
 real world, with high and sad bursts of feeling upon the ideal 
 one ; all, checkering and enriching the varied volumes, told of 
 the rare gifts with which this singular girl was endowed a her- 
 bal, as it were, of withered blossoms that might have borne Hes- 
 perian fruits. And sometimes in these outpourings of the full 
 mind and laden heart were allusions to himself, so tender and 
 so touching the pencilled outline of his features traced by 
 memory in a thousand aspects the reference to former inter- 
 views and conversations the dates and hours marked with a 
 woman's minute and treasuring care, all these tokens of genius 
 and of love spoke to him with a voice that said, " And this crea- 
 ture is lost to you forever : you never appreciated her till the 
 time for her departure was irrevocably fixed J "
 
 326 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 Maltravers uttered a deep groan ; all the past rushed over 
 him. Her romantic passion for one yet unknown her interest 
 in his glory her zeal for his life of life, his spotless and haughty 
 name. It was as if, with her, Fame and Ambition were dying 
 also, and henceforth nothing but common clay and sordid mo- 
 tives were to be left on earth. 
 
 How sudden how awfully sudden had been the blow ! True, 
 there had been an absence of some months in which the change 
 had operated. But absence is a blank a nonentity. He had 
 left her in apparent health in the tide of prosperity and pride. 
 He saw her again stricken down in body and temper chas- 
 tened humbled dying. And this being, so bright and lofty, 
 how had she loved him ! Never had he been so loved, except 
 in that morning dream haunted by the vision of the lost and 
 dim-remembered Alice. Never on earth could he be so loved 
 again. The air and aspect of the whole chamber grew to him 
 painful and oppressive. It was full of her the owner ! There 
 the harp, which so well became her muse -like form that it was 
 associated with her like a part of herself ! There the pictures, 
 fresh and glowing from her hand, the giace the harmony 
 the classic and simple taste everywhere displayed ! 
 
 Rousseau has left to us an immortal portrait of the lover wait- 
 ing for the first embraces of his mistress. But to wait with a 
 pulse as feverish, a brain as dizzy, for her last look to await 
 the moment of despair, not rapture to feel the slow and dull 
 time as palpable a load upon the heart, yet to shrink from your 
 own impatience, and wish that the agony of suspense might en- 
 dure for ever this, oh, this is a picture of intense passion of 
 flesh-and-blood reality of the rare and solemn epochs of our 
 mysterious life which had been worthier the genius of that 
 "Apostle of Affliction !" 
 
 At length the door opened ; the favorite attendant of Florence 
 looked in. 
 
 " Is Mr. Maltravers there ? Oh, sir, my lady is awake and 
 would see you." 
 
 Maltravers rose, but his feet were glued to the ground, his 
 sinking heart stood still it was a mortal terror that possessed 
 him. With a deep sigh he shook off the numbing spell, and 
 passed to the bedside of Florence. 
 
 She sate up, propped by pillows, and as he sank beside her, 
 and clasped her wan, transparent hand, she looked at him with 
 a smile of pitying love. 
 
 " You have been very, very kind to me," she said, after a pause, 
 and with a voice which had altered even since the last time he
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 327 
 
 heard It. "You have made that part of life from which human 
 nature shrinks with dread, the happiest and the brightest of all 
 my short and vain existence. My own dear Ernest Heaven 
 reward you ! " 
 
 A few grateful tears dropped from her eyes, and they fell on 
 the hand which she bent her lips to kiss. 
 
 " It was not here not amidst streets and the noisy abodes of 
 anxious, worldly men nor was it in this harsh and dreary sea- 
 son of the year, that I could have wished to look my last on 
 earth. Could I have seen the face of Nature could I have 
 watched once more with the summer sun amidst those gentle 
 scenes we loved so well. Death would have had no difference 
 from sleep. But what matters it ? With you there are summer 
 and Nature everywhere?" 
 
 Maltravers raised his face, and their eyes met in silence it 
 was a long, fixed gaze which spoke more than all words could. 
 Her head dropped on his shoulder, and there it lay, passive and 
 motionless, for some moments. A soft step glided into the 
 room it was the unhappy father's. He came to the other side 
 of his daughter, and sobbed convulsively. 
 
 She then raised herself, and even in the shades of death a 
 faint blush passed over her cheek. 
 
 " My good, dear father, what comfort will it give you here- 
 after to think how fondly you spoiled your Florence ! " 
 
 Lord Saxingham could not answer : he clasped her in his arms 
 and wept over her. Then he broke away looked on her with 
 a shudder 
 
 " Oh, God ! " he cried, " she is dead she is dead ! " 
 
 Maltravers started. The physician kindly approached, and 
 taking Lord Saxingham's hand, led him from the room he went 
 mute and obedient like a child. 
 
 But the struggle was not yet past. Florence once more opened 
 her eyes, and Maltravers uttered a cry of joy. But along those 
 eyes the film was darkening rapidly, as still through the mist and 
 shadow they sought the beloved countenance which hung over 
 her, as if to breathe life into waning life. Twice her lips moved, 
 but her voice failed, she shook her head sadly. 
 
 Maltravers held to her mouth a cordial which lay ready on 
 the table near her, but scarce had it moistened her lips when 
 her whole frame grew heavier and heavier in his clasp. Her 
 head once more sank upon his bosom she thrice gasped wildly 
 for breath and at length, raising her hand on high, life struggled 
 into its expiring ray. 
 
 " There above ! Ernest that name Ernest ! "
 
 328 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 Yes, that name was the last she uttered ; she was evidently 
 conscious of that thought, for a smile, as her voice again fal- 
 tered a smile sweet and serene that smile never seen but on 
 the faces of the dying and the dead borrowed from a light that 
 is not of this world settled slowly on her brow, her lips, her 
 whole countenance ; still she breathed, but the breath grew 
 fainter; at length, without murmur, sound, or struggle, it passed 
 away the head dropped from his bosom the form fell from 
 his arms all was over ' 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 < * * * Is this the promised end ? " Lear. 
 
 IT was two houis after that scene before Maltravers left the 
 house. It was then just on the stroke of the first hour of morn- 
 ing. To him, while he walked through the streets, and the sharp 
 winds howled on his path, it was as if a strange and wizard life 
 had passed into and supported him a sort of drowsy, dull ex- 
 istence. He was like a sleep-walker, unconscious of all around 
 him ; yet his steps went safe and free ; and the one thought 
 that possessed his being into which all intellect seemed 
 shrunk the thought, not fiery nor vehement, but calm, stern, 
 and solemn the thought of revenge seemed, as it were, grown 
 his soul itself. He arrived at the door of Colonel Danvers, 
 mounted the stairs, and, as his friend advanced to meet him, 
 said calmly, "Now, then, the hour has arrived." 
 
 " But what would you do now?" 
 
 "Come with me, and you shall learn." 
 
 " Very well,my carriage is below. Will you direct the servants?" 
 
 Maltravers nodded, gave his orders to the careless footman, 
 and the two friends were soon driving through the less-known 
 and courtly regions of the giant city. It was then that Mal- 
 travers concisely stated to Danvers the fraud that had been 
 practised by Cesarini. 
 
 " You will go with me now," concluded Maltravers, " to his 
 house. To do him justice, he is no coward ; he has not shrunk 
 from giving me his address, nor will he shrink from the atone- 
 ment I demand. I shall wait below while you arrange our meet- 
 ing at daybreak for to-morrow." 
 
 Danvers was astonished and even appalled by the discovery 
 made to him. There was something so unusual and strange in 
 the whole affair. But neither his experience, nor his principles 
 of honor, could suggest any alternative to the plan proposed.
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 329 
 
 For though not regarding the cause of quarrel in the same 
 light as Maltravers, and putting aside all question as to the right 
 of the lacier to constitute himself the champion of the betrothed 
 or the avenger of the dead, it seemed clear to the soldier that 
 a man whose confidential letter had been garbled by anothei 
 for the purpose of slandering his truth and calumniating his 
 name had no option but contempt, or the sole retribution 
 (wretched though it be) which the customs of the higher class 
 permit to those who live within its pale. But contempt for a 
 wrong that a sorrow so tragic had followed was that option in 
 human philosophy ? 
 
 The carriage stopped at a door in a narrow lane in an obscure 
 suburb. Yet, dark as all the houses around were, lights were 
 seen in the upper windows of Cesarini's residence, passing to 
 and fro; and scarce had the servant's loud knock echoed through 
 the dim thoroughfare, ere the door was opened. Danvers de- 
 scended, and entered the passage "Oh, sir, I am so glad you 
 are come ! " said an old woman, pale and trembling ; "he do take 
 on so ! " 
 
 "There is no mistake," asked Danvers, halting; "an Italian 
 gentleman named Cesarini lodges here?" 
 
 " Yes, sir, poor cretur I sent for you to come to him for says 
 I to my boy, says I " 
 
 "Whom do you take me for?" 
 
 "Why, la, sir, you be's the doctor, ben't you?" 
 
 Danvers made no reply ; he had a mean opinion of the cour- 
 age of one who could act dishonorably ; he thought there was 
 some design to cheat his friend out of his revenge ; accordingly 
 he ascended the stairs, motioning the woman to precede him. 
 
 He came back to the door of the carriage in a few minutes. 
 "Let us go home, Maltravers," said he, "this man is not in a 
 state to meet you." 
 
 " Ha ! " cried Maltravers, frowning darkly, and all his long- 
 smothered indignation rushing like fire through every vein of his 
 body; " would he shrink from the atonement ? " He pushed Dan- 
 vers impatiently aside, leapt from the carriage, and rushed up- 
 stairs. 
 
 Danvers followed. 
 
 Heated, wrought-up, furious, Ernest Maltravers burst into a 
 small and squalid chamber ; from the closed doors of which, 
 through many chinks, had gleamed the light that told him Ces- 
 arini was within. And Cesarini's eyes, blazing with horrible fire, 
 were the first object that met his gaze. Maltravers stood still, 
 as if frozen into stone,
 
 330 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 " Ha ! ha ! " laughed a shrill and shrieking voice, which con- 
 trasted dreadly with the accents of the soft Tuscan in which the 
 wild words were strung "who comes here with garments dyed 
 in blood ? You cannot accuse me for my blow drew no blood, 
 it went straight to the heart rt tore no flesh by the way; we Ital- 
 ians poison our victims ! Where art thou where art thou, Mal- 
 travers? I am ready. Coward, you do not come ! Oh, yes, here 
 you are ; the pistols I will not fight so. I am a wild beast. 
 Let us rend each other with our teeth and talons ! " 
 
 Huddled up like a heap of confused and jointless limbs in the 
 furthest corner of the room, lay the wretch, a raving maniac, 
 two men keeping their firm gripe on him, which, ever and anon, 
 with the mighty strength of madness, he shook off, to fall back 
 senseless and exhausted ; his strained and bloodshot eyes start- 
 ing from their sockets, the slaver gathering round his lips, his 
 raven hair standing on end, his delicate and symmetrical fea- 
 tures distorted into a hideous and Gorgon aspect. It was, indeed, 
 an appalling and sublime spectacle, full of an awful moral, the 
 meeting of the foes ! Here stood Maltravers, strong beyond the 
 common strength of men, in health, power, conscious superiority, 
 premeditated vengeance wise, gifted ; all his faculties ripe, de- 
 veloped, at his command ; the complete and all-armed man, 
 prepared for defence and offence against every foe a man who 
 once roused in arighteous quarrel, would not have quailed before 
 an army ; and there and thus was his dark and fierce purpose 
 dashed from his soul, shivered into atoms at his feet. He felt 
 the nothingness of man and man's wrath in the presence of the 
 madman on whose head the thunderbolt of a greater curse than 
 human anger ever breathes had fallen. In his horrible afflic- 
 tion the Criminal triumphed over the Avenger ! 
 
 " Yes ! yes ! " shouted Cesarini again ; " they tell me she is dy- 
 ing : but he is by her side pluck him thence he shall not 
 touch her hand she shall not bless him she is mine if I 
 killed her, I have saved her from him she is mine in death. 
 Let me in, I say, I will come in, I will, I will see her, and 
 strangle him at her feet." With that, by a tremendous effort, 
 he tore himself from the clutch of his holders, and with a sud- 
 den and exultant bound sprang across the room, and stood face 
 to face to Maltravers. The proud, brave man turned pale and 
 recoiled a step "It is he ! it is he !" shrieked the maniac, and 
 he leaped like a tiger at the throat of his rival. Maltravers quickly 
 seized his arm, and whirled him round. Cesarini fell heavily on 
 the floor, mute, senseless, and in strong convulsions. 
 
 " Mysterious Prpvidenqe \ " murmured MaUrayers, " (hou hast
 
 ERNEST MALTR AVERS. 331 
 
 justly rebuked the mortal for dreaming he might arrogate to 
 himself thy privilege of vengeance. Forgive the sinner, O God, 
 as I do as thou teachest this stubborn heart to forgive as she 
 forgave who is now with thee, a blessed saint in heaven ! " 
 
 When, some minutes afterwards, the doctor, who had been sent 
 for, arrived, the head of the stricken patient lay on the lap of his 
 foe, and it was the hand of Maltravers that wiped the froth from 
 the white lips, and the voice of Maltravers that strove to soothe, 
 and the tears of Maltravers that were falling on that fiery brow. 
 
 "Tend him, sir, tend him as my brother," said Maltravers, 
 hiding his face as he resigned the charge. "Let him have all 
 that can alleviate and cure remove him hence to some fitter 
 abode send for the best advice. Restore him, and and " 
 He could say no more, but left the room abruptly. 
 
 It was afterwards ascertained that Cesarini had remained in 
 the streets afte*- his short interview with Ernest ; that at length 
 he had knocked at Lord Saxingham's door, just in the very hour 
 when death had claimed its victim. He heard the announce- 
 ment he sought to force his way upstairs they thrust him from 
 the house, and nothing more of him was known till he arrived at 
 his own door, an hour before Danvers and Maltravers came, in 
 raging frenzy. Perhaps by one of the dim erratic gleams of light 
 which always checker the darkness of insanity, he retained some 
 faint remembrance of his compact and assignation with Mal- 
 travers, which had happily guided his steps back to his abode. 
 
 It was two months after this scene, a lovely Sabbath morning, 
 in the earliest May, as Lumley, Lord Vargrave, sate alone by the 
 window in his late uncle's villa, in his late uncle's easy-chair 
 his eyes were resting musingly on the green lawn on which the 
 windows opened, or rather on two forms that were seated upon 
 a rustic bench in the middle of the sward. One was the widow 
 in her weeds, the other was that fair and lovely child destined 
 to be the bride of the new lord. The hands of the mother and 
 daughter were clasped in each. There was sadness in the faces 
 of both deeper if more resigned on that of the elder, for the 
 child sought to console her parent, and grief in childhood comes 
 with a butterfly's wing. 
 
 Lumley gazed on them both, and on the child more earnestly. 
 
 "She is very lovely," he said ; "she will be very rich. After 
 all, I am not to be be pitied. I am a peer, and I have enough 
 to live upon at present. I am a rising man our party want 
 peers ; and though I could not have had more than a subaltern's
 
 332 ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 
 
 seat at the Treasury Board six months ago, when I was an ac- 
 tive, zealous, able commoner, now that I am a lord, with what 
 they call a stake in the country, I may open my mouth and 
 bless me! I know not how many windfalls may drop in ! My un- 
 cle was wiser than I thought in wrestling for this peerage, which 
 he won and I wear ! Then, by and by, just at the age when I 
 want to marry and have an heir (and a pretty wife saves one a 
 vast deal of trouble), ^200,000 and a young beauty ! Come, 
 come, I have strong cards in my hands if I play them tolerably. 
 I must take care that she falls desperately in love with me. 
 Leave me alone for that I know the sex, and have never failed 
 except in ah, that poor Florence ! Well, it is no use regret- 
 ting ! Like thrifty artists, we must paint out the unmarketable 
 picture, and call luckier creations to fill up the same canvas ! " 
 
 Here the servant interrupted Lord Vargrave's meditation by 
 bringing in the letters and the newspapers which had just been 
 forwarded from his town house. Lord Vargrave had spoken in 
 the Lords on the previous Friday, and he wished to see what 
 the Sunday newspapers said of his speech. So he took up one 
 of the leading papers before he opened the letters. His eyes 
 rested upon two paragraphs in close neighborhood with each 
 other : the first ran thus : 
 
 "The celebrated Mr. Maltravers has resigned his seat for the 
 
 of , and left town yesterday on an extended tour on the 
 
 Continent. Speculation is busy on the causes of the singular 
 and unexpected self-exile of a gentleman so distinguished in 
 the very zenith of his career." 
 
 " So, he has given up the game ! " muttered Lord Vargrave ; 
 "he was never a practical man I am glad he is out of the way. 
 But what's this about myself?" 
 
 "We hear that important changes are to take place in the gov- 
 ernment it is said that ministers are at last alive to the neces- 
 sity of strengthening themselves with new talent. Among other 
 appointments confidently spoken of in the best-informed circles, 
 
 we learn that Lord Vargrave is to have the place of . It will 
 
 be a popular appointment. Lord Vargrave is not a holiday ora- 
 tor, a mere declamatory rhetorician but a man of clear, busi- 
 ness-like views, and was highly thought of in the House of 
 Commons. He has also the art of attaching his friends, and his 
 frank, manly character cannot fail to have its due effect with 
 the English public. In another column of our journal our read- 
 ers will see a full report of his excellent maiden speech in the 
 House of Lords on Friday last : the sentiments there expressed 
 do the highest honor to his lordship's patriotism and sagacity,"
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVKRS. 333 
 
 "Very well, very well indeed ! " said Lumley, rubbing his 
 hands ; and, turning to his letters, his attention was drawn to 
 one with an enormous seal, marked "Private and confidential." 
 He knew before he opened it that it contained the offer of the 
 appointment alluded to in the newspaper. He read, and rose 
 exultantly ; passing through the French windows, he joined 
 Lady Vargrave and Evelyn on the lawn, and as he smiled on 
 the mother and caressed the child, the scene and the group 
 made a pleasant picture of English domestic happiness. 
 
 Here ends the First Portion of this work : it ends in the view 
 that bounds us when we look on the practical world with the 
 outward unspiritual eye and see life that dissatisfies justice, 
 for life is so seen but in fragments. The influence of fate seems so 
 small on the man who, in erring, but errs as the egoist, and 
 shapes out of ill some use that can profit himself. But Fate 
 hangs a shadow so vast on the heart that errs but in venturing 
 abroad, and knows only in others the sources of sorrow and joy. 
 
 Go alone, O Maltravers, unfriended, remote thy present a 
 waste, and thy past life a ruin, go forth to the Future ! Go, 
 Ferrers, light cynic with the crowd take thy way, complacent, 
 elated, no cloud upon conscience, for thou seest but sunshine 
 on fortune. Go forth to the Future ! 
 
 Human life is compared to the circle Is the simile just? All 
 lines that are drawn from the centre to touch the circumference, 
 by the law of the circle, are equal. But the lines that are drawn 
 from the heart of the man to the verge of his destiny do they 
 equal each other ? Alas ! some seem so brief, and some lengthen 
 on as for ever. 
 
 THE END.
 
 ALICE 
 
 OR 
 
 THE MYSTERIES
 
 NOTE. 
 
 ALTHOUGH it has been judged desirable to designate this 
 Second Part of " Ernest Maltravers " by its original title of 
 " Alice," yet, as it has been elsewhere stated, the two Parts are 
 united by the same plot, and form but one entire whole. The 
 more ingenious and attentive will perhaps perceive that under 
 the outward story, which knits together the destinies of Alice 
 and Maltravers, there is an interior philosophical design which 
 explains the author's application of the word " Eleusinia," or 
 "Mysteries," appended to the title. Thus regarded, Ernest 
 Maltravers will appear to the reader as the type of Genius, or 
 Intellectual Ambition, which, at the onset of its career, devotes 
 itself with extravagance and often erring passion to Nature 
 alone (typified by Alice). Maltravers is separated by action 
 and the current of worldly life, from the simple and earlier form 
 of Nature, new objects successively attract, and for a short 
 time absorb his devotion, but he has a secret yearning to the 
 first idol, and a repentant regret for his loss. Completing, 
 however, his mental education in the actual world, and, though 
 often led astray from the path, still earnestly fixing his eye 
 upon the goal, he is ultimately reunited to the one who had 
 first smiled upon his youth, and ever (yet unconsciously) in- 
 fluenced his after-manhood. But this attachment is no longer 
 erring, and the object of it has attained to a purer and higher 
 state of being, that is, GENIUS, if duly following its vocation, 
 reunites itself to the NATURE from which life and art had for 
 a while distracted it ; but to Nature in a higher and more 
 spiritual form than that under which youth beholds it, Nature 
 elevated and idealized. 
 
 In tracing the progress and denouement of this conception 
 the reader will be better enabled to judge both of the ethical 
 intention of the author, and of the degree of success with which, 
 as an artist, he has connected the inward story with the outer, 
 and, while faithful to his main typical purpose, left to the char- 
 acters that illustrate it the attributes of reality the freedom 
 and movement of living beings. So far as an author may pre-
 
 4 ALICE J OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 sume to judge of his own writings no narrative fiction by the 
 same hand (with the exception of the poem of " King Arthur"), 
 deserves to be classed before this work in such merit as maybe 
 thought to belong to harmony between a premeditated concep- 
 tion and the various incidents and agencies employed in the 
 development of plot. 
 
 KNEBWORTH, Dec. 14, 1851.
 
 ALICE; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 BOOK I. 
 
 VTTO 6ev6poK6/tot 
 # # dvafiodou. EURIP. Hel. I. Hl6. 
 
 Thee, hid the towering vales amidst, I call. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 "Who art thou, fair one, who usurp'st the place 
 
 Of Blanch, the lady of the matchless grace ? " LAMB. 
 
 IT was towards evening of a day in early April, that two 
 ladies were seated by the open windows of a cottage in Devon- 
 shire. The lawn before them was gay with evergreens, relieved 
 by the first few flowers and fresh turf of the reviving spring ; 
 and at a distance, through an opening amongst the trees, the 
 sea, blue and tranquil, bounded the view, and contrasted the 
 more confined and home-like feature of the scene. It was a 
 spot remote, sequestered, shut out from the business and pleas- 
 ures of the world ; as such it suited the tastes and character of 
 the owner. 
 
 That owner was the younger of the ladies seated by the 
 window. You would scarcely have guessed, from her appear- 
 ance, that she was more than seven or eight-and-twenty, though 
 she exceeded by four or five years that critical boundary in the 
 life of beauty. Her form was slight and delicate in its propor- 
 tions, nor was her countenance the less lovely, because, from 
 its gentleness and repose (not unmixed with a certain sadness), 
 the coarse and the gay might have thought it wanting in ex- 
 pression. For there is a stillness in the aspect of those who 
 have felt deeply, which deceives the common eye as rivers are 
 often alike tranquil and profound, in proportion as they are re- 
 mote from the springs which agitated and swelled the com- 
 mencement of their course, and by which their waters are still, 
 though invisibly, supplied. 
 
 The elder lady, the guest of her companion, was past seventy ;
 
 6 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 her gray hair was drawn back from the forehead, and gathered 
 under a stiff cap of quaker-like simplicity ; while her dress, 
 rich but plain, and of no very modern fashion, served to in- 
 crease the venerable appearance of one who seemed not ashamed 
 of years. 
 
 " My dear Mrs. Leslie," said the lady of the house, after a 
 thoughtful pause in the conversation that had been carried on 
 for the last hour ; " it is very true ; perhaps I was to blame in 
 coming to this place ; I ought not to have been so selfish." 
 
 "No, my dear friend," returned Mrs. Leslie gently ; " selfish 
 is a word that can never be applied to you ; you acted as be- 
 came you agreeably to your own instinctive sense of what is 
 best, when at your age independent in fortune and rank, and 
 still so lovely you resigned all that would have attracted 
 others, and devoted yourself, in retirement, to a life of quiet 
 and unknown benevolence. You are in your sphere in this 
 village humble though it be consoling, relieving, healing the 
 wretched, the destitute, the infirm ; and teaching your Evelyn 
 insensibly to imitate your modest and Christian virtues." The 
 good old lady spoke warmly, and with tears in her eyes ; her 
 companion placed her hand in Mrs. Leslie's. 
 
 " You cannot make me vain," said she, with a sweet and 
 melancholy smile. " I remember what I was when you first 
 gave shelter to the poor, desolate wanderer and her fatherless 
 child ; and I, who was then so poor and destitute, what should 
 I be, if I was deaf to the poverty and sorrows of others others, 
 too, who are better than I am ? But now Evelyn, as you say, 
 is growing up ; the time approaches when she must decide on 
 accepting or rejecting Lord Vargrave ; and yet in this pillage 
 how can she compare him with others? how can she form a 
 choice? What you say is very true; and yet I did not think 
 of it sufficiently. What shall I do? I am only anxious, dear 
 girl, to act so as may be best for her own happiness." 
 
 "Of that I am sure," returned Mrs. Leslie ; "and yet I know 
 not how to advise. On one hand, so much is due to the wishes 
 of your late husband, in every point of view, that if Lord Var- 
 grave be worthy of Evelyn's esteem and affection, it would be 
 most desirable that she should prefer him to all others. But if 
 he be what I hear he is considered in the world, an artful, 
 scheming, almost heartless man, of ambitious and hard pur- 
 suits, I tremble to think how completely the happiness of 
 Evelyn's whole life may be thrown away. She certainly is not 
 in love with him, and yet I fear she is one whose nature is but 
 too susceptible of affection. She ought now to see others, to
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 7 
 
 know her own mind, and not to be hurried, blindfold and inex- 
 perienced, into a step that decides existence. This is a duty 
 we owe to her nay, even to the late Lord Vargrave, anxious 
 as he was for the marriage. His aim was surely her happiness, 
 and he would not have insisted upon means that time and cir- 
 cumstances might show to be contrary to the end he had in 
 view." 
 
 "You are right," replied Lady Vargrave; "when my poor 
 husband lay on his bed of death, just before he summoned his 
 nephew to receive his last blessing, he said to me, ' Providence 
 can counteract all our schemes. If ever it should be for 
 Evelyn's real happiness that my wish for her marriage with 
 Lumley Ferrers should not be fulfilled, to you I must leave the 
 right to decide on what I cannot foresee. All I ask is, that no 
 obstacle shall be thrown in the way of my wish ; and that the 
 child shall be trained up to consider Lumley as her future hus- 
 band.' Among his papers was a letter addressed to me to the 
 same effect ; and, indeed, in other respects, that letter left 
 more to my judgment than I had any right to expect. Oh, I 
 am often unhappy to think that he did not marry one who 
 would have deserved his affection ! and but regret is useless 
 now ! " 
 
 " I wish you could really feel so," said Mrs. Leslie ; " for re- 
 gret of another kind still seems to haunt you ; and I do not 
 think you have yet forgotten your early sorrows." 
 
 " Ah ! how can I ? " said Lady Vargrave, with a quivering lip. 
 
 At that instant, a light shadow darkened the sunny lawn in 
 front of the casements, and a sweet, gay, young voice was heard 
 singing at a little distance ; a moment more, and a beautiful 
 girl, in the first bloom of youth, bounded lightly along the grass, 
 and halted opposite the friends. 
 
 It was a remarkable contrast the repose and quiet of the two 
 persons we have described the age and gray hairs of one the 
 resigned and melancholy gentleness written on the features of 
 the other with the springing step, and laughing eyes, and radiant 
 bloom of the new-comer ! As she stood with the setting sun 
 glowing full upon her rich fair hair, her happy countenance and 
 elastic form it was a vision almost too bright for this weary 
 earth a tiling of light and bliss that the joyous Greek might 
 have placed among the forms of Heaven, and worshipped as an 
 Aurora or a Hebe. 
 
 "Oh! how can you stay in-doors this beautiful evening? 
 Come, dearest Mrs. Leslie ; come, mother, dear mother, you 
 know you promised you would you said I was to call you
 
 8 ALICE J Ok, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 see, it will rain no more, and the shower has left the myrtles 
 and the violet-bank so fresh." 
 
 "My dear Evelyn," said Mrs. Leslie, with a smile, "I am 
 not so young as you." 
 
 " No ; but you are just as gay when you are in good spirits- 
 and who can be out of spirits in such weather? Let me call for 
 your chair ; let me wheel you I am sure lean. Down, Sultan ; 
 so you have found me out, have you, sir ? Be quiet, sir down ! " 
 
 This last exhortation was addressed to a splendid dog of the 
 Newfoundland breed, who now contrived wholly to occupy 
 Evelyn's attention. 
 
 The two friends looked at this beautiful girl, as with all the 
 grace of youth she shared while she rebuked the exuberant 
 hilarity of her huge playmate ; and the elder of the two seemed 
 the most to sympathize with her mirth. Both gazed with fond 
 affection upon an object dear to both. But some memory or asso- 
 ciation touched Lady Vargrave, and she sighed as she gazed. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 "Is stormy life preferred to this serene?" YOUNG'S Satires. 
 
 AND the windows were closed in, and night had succeeded to 
 evening, and the little party at the cottage were grouped together. 
 Mrs. Leslie was quietly seated at her tambour-frame ; Lady 
 Vargrave, leaning her cheek on her hand, seemed absorbed in a 
 volume before her, but her eyes were not on the page ; Evelyn 
 was busily employed in turning over the contents of a parcel of 
 books and music, which had just been brought from the lodge, 
 where the London coach had deposited it. 
 
 "Oh, dear mamma ! " cried Evelyn, "I am so glad ; there is 
 something you will like some of the poetry that touched you 
 so much, set to music." 
 
 Evelyn brought the songs to her mother, who roused herself 
 from her revery, and looked at them with interest. 
 
 "It is very strange," said she, "that I should be so affected 
 by all that is written by this person : I, too, "(she added, tenderly 
 stroking down Evelyn's luxuriant tresses) "who am not so fond 
 of reading as you are ! " 
 
 "You are reading one of his books now," said Evelyn, glanc- 
 ingoverthe open page on the table. "Ah, that beautiful passage 
 upon 'Our First Impressions.' Yet I do not like you, dear 
 mother, to read his books ; they always seem to make you sad,"
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. <J 
 
 "There is a charm to me in their thoughts, their manner of 
 expression," said Lady Vargrave, "which sets me thinking, 
 which reminds me of of an early friend, whom I could fancy I 
 hear talking while I read. It was so from the first time I opened 
 by accident a book of his, years ago." 
 
 " Who is this author that pleases you so much ? " asked Mrs. 
 Leslie, with some surprise, for Lady Vargrave had usually little 
 pleasure in reading even the greatest and most popular master- 
 pieces of modern genius. 
 
 " Maltravers," answered Evelyn ; "and I think I almost share 
 my mother's enthusiasm." 
 
 "Maltravers!" repeated Mrs. Leslie. "He is, perhaps, a 
 dangerous writer for one so young. At your age, dear girl, you 
 have naturally romance and feeling enough of your own, without 
 seeking them in books." 
 
 " But, dear madam," said Evelyn, standing up for her favorite, 
 "his writings do not consist of romance and feeling only ; they 
 are not exaggerated, they are so simple so truthful." 
 
 "Did you ever meet him?" asked Lady Vargrave. 
 
 "Yes," returned Mrs. Leslie, "once, when he was a gay, fair- 
 haired boy. His father resided in the next county, and we met 
 at a country-house. Mr. Maltravers himself has an estate near 
 
 my daughter in B shire, but he does not live on it ; he has 
 
 been some years abroad a strange character ! " 
 
 "Why does he write no more?" said Evelyn ; "I have read 
 his works so often, and know his poetry so well by heart, that I 
 should look forward to something new from him as an event." 
 
 " I have heard, my dear, that he has withdrawn much from 
 the world and its objects that he has lived greatly in the East. 
 The death of a lady to whom he was to have been married is 
 said to have unsettled and changed his character. Since that 
 event he has not returned to England. Lord Vargrave can tell 
 you more of him than I." 
 
 " Lord Vargrave thinks of nothing that is not always before 
 the world," said Evelyn. 
 
 "I am sure you wrong him," said Mrs. Leslie, looking up, 
 and fixing her eyes on Evelyn's countenance ; "tor you are not 
 before the world." 
 
 Evelyn slightly very slightly pouted her pretty lip, but 
 made no answer. She took up the music, and, seating herself 
 at the piano, practised the airs. Lady Vargrave listened with 
 emotion ; and as Evelyn, in a voice exquisitely sweet, though 
 not powerful, sang the words, her mother turned away her face, 
 and, half unconsciously, a few tears stole silently down her cheek,
 
 io ALICE; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 When Evelyn ceased herself affected, for the lines were im- 
 pressed with a wild and melancholy depth of feeling she came 
 again to her mother's side, and, seeing her emotion, kissed away 
 the tears from the pensive eyes. Her own gayety left her she 
 drew a stool to her mother's feet, and, nestling to her, and clasp- 
 ing her hand, did not leave that place till they retired to rest. 
 
 And the lady blessed Evelyn, and felt that, if bereaved, she 
 was not alone ! 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 " But come, them Goddess, far and free, 
 In heaven yclept Euphrosyne ! 
 ***** 
 
 To hear the lark begin his flight, 
 
 And, singing, startle the dull night." U Allegro. 
 
 "But come, thou Goddess, sage and holy, 
 Come, divinest Melancholy ! 
 ***** 
 
 There held in holy passion still, 
 
 Forget thyself to marble." // Penseroso. 
 
 THE early morning of early Spring what associations of 
 freshness and hope in that single sentence ! And there a little 
 after sunrise there was Evelyn, fresh and hopeful^as the morn- 
 ing itself, bounding with the light step of a light heart over the 
 lawn. Alone alone ! no governess, with a pinched nose and a 
 sharp voice, to curb her graceful movements, and tell her how 
 young ladies ought to walk. How silently Morning stole over 
 the Earth ! It was as if Youth had the day and the world to 
 itself. The shutters of the cottage were still closed, and Eve- 
 lyn cast a glance upward, to assure herself that her mother, who 
 also rose betimes, was not yet stirring. So she tripped along, 
 singing from very glee, to secure a companion, and let out Sul- 
 tan ; and, a few moments afterwards, they were scouring over 
 the grass, and descending the rude steps that wound down the 
 cliff to the smooth sea-sands. Evelyn was still a child at heart, 
 fet somewhat more than a child in mind. In the majesty of 
 
 " That hollow, sounding, and mysterious main" 
 5n the silence broken but by murmur of the billows in the 
 solitude relieved but by the boats of the early fishermen she 
 felt those deep and tranquillizing influences which belong to the 
 Religion of Nature. Unconsciously to herself, her sweet face 
 grew more thoughtful, and her step more slpw. What a com-
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. II 
 
 plex thing is education ! How many circumstances, that have 
 no connection with books and tutors, contribute to the rearing 
 of the human mind ! the earth, the sky, and the ocean, were 
 among the teachers of Evelyn Cameron ; and beneath her sim- 
 plicity of thought was daily filled, from the urns of invisible 
 spirits, the fountain of the poetry of feeling. 
 
 This was the hour when Evelyn most sensibly felt how little 
 our real life is chronicled by external events how much we 
 live a second and a higher life in our meditations and dreams. 
 Brought up, not more by precept than example, in the faith 
 which unites creature and Creator, this was the hour in which 
 thought itself had something of the holiness of prayer; and if 
 (turning from dreams divine to earthiier visions) this also was 
 the hour in which the heart painted and peopled its own fairy 
 land below of the two ideal worlds that stretch beyond the 
 inch of time on which we stand, Imagination is perhaps holier 
 than Memory. 
 
 So now, as the day crept on, Evelyn returned in a more sober 
 mood, and then she joined her mother and Mrs. Leslie at break- 
 fast ; and then the household cares such as they were de- 
 volved upon her, heiress though she was ; and, that duty done, 
 once more the straw hat and Sultan were in requisition ; and, 
 opening a little gate at the back of the cottage, she took the 
 path along the village churchyard that led to the house of the 
 old curate. The burial-ground itself was surrounded and shut 
 in with a belt of trees. Save the small, time-discolored church, 
 and the roofs of the cottage and the minister's house, no build- 
 ing not even a cotter's hut was visible there. Beneath a dark 
 and single yew-tree, in the centre of the ground, was placed a 
 rude seat ; opposite to this seat was a grave, distinguished from 
 the rest by a slight palisade. As the young Evelyn passed slowly 
 by this spot, a glove on the long, damp grass beside the yew-tree 
 caught her eye. She took it up and sighed it was her mother's. 
 She sighed for she thought of the soft melancholy on that 
 mother's face which her caresses and her mirth never could 
 wholly chase away. She wondered why that melancholy was 
 so fixed a habit for the young ever wonder why the expe- 
 rienced should be sad. 
 
 And now Evelyn had passed the churchyard, and was on the 
 green turf before the minister's quaint, old-fashioned house. 
 
 The old man himself was at work in his garden; but he threw 
 down his hoe as he saw Evelyn, and came cheerfully up to 
 greet her. 
 
 It was easy to see how dear she was to him.
 
 12 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 " So you are come for your daily lesson, my young pupil ? " 
 
 " Yes ; but Tasso can wait if the " 
 
 "If the tutor wants to play truant ; no, my child and, in- 
 deed, the lesson must be longer than usual to-day, for I fear I 
 shall have to leave you to-morrow for some days." 
 
 " Leave us ! why ? leave Brook-Green impossible ! " 
 
 " Not at all impossible; for we have now a new vicar, and I must 
 turn courtier in my old age, and ask him to leave me with my 
 flock. He is at Weymouth, and has written to me to visit him 
 there. So, Miss Evelyn, I must give you a holiday task to learn 
 while I am away." 
 
 Evelyn brushed the tears from her eyes for when the heart 
 is full of affection, the eyes easily run over and clung mourn- 
 fully to the old man, as she gave utterance to all her half-child- 
 ish, half-womanly grief at the thought of parting so soon with 
 him. And what, too, could her mother do without him ; and 
 why could he not write to the vicar, instead of going to him ? 
 
 The curate, who was childless and a bachelor, was not insen- 
 sible to the fondness of this beautiful pupil, and perhaps he 
 himself was a little more distrait than usual that morning, or 
 else Evelyn was peculiarly inattentive; for certain it is that she 
 reaped very little benefit from the lesson. 
 
 Yet he was an admirable teacher, that old man ! Aware of 
 Evelyn's quick, susceptible, and rather fanciful character of 
 mind, he had sought less to curb, than to refine and elevate her 
 imagination. Himself of no ordinary abilities, which leisure 
 had allowed him to cultivate, his piety was too large and cheer- 
 ful to exclude literature Heaven's best gift from the pale of 
 religion. And under his care Evelyn's mind had been duly 
 stored with the treasures of modern genius, and her judgment 
 strengthened by the criticisms of a graceful and generous taste. 
 
 In that sequestered hamlet, the young heiress had been trained 
 to adorn her future station ; to appreciate the arts and elegan- 
 cies that distinguish (no matter what the rank) the refined from 
 the low, better than if she had been brought up under the hun- 
 dred-handed Briareus of fashionable education. Lady Vargrave, 
 indeed, like most persons of modest pretensions and imperfect 
 cultivation, was rather inclined to overrate the advantages to be 
 derived from book-knowledge, arid she was never better pleased 
 than when she saw Evelyn opening the monthly parcel from Lon- 
 don, and delightedly poring over volumes which Lady Vargrave 
 innocently believed to be reservoirs of inexhaustible wisdom. 
 
 But this day Evelyn would not read, and the golden verses 
 of Tasso lost their music to her ear. So the curate gave up the
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 1J 
 
 lecture, and placed a little programme of studies to be conned 
 during his absence, in her reluctant hand; and Sultan, who had 
 been wistfully licking his paws for the last half-hour, sprung up 
 and caracoled once more into the garden and the old priest 
 and the young woman left the works of man for those of Nature. 
 
 " Do not fear ; I will take such care of your garden while you 
 are away," said Evelyn ; "and you must write and let me know 
 what day you are to come back." 
 
 " My dear Evelyn, you are born to spoil every one from 
 Sultan to Aubrey." 
 
 " And to be spoiled too, don't forget that," cried Evelyn, 
 laughingly shaking back her ringlets. " And now, before you 
 go, will you tell me, as you are so wise, what I can do to make 
 to make my mother love me ?" 
 
 Evelyn's voice faltered as she spoke the last words, and Au- 
 brey looked surprised and moved. 
 
 " Your mother love you, my dear Evelyn ! What do you 
 mean does she not love you ? " 
 
 "Ah, not as I love her ; she is kind and gentle, I know, for 
 she is so to all ; but she does not confide in me she does not 
 trust me ; she has some sorrow at heart which I am never al- 
 lowed to learn and soothe. Why does she avoid all mention of 
 her early days ? she never talks to me as if she too, had once a 
 mother. Why am I never to speak of her first marriage of 
 my father? Why does she look reproachfully at me, and shun 
 me yes, shun me, for days together if if I attempt to draw 
 her to the past? Is there a secret? if so, am I not old enough 
 to know it ?" 
 
 Evelyn spoke quickly and nervously, and with quivering lips. 
 Aubrey took her hand, and pressing it, said, after a little pause : 
 
 " Evelyn, this is the first time you have ever thus spoken to 
 me. Has anything chanced to arouse your shall I call it curi- 
 osity, or shall I call it the mortified pride of affection ?" 
 
 " And you, too, are harsh ; you blame me ! No, it is true 
 that I have not thus spoken to you before ; but I have long, 
 long thought with grief that I was insufficient to my mother's 
 happiness I who love her so dearly. And now, since Mrs. 
 Leslie has been here, I find her conversing with this compara- 
 tive stranger, so much more confidentially than with me ; when 
 I come in unexpectedly, they cease their conference, as if I were 
 not worthy to share it ; and and oh, if I could but make you 
 understand that all I desire is, that my mother should love me, 
 and know me, and trust me." 
 
 " Evelyn," said the curate, coldly, "you love your mother.
 
 14 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 and justly ; a kinder and a gentler heart than hers does not 
 beat in a human breast. Her first wish in life is for your hap- 
 piness and welfare. You ask for confidence, but why not con- 
 fide in her ; why not believe her actuated by the best and the 
 tenderest motives ; why not leave it to her discretion to reveal 
 to you any secret grief, if such there be, that preys upon her; 
 why add to that grief by any selfish indulgence of over-suscep- 
 tibility in yourself ? My dear pupil, you are yet almost a child ; 
 and they who have sorrowed may well be reluctant to sadden 
 with a melancholy confidence those to whom sorrow is yet un- 
 known. This much, at least, I may tell you for this much she 
 does not seek to conceal that Lady Vargravewas early inured 
 to trials from which you, more happy, have been saved. She 
 speaks not to you of her relations, for she has none left on earth. 
 And after her marriage with your benefactor, Evelyn, perhaps 
 it seemed to her a matter of principle to banish all vain regret, 
 all remembrance, if possible, of an earlier tie." 
 
 " My poor, poor mother ! Oh, yes, you are right ; forgive 
 me. She yet mourns, perhaps, my father, whom I never saw, 
 whom I feel, as it were, tacitly forbid to name, you did not 
 know him ? " 
 
 "Him! whom?" 
 
 "My father, my mother's first husband ?" 
 
 " No." 
 
 " But I am sure I could not have loved him as well as 
 my benefactor, my real and second father, who is now dead 
 and gone. Oh, how well I remember him how fondly ! " 
 Here Evelyn stopped and burst into tears. 
 
 "You do right to remember him thus; to love and revere 
 his memory a father indeed he was to you. But now, Evelyn, 
 my own dear child, hear me. Respect the silent heart of your 
 mother ; let her not think that her misfortunes, whatever they 
 may be, can cast a shadow over you you, her last hope and 
 blessing. Rather than seek to open the old wounds, suffer 
 them to heal, as they must, beneath the influences of religion 
 and time ; and wait the hour when without, perhaps, too keen 
 a grief, your mother can go back with you into the past." 
 
 "I will, I will. Oh, how wicked, how ungracious I have 
 been ! it was but an excess of love, believe it, dear Mr. Aubrey, 
 believe it." 
 
 " I do believe it, my poor Evelyn ; and now I know that I 
 may trust in you. Come, dry those bright eyes, or they will 
 think I have been a hard task-master, and let us go to the 
 cottage."
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. i$ 
 
 They walked slowly and silently across the humble garden 
 Into the churchyard, and there, by the old yew-tree, they saw 
 Lady Vargrave. Evelyn, fearful that the traces of her tears 
 were yet visible, drew back ; and Aubrey, aware of what passed 
 within her, said : 
 
 " Shall I join your mother, and tell her of my approaching 
 departure? and perhaps, in the nean while, you will call at our 
 poor pensioner's in the village Dame Newman is so anxious to 
 see you we will join you there soon. " 
 
 Evelyn smiled her thanks, and kissing her hand to her 
 mother with seeming gayety, turned back and passed through the 
 glebe into the little village. Aubrey joined Lady Vargrave, and 
 drew her arm in his. 
 
 Meanwhile Evelyn thoughtfully pursued her way. Her 
 heart was full, and of self-reproach. Her mother had, then, 
 known cause for sorrow, and, perhaps, her reserve was but 
 occasioned by her reluctance to pain her child. Oh, how doubly 
 anxious would Evelyn be hereafter to soothe, to comfort, to 
 wean that dear mother from the past ! Though in this girl's 
 character there was something of the impetuosity and thought- 
 lessness of her years, it was noble as well as soft ; and now the 
 woman's trustfulness conquered all the woman's curiosity. 
 
 She entered the cottage of the old bedridden crone whom 
 Aubrey had referred to. It was as a gleam of sunshine, that 
 sweet comforting face ; and here, seated by the old woman's 
 side, with the Book of the Poor upon her lap, Evelyn was found 
 by Lady Vargrave. It was curious to observe the different 
 impressions upon the cottagers made by the mother and 
 daughter. Both were beloved with almost equal enthusiasm ; 
 but with the first the poor felt more at home. They could 
 talk to her more at ease ; she understood them so much more 
 quickly ; they had no need to beat about the bush to tell the 
 little peevish complaints that they were half-ashamed to utter to 
 Evelyn. What seemed so light to the young, cheerful beauty, 
 the mother listened to with so grave and sweet a patience. 
 When all went right, they rejoiced to see Evelyn ; but in their 
 little difficulties and sorrows, nobody was like "my good 
 lady ! " 
 
 So Dame Newman, the moment she saw the pale counte- 
 nance and graceful shape of Lady Vargrave at the threshold, 
 uttered an exclamation of delight. Now she could let out all 
 that she did not like to trouble the young lady with ; now she 
 could complain of east winds, and rheurnatiz, and the parish 
 officers, and the bad tea they sold poor people at Mr. Hart's
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 shop, and the ungrateful grandson who was so well-to-do, and 
 who forgot he had a grandmother alive ! 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 " Towards the end of the week we received a card from the town ladies." 
 
 Vicar of Wakefield, 
 
 THE curate was gone, and the lessons suspended ; otherwise 
 as like each to each as sunshine or cloud permitted day fol- 
 lowed day in the calm retreat of Brook-Green ; when, one 
 morning, Mrs. Leslie, with a letter in her hand, sought Lady 
 Vargrave, who was busied in tending the flowers of a small 
 conservatory which she had added to the cottage, when, from 
 various motives, and one in especial powerful and mysterious, 
 she exchanged for so sequestered a home the luxurious villa 
 bequeathed to her by her husband. 
 
 To flowers those charming children of Nature, in which 
 our age can take the same tranquil pleasure as our youth Lady 
 Vargrave devoted much of her monotonous and uncheckered 
 time. She seemed to love them almost as living things ; and 
 her memory associated them with hours as bright and as fleet- 
 ing as themselves. 
 
 " My dear friend," said Mrs. Leslie, " I have news for you. 
 My daughter, Mrs. Merton, who has been in Cornwall on a visit 
 to her husband's mother, writes me word that she will visit us 
 
 on her road home to the Rectory in B shire. She will not 
 
 put you much out of the way," added Mrs. Leslie, smiling, 
 " for Mr. Merton will not accompany her ; she only brings her 
 daughter Caroline, a lively, handsome, intelligent girl, who will be 
 enchanted with Evelyn. All you will regret is, that she comes 
 to terminate my visit, and take me away with her. If you can 
 forgive that offence, you will have nothing else to pardon." 
 
 Lady Vargrave replied with her usual simple kindness, but 
 she was evidently nervous at the visit of a stranger (for she 
 had never yet seen Mrs. Merton), and still more distressed at 
 the thought of losing Mrs. Leslie a week or two sooner than had 
 been anticipated. However, Mrs. Leslie hastened to reassure 
 her. Mrs. Merton was so quiet and good-natured, the wife of 
 a country clergyman with simple tastes ; and, after all, Mrs. Les- 
 lie s visit might last as long, if Lady Vargrave would be contented 
 to extend her hospitality to Mrs. Merton and Caroline. 
 
 When the visit was announced to Evelyn,, her young heart
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. \ 17 
 
 was susceptible only of pleasure and curiosity. She had no 
 friend of her own age ; she was sure she should like the grand- 
 child of her dear Mrs. Leslie. 
 
 Evelyn, who had learned betimes, from the affectionate 
 solicitude of her nature, to relieve her mother of such few 
 domestic cares as a home so quiet, with an establishment so 
 regular, could afford, gayly busied herself in a thousand little 
 preparations. She filled the rooms of the visitors with flowers 
 (not dreaming that any one could fancy them unwholesome), 
 and spread the tables with her own favorite books, and had 
 the little cottage piano in her own dressing-room removed into 
 Caroline's Caroline must be fond of music ; she had some 
 doubts of transferring a cage with two canaries into Caroline's 
 room also, but when she approached the cage with that inten- 
 tion, the birds chirped so merrily, and seemed so glad to see 
 her, and so expectant of sugar, that her heart smote her for her 
 meditated desertion and ingratitude. No, she could not give 
 up the canaries ; but the glass bowl with the gold fish oh, that 
 would look so pretty on its stand just by the casement ; and 
 the fish dull things ! would not miss her. 
 
 The morning the noon the probable hour of the impor- 
 tant arrival came at last ; and after having three times within 
 the last half-hour visited the rooms, and settled, and unsettled, 
 and settled again everything before arranged, Evelyn retired to 
 her own room to consult her wardrobe, and Margaret once 
 her nurse, now her Abigail. Alas! the wardrobe of the destined 
 Lady Vargrave the betrothed of a rising statesman, a new 
 and now an ostentatious peer the heiress of the wealthy Temple- 
 ton was one that many a tradesman's daughter would have 
 disdained. Evelyn visited so little ; the clergyman of the 
 place, and two old maids who lived most respectably on a hun- 
 dred and eighty pounds a year, in a cottage, with one maidser- 
 vant, two cats, and a footboy, bounded the circle of her 
 acquaintance. Her mother was so indifferent to dress ; she 
 herself had found so many other ways of spending money ! 
 but Evelyn was not now more philosophical than others of her 
 age. She turned from muslin to muslin from the colored to 
 the white, from the white to the colored with pretty anxiety 
 and sorrowful suspense. At last she decided on the newest ; 
 and when it was on, and the single rose set in the lustrous and 
 beautiful hair, Carson herself could not have added a charm. 
 Happy age ! Who wants the arts of the milliner at seventeen? 
 
 "And here, miss ; here's the fine necklace Lord Vargrave 
 brought down when my lord came last; it will look so grand !"
 
 iS ALICE ; OR, THE MVSTERIES. 
 
 The emeralds glittered in their case Evelyn looked at them 
 irresolutely ; then, as she looked, a shade came over her fore- 
 head, and she sighed, and closed the lid. 
 
 " No, Margaret, I do not want it ; take it away." 
 
 " Oh dear, miss ! what would my lord say if he were down ? 
 And they are so beautiful ! they will look so fine ! Deary me, 
 how they sparkle ! But you will wear much finer when you are 
 my lady." 
 
 "I hear mamma's bell ; go, Margaret, she wants you." 
 
 Left alone, the young beauty sank down abstractedly, and 
 though the looking-glass was opposite, it did not arrest her eye ; 
 she forgot her wardrobe, her muslin dress, her fears, and her 
 guests. 
 
 "Ah," she thought, "what a weight of dread I feel here when 
 I think of Lord Vargrave and this fatal engagement ; and 
 every day I feel it more and more. To leave my dear, dear 
 mother the cottage oh ! I never can. I used to like him 
 when I was a child ; now I shudder at his name. Why is this ? 
 He is kind he condescends to seek to please. It was the wish 
 of my poor father for father he really was to me ; and yet 
 oh, that he had left me poor and free !" 
 
 At this part of Evelyn's meditation the unusual sound of 
 wheels was heard on the gravel ; she started up wiped the 
 tears from her eyes and hurried down to welcome the ex- 
 pected guests. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 " Tell me, Sophy, my dear, what do you think of our new visitors ? " 
 Vicar of Wakefield. 
 
 MRS. MERTON and her daughter were already in the middle 
 drawing-room, seated on either side of Mrs. Leslie. The former 
 a woman of quiet and pleasing exterior; her face still handsome, 
 and, if not intelligent, at least expressive of sober good-nature 
 and habitual content. The latter a fine, dark-eyed girl, of de- 
 cided countenance, and what is termed a showy style of beauty, 
 tall, self-possessed, and dressed plainly indeed, but after the 
 approved fashion. The rich bonnet of the large shape then 
 worn; the Chantilly veil; the gay French Cachemire; the full 
 sleeves, at that time the unnatural rage; the expensive, yet un- 
 assuming robe de soie ; the perfect chaussure ; the air of society; 
 the easy manner; the tranquil but scrutinizing gaze all startled, 
 discomposed, and half-frightened Evelyn,
 
 ALICE J OR, THE MYSTERIES. 19 
 
 Miss Merlon herself, if more at her ease, was equally surprised 
 by the beauty and unconscious grace of the young fairy before 
 her, and rose to greet her with a well-bred cordiality which at 
 once made a conquest of Evelyn's heart. 
 
 Mrs. Merton kissed her cheek and smiled kindly on her, but 
 said little. It was easy to see that she was a less conversable 
 and more homely person than Caroline. 
 
 When Evelyn conducted them to their rooms, the mother and 
 daughter detected at a glance the care that had provided for 
 their comforts; and something eager and expectant in Evelyn's 
 eyes taught the good-nature of the one and the good breeding 
 of the other to reward their young hostess by various little ex- 
 clamations of pleasure and satisfaction. 
 
 "Dear, how nice! What a pretty writing-desk !" said one. 
 "And the pretty gold fish!" said the other. "And the piano, 
 too, so well placed"; and Caroline's fair fingers ran rapidly 
 over the keys. Evelyn retired, covered with smiles and blushes. 
 And then Mrs. Merton permitted herself to say to the well- 
 dressed Abigail: 
 
 " Do take away those flowers, they make me quite faint." 
 
 "And how low the room is so confined!" said Caroline; 
 when the lady's lady withdrew with the condemned flowers. 
 " And I see no Pysche however, the poor people have done 
 their best." 
 
 "Sweet person, Lady Vargrave!" said Mrs. Merton "so in- 
 teresting! so beautiful and how youthful in appearance!" 
 
 "Nofournure not much the manner of the world," said 
 Caroline. 
 
 "No; but something better." 
 
 " Hem! " said Caroline. "The girl is very pretty, though too 
 small." 
 
 "Such a smile such eyes she is irresistible! and what a 
 fortune! she will be a charming friend for you, Caroline." 
 
 "Yes, she may be useful, if she marry Lord Vargrave; or, 
 indeed, if she make any brilliant match. What sort of a man 
 is Lord Vargrave?" 
 
 "I never saw him; they say, most fascinating." 
 
 "Well, she is very happy," said Caroline, with a sigh.
 
 20 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 " Two lovely damsels cheer my lonely walk." LAMB'S Album Verses. 
 
 AFTER dinner there was still light enough for the young 
 people to stroll through the garden. Mrs. Merton, who was 
 afraid of the damp, preferred staying within; and she was so 
 quiet, and made herself so much at home, that Lady Vargrave, 
 to use Mrs. Leslie's phrase, was not the least "put out " by her: 
 besides, she talked of Evelyn, and that was a theme very dear 
 to Lady Vargrave, who was both fond and proud of Evelyn. 
 
 "This is very pretty, indeed! the view of the sea quite 
 lovely!" said Caroline. "You draw?" 
 
 ' Yes, a little." 
 
 ' From Nature ? " 
 
 'Oh, yes!" 
 
 'What, in Indian ink?" 
 
 'Yes; and water-colors." 
 
 " Oh! why, who could have taught you in this little village; 
 or, indeed, in this most primitive county?" 
 
 " We did not come to Brook-Green till I was nearly fifteen. 
 My dear mother, though very anxious to leave our villa at Ful- 
 ham, would not do so on my account while masters could be 
 of service to me; and as I knew she had set her heart on this 
 place, I worked doubly hard." 
 
 " Then she knew this place before ? " 
 
 " Yes; she had been here many years ago, and took the place 
 after my poor father's death (I always call the late Lord Var- 
 grave my father). She used to come here regularly once a year 
 without me; and when she returned, I thought her even more 
 melancholy than before." 
 
 " What makes the charm of the place to Lady Vargrave ? " 
 asked Caroline, with some interest. 
 
 " I don't know; unless it be its extreme quiet, or some early 
 association." 
 
 " And who is your nearest neighbor ? " 
 
 " Mr. Aubrey, the curate. It is so unlucky he is gone from 
 home for a short time. You can't think how kind and pleasant 
 he is the most amiable old man in the world just such a man 
 as Bernardin St. Pierre would have loved to describe." 
 
 " Agreeable, no doubt, but dull good curates generally are." 
 
 " Dull not the least; cheerful, even to playfulness, and full 
 of information. He has been so good to me about books; in- 
 deed, I have learned a great deal from him,"
 
 ALICE; OR, THE MYSTL.RIES. 21 
 
 " I dare say he is an admirable judge of sermons." 
 
 " But Mr. Aubrey is not severe," persisted Evelyn, earnestly: 
 " he is very fond of Italian literature, for instance; we are read- 
 ing Tasso together." 
 
 "Oh! pity he is old I think you said he was old. Perhaps 
 there is a son, the image of the sire ? " 
 
 " Oh no," said Evelyn, laughing innocently; " Mr. Aubrey 
 never married." 
 
 " And where does the old gentleman live ? " 
 
 " Come a little this way there, you can just see the roof of 
 his house, close by the church." 
 
 " I see; it is tant soit pcu trisle to have the church so near you." 
 
 "Do you think so? Ah! but you have not seen it: it is the 
 prettiest church in the county; and the little burial-ground so 
 quiet so shut in; I feel better every time I pass it. Some 
 places breathe of religion." 
 
 " You are poetical, my dear little friend." 
 
 Evelyn, who had poetry in her nature and therefore some- 
 times it broke out in her simple language colored, and felt 
 half ashamed. 
 
 " It is a favorite walk with my mother," said she, apologeti- 
 cally; " she often spends hours there alone; and so, perhaps, I 
 think it a prettier spot than others may. It does not seem to 
 me to have anything of gloom in it; when I die, I should like 
 to be buried there." 
 
 Caroline laughed slightly. "That is a strange wish; but per- 
 haps you have been crossed in love ? " 
 
 " I oh, you are laughing at me ! " 
 
 " You do not remember Mr. Cameron, your real father, I 
 suppose ?". 
 
 " No; I believe he died before I was born." 
 
 " Cameron is a Scotch name: to what tribe of Camerons do 
 you belong ? " 
 
 "I don't know," said Evelyn, rather embarrassed; "indeed, 
 I know nothing of my father's or mother's family. It is very 
 odd, but I don't think we have any relations. You know, when 
 I am of age, that I am to take the name of Templeton." 
 
 "Ah ! the name goes with the fortune; I understand. Dear 
 Evelyn, how rich you will be! I do so wish I were rich! " 
 
 " And I that I were poor," said Evelyn, with an altered tone 
 and expression of countenance. 
 
 " Strange girl ! what can you mean ?" 
 
 Evelyn said nothing, and Caroline examined her curi- 
 ously.
 
 22 ALICE ', OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 " These notions come from living so much out of the world, 
 my dear Evelyn. How you must long to see more of life ! " 
 
 " I! not in the least. I should never like to leave this place 
 I could live and die here." 
 
 " You will think otherwise when you are Lady Vargrave. 
 Why do you look so grave ? Do you not love Lord Vargrave ? " 
 
 " What a question ! " said Evelyn, turning away her head, 
 and forcing a laugh. 
 
 " It is no matter whether you do or not: it is a brilliant posi- 
 tion. He has rank reputation high office: all he wants is 
 money, and that you will give him. Alas! I have no prospect 
 so bright. I have no fortune, and I fear my face will never 
 buy a title, an opera-box, and a house in Grosvenor Square. I 
 wish I were the future Lady Vargrave." 
 
 " I am sure I wish you were," said Evelyn, with great natvctt ; 
 " you would suit Lord Vargrave better than I should." 
 
 Caroline laughed. 
 
 " Why do you think so ? " 
 
 " Oh, his way of thinking is like yours; he never says any- 
 thing I can sympathize with." 
 
 " A pretty compliment to me! Depend upon it, my dear, you 
 will sympathize with me when you have seen as much of the 
 world. But Lord Vargrave is he too old ? " 
 
 " No, I don't think of his age, and indeed he looks younger 
 than he is." 
 
 " Is he handsome ? " 
 
 " He is what may be called handsome you would think so." 
 
 " Well, if he comes here, I will do my best to win him from 
 you; so look to yourself." 
 
 " Oh, I should be so grateful; I should like him- so much if 
 he would fall in love with you ! " 
 
 " I fear there is no chance of that." 
 
 "But how," said Evelyn, hesitatingly, after a pause; "how 
 is it that you have seen so much more of the world than I have ? 
 I thought Mr. Merton lived a great deal in the country." 
 
 " Yes, but my uncle, Sir John Merton, is member for the 
 county: my grandmother on my father's side Lady Elizabeth, 
 who has Tregony Castle (which we have just left) for her join- 
 ture-house goes to town almost every season, and I have spent 
 three seasons with her. She is a charming old woman quite 
 the grande dame. I am sorry to say she remains in Cornwall 
 this year; she has not been very well: the physicians forbid 
 late hours and London: but even in the country we are very 
 gay. My uncle lives near us, and, though a widower, has his
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. $$ 
 
 house full when down at Merton Park; and papa, too, is rich 
 very hospitable and popular and will, I hope, be a bishop one 
 of these days not at all like a mere country parson; and so, 
 somehow or other, I have learned to be ambitious we are an 
 ambitious family on papa's side. But, alas! I have not your 
 cards to play. Young, beautiful, and an heiress! Ah, what 
 prospects! You should make your mamma take you to town." 
 
 "To town! she would be wretched at the very idea. Oh, 
 you don't know us." 
 
 " I can't help fancying, Miss Evelyn," said Caroline archly, 
 " that you are not so blind to Lord Vargrave's perfections, and 
 so indifferent to London, only from the pretty, innocent way of 
 thinking, that so prettily and innocently you express. I dare 
 say, if the truth were known, there is some handsome young 
 rector, besides the old curate, who plays the flute, and preaches 
 sentimental sermons in white kid gloves." 
 
 Evelyn laughed merrily so merrily that Caroline's suspicions 
 vanished. They continued to walk and talk thus, till the night 
 came on, and then they went in; and Evelyn showed Caroline 
 her drawings, which astonished that young lady, who was a 
 good judge of accomplishments. Evelyn's performance on the 
 piano astonished her yet more; but Caroline consoled herself 
 on this point, for her voice was more powerful, and she sang 
 French songs with much more spirit. Caroline showed talent 
 in all she undertook, but Evelyn, despite her simplicity, had 
 genius, though as yet scarcely developed; for she had quickness, 
 emotion, susceptibility, imagination. And the difference between 
 talent and genius lies rather in the heart than the head. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 " Dost them feel 
 
 The solemn whispering influence of the scene 
 Oppressing thy young heart, that thou dost draw 
 More closely to my side ? " F. HEMANS: Wood Walk and Hymn. 
 
 CAROLINE and Evelyn, as was natural, became great friends. 
 They were not kindred to each other in disposition, but they 
 were thrown together, and friendship thus forced upon both. 
 Unsuspecting and sanguine, it was natural to Evelyn to admire; 
 and Caroline was, to her inexperience, a brilliant and imposing 
 novelty. Sometimes Miss Merton's worldliness of thought 
 shocked Evelyn; but then Caroline had a way with her as if 
 she were not in earnest as if she were merely indulging an
 
 24 ALICE J OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 inclination towards irony; nor was she without a certain vein 
 of sentiment that persons a little hackneyed in the world, and 
 young ladies a little disappointed that they are not wives in- 
 stead of maids, easily acquire. Trite as this vein of sentiment 
 was, poor Evelyn thought it beautiful and most feeling. Then, 
 Caroline was clever, entertaining, cordial, with all that super- 
 ficial superiority that a girl of twenty-three who knows London 
 readily exercises over a country girl of seventeen. On the other 
 hand, Caroline was kind and affectionate towards her. The 
 clergyman's daughter felt that she could not be always superior, 
 even in fashion, to the wealthy heiress. 
 
 One evening, as Mrs. Leslie and Mrs. Merton sate under the 
 veranda of the cottage, without their hostess, who had gone 
 alone into the village and the young ladies were confidentially 
 conversing on the lawn, Mrs. Leslie said rather abruptly, "Is 
 not Evelyn a delightful creature ? How unconscious of her 
 beauty; how simple, and yet so naturally gifted ! " 
 
 " I have never seen one who interested me more," said Mrs. 
 Merton, settling her ptterine ; " she is extremely pretty." 
 
 " I am so anxious about her," resumed Mrs. Leslie, thought- 
 fully. " You know the wish of the late Lord Vargravc that she 
 should marry his nephew, the present lord, when she reaches 
 the age of eighteen. She only wants nine or ten months of that 
 time; she has seen nothing of the world; she is not fit to de- 
 cide for herself; and Lady Vargrave, the best of human creat- 
 ures, is still herself almost too inexperienced in the world to be 
 a guide for one so young, placed in such peculiar circumstances 
 and of prospects so brilliant. Lady Vargrave, at heart, is a 
 child still, and will be so, even when as old as I am." 
 
 " It is very true," said Mrs. Merton. " Don't you fear that 
 the girls will catch cold ? the dew is falling, and the grass must 
 be wet." 
 
 "I have thought," continued Mrs. Leslie, without heeding 
 the latter part of Mrs. Merton's speech, " that it would be a 
 kind thing to invite Evelyn to stay with you a few months at 
 the Rectory. To be sure, it is not like London; but you see 
 a great deal of the world: the society at your house is well 
 selected, and at times even brilliant; she will meet young 
 people of her own age, and young people fashion and form each 
 other." 
 
 " I was thinking myself, that I should like to invite her," said 
 Mrs. Merton; "I will consult Caroline." 
 
 "Caroline, I am sure, would be delighted; the difficulty lies 
 rather in Evelyn herself."
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 2$ 
 
 " You surprise me ! she must be moped to death here." 
 
 " But will she leave her mother ? " 
 
 "Why, Caroline often leaves me," said Mrs. Merton. 
 
 Mrs. Leslie was silent, and Evelyn and her new friend now 
 joined the mother and daughter. 
 
 " I have been trying to persuade Evelyn to pay us a little 
 visit," said Caroline; "she could accompany us so nicely; and 
 if she is still strange with us dear grandmamma goes too: 
 I am sure we can make her at home." 
 
 " How odd !" said Mrs. Merton; "we were just saying the 
 same thing. My dear Miss Cameron, we should be so happy 
 to have you." 
 
 " And I should be so happy to go, if mamma would but go 
 too." 
 
 As she spoke, the moon, just risen, showed the form of Lady 
 Vargrave slowly approaching the house. By the light, her 
 features seemed more pale than usual; and her slight and deli- 
 cate form, with its gliding motion and noiseless step, had in it 
 something almost ethereal and unearthly. 
 
 Evelyn turned and saw her, and her heart smote her. Her 
 mother so wedded to the dear cottage and had this gay 
 stranger rendered that dear cottage less attractive she who had 
 said she could live and die in its humble precincts ? Abruptly 
 she left her new friend, hastened to her mother, and threw her 
 arms fondly round her. 
 
 " You are pale, you have over-fatigued yourself: where have 
 you been ? why did you not take me with you?" 
 
 Lady Vargrave pressed Evelyn's hand affectionately. 
 
 "You care for me too much," said she. "I am but a dull 
 companion for you; I was so glad to see you happy with one 
 better suited to your gay spirits. What can we do when she 
 leaves us ? " 
 
 "Ah, I want no companion but my own own mother. And 
 have I not Sultan, too ? " added Evelyn, smiling away the tear 
 that had started to her eyes.
 
 a6 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 " Friend after friend departs, 
 
 Who hath not lost a friend ? 
 There is no union here of hearts 
 That finds not here an end." J. MONTGOMERY. 
 
 THAT night, Mrs. Leslie sought Lady Vargrave in her own 
 room. As she entered gently she observed that, late as the 
 hour was, Lady Vargrave was stationed by the open window, 
 and seemed intently gazing on the scene below. Mrs. Leslie 
 reached her side unperceived. The moonlight was exceedingly 
 bright, and just beyond the garden, from which it was separated 
 but by a slight fence, lay the solitary churchyard of the hamlet, 
 with the slender spire of the holy edifice rising high and taper- 
 ing into the shining air. It was a calm and tranquillizing scene; 
 and so intent was Lady Vargrave's abstracted gaze, that Mrs. 
 Leslie was unwilling to disturb her revery. 
 
 At length Lady Vargrave turned; and there was that patient 
 and pathetic resignation written in her countenance which be- 
 longs to those whom the world can deceive no more, and who 
 have fixed their hearts in the life beyond. 
 
 Mrs. Leslie, whatever she thought or felt, said nothing, ex- 
 cept in kindly remonstrance on the indiscretion of braving the 
 night air. The window was closed; they sat down to confer. 
 
 Mrs. Leslie repeated the invitation given to Evelyn, and 
 urged the advisability of accepting it. " It is cruel to separate 
 you," said she; "I feel it acutely. Why not, then, come with 
 Evelyn ? You shake your head why always avoid society ? 
 So young yet, you give yourself too much to the past ! " 
 
 Lady Vargrave rose and walked to a cabinet at the end of 
 the room; she unlocked it, and beckoned to Mrs. Leslie to ap- 
 proach. In a drawer lay carefully folded articles of female 
 dress rude, homely, ragged the dress of a peasant girl. 
 
 " Do these remind you of your first charity to me ? " she said 
 touchingly: "they tell me that I have nothing to do with the 
 world in which you and yours, and Evelyn herself, should 
 move." 
 
 "Too tender conscience ! your errors were but those of cir- 
 cumstance of youth; how have they been redeemed ! none 
 even suspect them. Your past history is known but to the good 
 old Aubrey and myself. No breath even of rumor tarnishes 
 the name of Lady Vargrave." 
 
 "Mrs. Leslie," said Lady Vargrave, reclosing the cabinet,
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 2? 
 
 and again seating herself, "my world lies around me I cannot 
 quit it. If I were of use to Evelyn, then, indeed, I would sac- 
 rifice brave all; but I only cloud her spirits: I have no ad- 
 vice to give her no instruction to bestow. When she was a 
 child, I could watch over her; when she was sick, I could nurse 
 her; but now she requires an adviser a guide; and I feel too 
 sensibly that this task is beyond my powers. I, a guide to 
 youth and innocence ! // No, I have nothing to offer her 
 dear child ! but my love and my prayers. Let your daughter 
 take her, then watch over her, guide, advise her. For me 
 unkind, ungrateful as it may seem were she but happy, I could 
 well bear to be alone ! " 
 
 " But she how will she, who loves you so, submit to this 
 separation ? " 
 
 " It will not be long, and," added Lady Vargrave, with a seri- 
 ous, yet sweet smile, " she had better be prepared for that sep- 
 aration which must come at last. As year by year I outlive my 
 last hope, that of once more beholding him I feel that life be- 
 comes feebler and feebler, and I look more on that quiet church- 
 yard as a home to which I am soon returning. At all events, 
 Evelyn will be called upon to form new ties, that must estrange 
 her from me; let her wean herself from one so useless to her, 
 to all the world, now, and by degrees." 
 
 "Speak not thus," said Mrs. Leslie, strongly affected; "you 
 have many years of happiness yet in store for you; the more 
 you recede from youth, the fairer life will become to you." 
 
 " God is good to me," said the lady, raising her meek eyes ; 
 " and I have already found it so I am contented." 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 " The greater part of them seemed to be charmed with his presence." 
 
 MACKENZIE: The Man of the World. 
 
 IT was with the greatest difficulty that Evelyn could, at last, 
 be persuaded to consent to the separation from her mother: she 
 wept bitterly at the thought. But Lady Vargrave, though 
 touched, was firm, and her firmness was of that soft, imploring 
 character, which Evelyn never could resist. The visit was to 
 last some months, it is true; but she would return to the cot- 
 tage; she would escape too and this, perhaps, unconsciously 
 reconciled her more than aught else the periodical visit of 
 Lord Vargrave. At the end of July, when the parliamentary
 
 28 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 session, at that unreformed era, usually expired, he always came 
 to Brook-Green for a month. His last visits had been most 
 unwelcome to Evelyn, and this next visit she dreaded more 
 than she had any of the former ones. It is strange, the repug- 
 nance with which she regarded the suit of her affianced ! she 
 whose heart was yet virgin who had never seen any one who, 
 in form, manner, and powers to please, could be compared to 
 the gay Lord Vargrave. And yet a sense of honor of what 
 was due to her dead benefactor, her more than father all com- 
 bated that repugnance, and left her uncertain what course to 
 pursue, uncalculating as to the future. In the happy elasticity 
 of her spirits, and with a carelessness almost approaching to 
 levity, which, to say truth, was natural to her, she did not often 
 recall the solemn engagement that must soon be ratified or an- 
 nulled; but when that thought did occur, it saddened her for 
 hours, and left her listless and despondent. The visit to Mrs. 
 Merton was, then, finally arranged the day of departure fixed 
 when, one morning, came the following letter from Lord Var- 
 grave himself : 
 
 " To the Lady Vargrave, etc. etc. : 
 
 " MY DEAR FRIEND, I find that we have a week's holy-day 
 in our do-nothing Chamber, and the weather is so delightful, 
 that I long to share its enjoyment with those I love best. You 
 will, therefore, see me almost as soon as you receive this; that 
 is, I shall be with you at dinner on the same day. What can I 
 say to Evelyn ? Will you, dearest Lady Vargrave, make her 
 accept all the homage which, when uttered by me, she seems 
 half inclined to reject ? 
 
 " In haste, most affectionately yours, 
 
 " VARGRAVE. 
 
 "Hamilton Place, April 30/1*, 18-." 
 
 This letter was by no means welcome, either to Mrs. Leslie or 
 to Evelyn. The former feared that Lord Vargrave would 
 disapprove of a visit, the real objects of which could scarcely be 
 owned to him. The latter was reminded of all she desired 
 to forget. But Lady Vargrave herself rather rejoiced at the 
 thought of Lumley's arrival. Hitherto, in the spirit of her 
 passive and gentle character, she had taken the engagement be- 
 tween Evelyn and Lord Vargrave almost as a matter of course. 
 The will and wish of her late husband operated most powerfully 
 on her mind ; and while Evelyn was yet in childhood Lumley's 
 visits had ever been acceptable, and the playful girl liked the 
 gay, good-humored lord, who brought her all soits of pres-
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 29 
 
 ents, and appeared as fond of dogs as herself. But Evelyn's 
 recent change of manner, her frequent fits of dejection and 
 thought once pointed out to Lady Vargrave by Mrs. Leslie 
 aroused all the affectionate and maternal anxiety of the former. 
 She was resolved to watch, to examine, to scrutinize not only 
 Evelyn's reception of Vargrave, but, as far as she could, the 
 manner and disposition of Vargrave himself. She felt how 
 solemn a trust was the happiness of a whole life ; and she had 
 that romance of heart, learned from Nature, not in books, which 
 made her believe that there could be no happiness in a marriage 
 without love. 
 
 The whole family party were on the lawn, when, an hour 
 earlier than he was expected, the travelling carriage of Lord 
 Vargrave was whirled along the narrow sweep that conducted 
 from the lodge to the house. Vargrave, as he saw the party, 
 kissed his hand from the window ; and, leaping from the car- 
 riage when it stopped at the porch, hastened to meet his hostess. 
 
 " My dear Lady Vargrave, I am so glad to see you. You are 
 looking charmingly; and Evelyn? oh, there she is; the dear 
 coquette, how lovely she is ! how she has improved ! But who 
 (sinking his voice), who are those ladies ? " 
 
 "Guests of ours Mrs. Leslie, whom you have often heard us 
 speak of, but never met " 
 
 " Yes and the others ? " 
 
 " Her daughter and grandchild." 
 
 " I shall be delighted to know them." 
 
 A more popular manner than Lord Vargrave's it is impossible 
 to conceive. Frank and prepossessing, even when the poor and 
 reckless Mr. Ferrers, without rank or reputation his smile 
 the tone of his voice his familiar courtesy apparently so in- 
 artificial and approaching almost to a boyish bluntness of good- 
 humor were irresistible in the rising statesman and favored 
 courtier. 
 
 Mrs. Merton was enchanted with him ; Caroline thought him, 
 at the first glance, the most fascinating person she had ever 
 seen ; even Mrs. Leslie, more grave, cautious, and penetrating, 
 was almost equally pleased with the first impression ; and it was 
 not till, in his occasional silence, his features settled into their 
 natural expression that she fancied she detected, in the quick 
 suspicious eye and the close compression of the lips, the tokens of 
 that wily, astute, and worldly character, which, in proportion as 
 he had risen in his career, even his own party reluctantly and 
 mysteriously assigned to one of their most prominent leaders. 
 
 When Vargrave took Evelyn's hand and raised it with meaning
 
 30 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 gallantry to his lips, the girl first blushed deeply and then turned 
 pale as death ; nor did the color thus chased away soon return 
 to the transparent cheek. Not noticing signs which might bear 
 a twofold interpretation, Lumley, who seemed in high spirits, 
 rattled away on a thousand matters praising the view, the 
 weather, the journey throwing out a joke here, and a com- 
 pliment there, and completing his conquest over Mrs. Merton 
 and Caroline. 
 
 " You have left London in the very height of its gaiety, Lord 
 Vargrave," said Caroline, as they sat conversing after dinner. 
 
 " True, Miss Merton ; but the country is in the height of its 
 gaiety too." 
 
 "Are you so fond of the country then ? " 
 
 " By fits and starts my passion for it comes in with the early 
 strawberries, and goes out with the hautboys I lead so artificial 
 a life ; but then I hope it is an useful one. I want nothing but 
 a home to make it a happy one." 
 
 " What is the latest news ? dear London ! I am so sorry 
 grandmamma, Lady Elizabeth, is not going there this year, so I 
 
 am compelled to rusticate. Is Lady Jane D to be married 
 
 at last ? " 
 
 " Commend me to a young lady's idea of news always 
 
 marriage ! Lady Jane D ! yes, she is to be married, as 
 
 you say at last! While she was a beauty, our cold sex were 
 shy of her ; but she has now faded into plainness the proper 
 color for a wife." 
 
 " Complimentary ! " 
 
 " Indeed it is for you beautiful women we love too much for 
 our own happiness heigho ! and a prudent marriage means 
 friendly indifference, not rapture and despair. But give me 
 beauty and love ; I never was prudent ; it is not my weakness." 
 
 Though Caroline was his sole supporter in this dialogue, Lord 
 Vargrave'seyes attempted to converse with Evelyn, who was un- 
 usually silent and abstracted. Suddenly Lord Vargrave seemed 
 aware that he was scarcely general enough in his talk for his 
 hearers. He addressed himself to Mrs. Leslie and glided back, 
 as it were, into a former generation. He spoke of persons gone 
 and things forgotten ; he made the subject interesting even to 
 the young, by a succession of various and sparkling anecdotes. 
 No one could be more agreeable ; even Evelyn now listened to 
 him with pleasure; for to all women wit and intellect have their 
 charm. But still there was a cold and sharp levity in the tone 
 of the man of the world that prevented the charm sinking below 
 th? surface. Tp Mrs. Leslie he seemed unconsciously to betray
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 31 
 
 a laxity of principle ; to Evelyn a want of sentiment and heart. 
 Lady Vargrave, who did not understand a character of this 
 description, listened attentively, and said to herself, " Evelyn 
 may admire, but I fear she cannot love him." Still, time passed 
 quickly in Lumley's presence, and Caroline thought she had 
 never spent so pleasant an evening. 
 
 When Lord Vargrave retired to his room, he threw himself in 
 his chair and yawned with exceeding fervor. His servant 
 arranged his dressing-robe and placed his portfolios and letter- 
 boxes on the table. 
 
 " What o'clock is it?" said Lumley. 
 
 " Very early, my lord ; only eleven." 
 
 "The devil! the country air is wonderfully exhausting. I 
 am very sleepy ; you may go." 
 
 "This little girl," said Lumley, stretching himself, "is pre- 
 ternaturally shy I must neglect her no longer yet it is surely 
 all safe. She has grown monstrous pretty ; but the other girl 
 is more amusing, more to my taste, and a much easier conquest, 
 I fancy. Her great dark eyes seemed full of admiration for my 
 lordship sensible young woman ! she may be useful in piquing 
 Evelyn." 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 Julio. " Wilt thou have him ? "The Maid in the Mill. 
 
 LORD VARGRAVE heard the next morning with secret distaste 
 and displeasure of Evelyn's intended visit to the Mertons. 
 He could scarcely make any open objection to it ; but he did 
 not refrain from many insinuations as to its impropriety. 
 
 " My dear friend," said he to Lady Vargrave, " it is scarcely 
 right in you (pardon me for saying it) to commit Evelyn to the 
 care of comparative strangers. Mrs. Leslie, indeed, you know; 
 but Mrs. Merton, you allow, you have now seen for the first 
 time a most respectable person, doubtless ; but still, recollect 
 how young Evelyn is how rich what a prize to any younger 
 sons in the Merton family (if such there be). Miss Merton 
 herself is a shrewd, worldly girl ; and if she were of our sex, 
 would make a capital fortune-hunter. Don't think my fear is 
 selfish ; I do not speak for myself. If I were Evelyn's brother, 
 I should be yet more earnest in my remonstrance." 
 
 " But, Lord Vargrave, poor Evelyn is dull here ; my spirits 
 infect hers. She ought to mix more with those of her own age, 
 to see more of the world before before "
 
 3^ ALICE J OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 " Before her marriage with me. Forgive me, but is not that 
 my affair? If lam contented, nay, charmed, with her inno- 
 cence if I prefer it to all the arts which society could teach 
 her, surely you would be acquitted for leaving her in the beau- 
 tiful simplicity that makes her chief fascination ? She will see 
 enough of the world as Lady Vargrave." 
 
 " But if she should resolve never to be Lady Vargrave ? " 
 
 Lumley started, bit his lip, and frowned. Lady Vargrave 
 had never before seen on his countenance the dark expression 
 it now wore. He recollected and recovered himself, as he saw 
 her eye fixed upon him, and said, with a constrained smile 
 
 "Can you anticipate an event so fatal to my happiness, so 
 unforeseen, so opposed to all my poor uncle's wishes, as Evelyn's 
 rejection of a suit pursued for years, and so solemnly sanctioned 
 in her very childhood ? " 
 
 " She must decide for herself," said Lady Vargrave. " Your 
 uncle carefully distinguished between a wish and a command. 
 Her heart is as yet untouched. If she can love you, may you 
 deserve her affection." 
 
 " It shall be my study to do so. But why this departure from 
 your roof, just when we ought to see most of each other ? It 
 cannot be that you would separate us ? " 
 
 " I fear, Lord Vargrave, that if Evelyn were to remain here, 
 she would decide against you. I fear if you press her now, 
 such now may be her premature decision. Perhaps this arises 
 from too fond an attachment for her home : perhaps even a 
 short absence from her home from me may more reconcile 
 her to a permanent separation." 
 
 Vargrave could say no more ; for here they were joined by 
 Caroline and Mrs. Merton. But his manner was changed, nor 
 could he recover the gaiety of the previous night. 
 
 When, however, he found time for meditation, he contrived 
 to reconcile himself to the intended visit. He felt that it was 
 easy to secure the friendship of the whole of the Merton family, 
 and that friendship might be more useful to him than the neu- 
 tral part adopted by Lady Vargrave. He should, of course, be 
 invited to the Rectory ; it was much nearer London than Lady 
 Vargrave's cottage he could more often escape from public 
 cares to superintend his private interests. A country neighbor- 
 hood, particularly at that season of the year, was not likely to 
 abound in very dangerous rivals. Evelyn would, he saw, be 
 surrounded by a worldly family, and he thought that an advan- 
 tage ; it might serve to dissipate Evelyn's romantic tendencies, 
 jmd make her sensible of the pleasures of the London life, the offi-
 
 ALICE ) OR, THE MYSTERIES. 33 
 
 cial rank, the gay society that her union with him would offer 
 as an equivalent for her fortune. In short, as was his wont, 
 he strove to make the best of the new turn affairs had taken. 
 Though guardian to Miss Cameron and one of the trustees for 
 the fortune she was to receive on attaining her majority, he had 
 not the right to dictate as to her residence. The late lord's 
 will had expressly and pointedly corroborated the natural 
 and lawful authority of Lady Vargrave in all matters connected 
 with Evelyn's education and home. It may be as well in this 
 place to add, that to Vargrave and the co-trustee, Mr. Gus- 
 tavus Douce, a banker of repute and eminence, the testator left 
 large discretionary powers as to the investment of the fortune. 
 He had stated it as his wish that from one hundred and twenty 
 to one hundred and thirty thousand pounds should be invested 
 in the purchase of a landed estate ; but he had left it to the dis- 
 cretion of the trustees to increase that sum, even to the amount 
 of the whole capital, should an estate of adequate importance 
 be in the market ; while the selection of time and purchase was 
 unreservedly confined to the trustees. Vargrave had hitherto 
 objected to every purchase in the market ; not that he was in- 
 sensible to the importance and consideration of landed prop- 
 erty, but because, till he himself became the legal receiver of 
 the income, he thought it less trouble to suffer the money to lie 
 in the funds than to be pestered with all the onerous details 
 in the management of an estate that might never be his. He, 
 however, with no less ardor than his deceased relative, looked 
 forward to the time when the title of Vargrave should be based 
 upon the venerable foundation of feudal manors and seignorial 
 acres. 
 
 "Why did you not tell me Lord Vargrave was so charming?" 
 said Caroline to Evelyn, as the two girls were sauntering in 
 familiar tte-a-tte, along the gardens. " You will be very happy 
 with such a companion." 
 
 Evelyn made no answer for a few moments, and then, turn- 
 ing abruptly round to Caroline and stopping short, she said, 
 with a kind of tearful eagerness, " Dear Caroline, you are so 
 wise, so kind too advise me tell me what is best. I am very 
 unhappy." 
 
 Miss Merton was moved and surprised by Evelyn's earnest- 
 ness. 
 
 " But what is it, my poor Evelyn," said she ; " why are you 
 unhappy? you whose fate seems to me so enviable." 
 
 " I cannot love Lord Vargrave ; I recoil from the idea of 
 marrying him. Ought I not fairly to tell him so ? Ought I
 
 34 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 not to say, that I cannot fulfill the wish that oh, there's the 
 thought which leaves me so irresolute ! his uncle bequeathed 
 to me me who have no claim of relationship the fortune that 
 should have been Lord Vargrave's, in the belief that my hand 
 would restore it to him. It is almost a fraud to refuse him. 
 Am I not to be pitied ? " 
 
 " But why can you not love Lord Vargrave ? If past the pre- 
 miere jeunessf, he is still handsome : he is more than handsome: 
 he has the air of rank an eye that fascinates a smile that 
 wins the manners that please the abilities that command 
 the world ! Handsome clever admired distinguished 
 what can woman desire more in her lover her husband? Have 
 you ever formed some fancy, some ideal of the one you could 
 love, and how does Lord Vargrave fall short of the vision ?" 
 
 " Have I ever formed an ideal ? oh, yes ! " said Evelyn, with 
 a beautiful enthusiasm that lighted up her eyes, blushed in her 
 cheek, and heaved her bosom beneath its robe; ''something 
 that in loving I could also revere : a mind that would elevate 
 my own ; a heart that could sympathize with my weakness, my 
 follies, my romance, if you will ; and in which I could treasure 
 my whole soul." 
 
 " You paint a schoolmaster, not a lover ! " said Caroline. 
 " You do .not care, then, whether this hero be handsome or 
 young ? " 
 
 "Oh, yes, he should be both," said Evelyn, innocently ; "and 
 yet," she added, after a pause and with an infantine playfulness 
 of manner and countenance, " I know you will laugh at me ; 
 but I think I could be in love with more than one at the same 
 time ! " . 
 
 " A common case, but a rare confession ! " 
 
 "Yes ; for if I might ask for the youth and outward advan- 
 tages that please the eye, I could also love with a yet deeper 
 love that which would speak to my imagination Intellect, Ge- 
 nius, Fame ! Ah, these have an immortal youth and imperish- 
 able beauty of their own ! " 
 
 " You are a very strange girl." 
 
 " But we are on a very strange subject it is all an enigma! " 
 said Evelyn, shaking her wise little head with a pretty gravity 
 half mock, half real. " Ah, if Lord Vargrave should love you 
 and you oh, you would love him, and then I should be free, 
 and so happy ! " 
 
 They were then on the lawn in sight of the cottage windows, 
 and Lumley, lifting his eyes from the newspaper, which had 
 lust arrived and been seized with all a politician's avidity, saw
 
 ALICE ; Ok, THE MYSTERIES. 35 
 
 them in the distance. He threw down the paper, mused a mo- 
 ment or two, then took up his hat and joined them ; but before 
 he did so he surveyed himself in the glass. " I think I look 
 young enough still," he thought. 
 
 " Two cherries on one stalk," said Lumley gaily : " by the 
 by, it is not a complimentary simile. What young lady would 
 be like a cherry ? such an uninteresting, common, charity-boy 
 sort of fruit. For my part, I always associate cherries with the 
 image of a young gentleman in corduroys and a skeleton jacket, 
 with one pocket full of marbles, and the other full of worms for 
 fishing, with three half-pence in the left paw, and two cherries 
 on one stalk (Helena and Hermia) in the right." 
 
 " How droll you are! " said Caroline, laughing. 
 
 " Much obliged to you, and don't envy your discrimination 
 ' melancholy marks me for its own.' You ladies ah, yours is 
 the life for gay spirits and light hearts ; to us are left business and 
 politics law, physic, and murder, by way of professions abuse 
 nicknamed fame ; and the privilege of seeing how universal a 
 thing among the great and the wealthy is that pleasant vice, 
 beggary ; which privilege is proudly entitled, ' patronage and 
 power.' Are we the things to be gay ' droll,' as you say ? Oh, 
 no, all our spirits are forced, believe me. Miss Cameron, did 
 you ever know that wretched species of hysterical affection 
 called 'forced spirits?' Never, I am sure; your ingenuous 
 smile, your laughing eyes, are the index to a happy and a san- 
 guine heart." 
 
 " And what of me ? " asked Caroline quickly, and with a 
 slight blush. 
 
 " You, Miss Merton ? ah, I have not yet read your charac- 
 ter a fair page, but an unknown letter. You, however, have 
 seen the world, and know that we must occasionally wear a mask." 
 Lord Vargrave sighed as he spoke, and relapsed into sudden 
 silence ; then looking up his eyes encountered Caroline's, 
 which were fixed upon him ; their gaze flattered him ; Caro- 
 line turned away, and busied herself with a rose-bush. Lum- 
 ley gathered one of the flowers and presented it to her. Eve- 
 lyn was a few steps in advance. 
 
 " There is no thorn in this rose," said he : " may the offering 
 be an omen you are now Evelyn's friend oh, be mine ; she 
 is to be your guest. Do not scorn to plead for me." 
 
 " Can you want a pleader ? " said Caroline, with a slight tre- 
 mor in her voice. 
 
 " Charming Miss Merton, love is diffident and fearful ; but it 
 must now find a voice, t which may Evelyn benignly listen.
 
 36 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 What I leave unsaid would that my new friend's eloquence 
 could supply." 
 
 He bowed slightly and joined Evelyn. Caroline understood 
 the hint and returned alone and thoughtfully to the house. 
 
 " Miss Cameron Evelyn ah, still let me call you so as in 
 the happy and more familiar days of your childhood I wish 
 you could read my heart at this moment : you are about to 
 leave your home new scenes will surround new faces smile 
 on you ; dare I hope that I may still be remembered?" 
 
 He attempted to take her hand as he spoke ; Evelyn with- 
 drew it gently. 
 
 "Ah, my lord," said she, in a very low voice, "if remem- 
 brance were all that you asked of me " 
 
 " It is all favorable remembrance remembrance of the 
 love of the past remembrance of the bond to come." 
 
 Evelyn shivered. " It is better to speak openly," said she : 
 "let me throw myself on your generosity. I am not insensible 
 to your brilliant qualities to the honor of your attachment 
 but but as the time approaches in which you will call for 
 my decision let me now say, that I cannot feel for you 
 those those sentiments, without which you could not desire 
 our union without which it were but a wrong to both of us to 
 form it. Nay, listen to me I grieve bitterly at the tenor of 
 your too-generous uncle's will can I not atone to you ? Will- 
 ingly would I sacrifice the fortune that, indeed, ought to be 
 yours accept it, and remain my friend." 
 
 "Cruel Evelyn ! and can you suppose that it is your fortune 
 I seek ? it is_yourself. Heaven is my witness that, had you 
 no dowry but your hand and heart, it were treasure enough to 
 me. You think you cannot love me. Evelyn, you do not yet 
 know yourself. Alas ! your retirement in this distant village 
 my own unceasing avocations, which chain me, like a slave, to 
 the galley-oar of politics and power have kept us separate. 
 You do not know me. I am willing to hazard the experiment 
 of that knowledge. To devote my life to you to make you 
 partaker of my ambition, my career to raise you to the highest 
 eminence in the Matronage of England to transfer pride from 
 myself to you to love, and to honor, and to prize you all this 
 will be my boast ; and all this will win love for me at last. 
 Fear not, Evelyn, fear not for your happiness ; with me you 
 shall know no sorrow. Affection at home splendor abroad 
 await you. I have passed the rough and arduous part of my 
 career sunshine lies on the summit to which I climb. No 
 station in England is too high for me to aspire to, prospects,
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 37 
 
 how bright with you ! how dark without you ! Ah, Evelyn, 
 be this hand mine the heart shall follow ! " 
 
 Vargrave's words were artful and eloquent; the words were 
 calculated to win their way but the manner, the tone of voice, 
 wanted earnestness and truth. This was his defect this char- 
 acterized all his attempts to seduce or to lead others in public 
 or in private life. He had no heart, no deep passion, in what 
 he undertook. He could impress you with the conviction of 
 his ability, and leave the conviction imperfect, because he could 
 not convince you that he was sincere. That best gift of mental 
 power earnestness was wanting to him; and Lord Vargrave's 
 deficiency of heart was the true cause why he was not a great 
 man. Still, Evelyn was affected by his words; she suffered the 
 hand he now once more took to remain passively in his, and 
 said timidly 
 
 "Why, with sentiments so generous and confiding why do 
 you love me, who cannot return your affection worthily ? No, 
 Lord Vargrave ; there are many who must see you with juster 
 eyes than mine many fairer, and even wealthier. Indeed 
 indeed, it cannot be. Do not be offended, but think that the for- 
 tune left to me was on one condition I cannot, ought not to fulfil. 
 Failing that condition, in equity and honor it reverts to you." 
 
 "Talk not thus, I implore you, Evelyn: do not imagine me 
 the worldly calculator that my enemies deem me. But to 
 remove at once from your mind the possibility of such a com- 
 promise between your honor and repugnance (repugnance ! 
 have I lived to say that word ?) know that your fortune is not 
 at your own disposal. Save the small forfeit that awaits your 
 non-compliance with my uncle's dying prayer, the whole is set- 
 tled peremptorily on yourself and your children ; it is entailed 
 you cannot alienate it. Thus, then, your generosity can 
 never be evinced but to him on whom you bestow your hand. 
 Ah ! let me recall that melancholy scene. Your benefactor 
 on his death-bed your mother kneeling by his side yourhand 
 clasped in mine and those lips, with their latest breath, utter- 
 ing at once a blessing and a command ! " 
 
 "Ah, cease cease, my lord ! " said Evelyn, sobbing. 
 
 " No; bid me not cease before you tell me you will be 
 mine. Beloved Evelyn ! I may hope you will not resolve 
 against me." 
 
 "No," said Evelyn, raising her eyes and struggling for com- 
 posure; "I feel too well what should be my duty ; I will en- 
 deavor to perform it. Ask me no more now; I will struggle to 
 answer you as you wish hereafter."
 
 38 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 Lord Vargrave, resolved to push to the utmost the advantage 
 he had gained, was about to reply when he heard a step be- 
 hind him ; and turning round quickly and discomposed, be- 
 held a venerable form approaching them. The occasion was 
 lost : Evelyn also turned; and seeing who was the intruder 
 sprang towards him almost with a cry of joy. 
 
 The new-comer was a man who had passed his seventieth year; 
 but his old age was green, his step light, and on his healthful 
 and benignant countenance time had left but few furrows. He 
 was clothed in black; and his locks which were white as snow, 
 escaped from the broad hat and almost touched his' shoulders. 
 
 The old man smiled upon Evelyn, and kissed her forehead 
 fondly. He then turned to Lord Vargrave, who, recovering 
 his customary self-possession, advanced to meet him with ex- 
 tended hand. 
 
 " My dear Mr. Aubrey, this is a welcome surprise. I heard 
 you were not at the vicarage, or I would have called on you." 
 
 "Your lordship honors me," replied the curate. "For the 
 first time in thirty years I have been thus long absent from my 
 cure ; but I am now returned, I hope, to end my days among 
 my flock." 
 
 "And what," asked Vargrave " what if the question be not 
 presumptuous occasioned your unwilling absence?" 
 
 " My lord," replied the old man, with a gentle smile, " anew 
 vicar has been appointed. I went to him, to proffer an humble 
 prayer that I might remain amongst those whom I regarded as 
 my children. I have buried one generation I have mar- 
 ried another I have baptized a third." 
 
 "You should have had the vicarage itself you should be 
 better provided for, my dear Mr. Aubrey; I will speak to the 
 Lord Chancellor." 
 
 Five times before had Lord Vargrave uttered the same prom- 
 ise, and the curate smiled to hear the familiar words. 
 
 " The vicarage, my lord, is a family living, and is now vested 
 in a young man who requires wealth more than I do. He has 
 been kind to me, and re-established me among my flock; I 
 would not leave them for a bishopric. My child," continued 
 the curate, addressing Evelyn with great affection, " you are 
 surely unwell you are paler than when I left you." 
 
 Evelyn clung fondly to his arm, and smiled her old gay 
 smile as she replied to him. They took the way towards the 
 house. 
 
 The curate remained with them for an hour. There was a 
 mingled sweetness and dignity in his manner which had in it
 
 ALICE J OR, THE MYSTERIES. 39 
 
 something of the primitive character we poetically ascribe to 
 the pastors of the church. Lady Vargrave seemed to vie with 
 Evelyn which should love him the most. When he retired to 
 his home, which was not many yards distant from the cottage, 
 Evelyn, pleading a headache, sought her chamber, andLumlcy, 
 to soothe his mortification, turned to Caroline who had seated 
 herself by his side. Her conversation amused him, and her 
 evident admiration flattered. While Lady Vargrave absented 
 herself in motherly anxiety to attend on Evelyn while Mrs. 
 Leslie was occupied at her frame and Mrs. Merton looked on 
 and talked indolently to the old lady of rheumatism and ser- 
 mons, of children's complaints and servants' misdemeanors 
 the conversation between Lord Vargrave and Caroline, at first 
 gay and animated, grew gradually more sentimental and sub- 
 dued: their voices took a lower tone, and Caroline sometimes 
 turned away her head and blushed. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 ' There stands the Messenger of Truth there stands 
 The Legate of the skies." COWPER. 
 
 FROM that night Lumley found no opportunity for private 
 conversation with Evelyn; she evidently shunned to meet with 
 him alone; she was ever with her mother, or Mrs. Leslie, or the 
 good curate, who spent much of his time at the cottage; for the 
 old man had neither wife nor children he was alone at home 
 he had learned to make his home with the widow and her 
 daughter. With them he was an object of the tenderest affec- 
 tion of the deepest veneration. Their love delighted him, 
 and he returned it with the fondness of a parent and the be- 
 nevolence of a pastor. He was a rare character, that village 
 priest ! 
 
 Born of humble parentage, Edward Aubrey had early dis- 
 played abilities which attracted the notice of a wealthy pro- 
 prietor, who was not displeased to affect the patron. Young 
 Aubrey was sent to school, and thence to college as a sizar: he 
 obtained several prizes, and took a high degree. Aubrey was 
 not without the ambition and the passions of youth : he went into 
 the world, ardent, inexperienced, and without a guide. He drew 
 back before errors grew into crimes, or folly became a habit. 
 It was nature and affection that reclaimed and saved him from 
 either alternative fairje or ruin. His widowed mother wag
 
 4O ALICE J OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 suddenly stricken with disease. Blind and bedridden, her 
 whole dependence was on her only son. This affliction called 
 forth a new character in Edward Aubrey. This mother had 
 stripped herself of so many comforts to provide for him he 
 devoted his youth to her in return. She was now old and im- 
 becile. With the mingled selfishness and sentiment of age she 
 would not come to London she would not move from the 
 village where her husband lay buried where her youth had 
 been spent. In this village the able and ambitious young man 
 buried his hopes and his talents ; by degrees the quiet and 
 tranquillity of the country life became dear to him. As steps 
 in a ladder, so piety leads to piety, and religion grew to him a 
 habit. He took orders and entered the church. A disappoint- 
 ment in love ensued it left on his mind and heart a sober and 
 resigned melancholy, which at length mellowed into content. 
 His profession and its sweet duties became more and more 
 dear to him ; in the hopes of the next world he forgot the am- 
 bition of the present. He did not seek to shine 
 
 " More skilled to raise the wretched than to rise." 
 
 His own birth made the poor his brothers, and their dispositions 
 and wants familiar to him. His own early errors made him 
 tolerant to the faults of others ; few men are charitable who 
 remember not that they have sinned. In our faults lie the 
 germs of virtues. Thus gradually and serenely had worn away 
 his life obscure, but useful calm, but active a man whom 
 " the great prizes " of the church might have rendered an 
 ambitious schemer to whom a modest confidence gave the 
 true pastoral power to conquer the world within himself, and 
 to sympathize with the wants of others. Yes, he was a rare 
 character, that village priest ! 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 " Tout notre raisonnement se reduit a ceder au sentiment."* PASCAL. 
 
 LORD VARGRAVE, who had no desire to remain alone with 
 the widow when the guests were gone, arranged his departure 
 for the same day as that fixed for Mrs. Merton's ; and as their 
 road lay together for several miles, it was settled that they 
 should all dine at whence Lord Vargrave would pro- 
 ceed to London. Failing to procure a second chance-interview 
 
 * All pur reasoning reduces itself to yielding to sentiment,
 
 ALICE J OR, THE MYSTERIES. 4! 
 
 with Evelyn, and afraid to demand a formal one for he felt 
 the insecurity of the ground he stood on Lord Vargrave, irri- 
 tated and somewhat mortified, sought, as was his habit, what- 
 ever amusement was in his reach. In the conversation of Caro- 
 line Merton shrewd, worldly, and ambitious he found the 
 sort of plaything that he desired. They were thrown much 
 together; but to Vargrave, at least, there appeared no danger 
 in the intercourse; and, perhaps, his chief object was to pique 
 Evelyn, as well as to gratify his own spleen. 
 
 It was the evening before Evelyn's departure; the little party 
 had been for the last hour dispersed; Mrs. Merton was in her 
 own room, making to herself gratuitous and unnecessary occu- 
 pation in seeing her woman pack up. It was just the kind of 
 task that delighted her. To sit in a large chair, and see some- 
 body else at work to say, languidly, " Don't crumple that scarf, 
 Jane and where shall we put Miss Caroline's blue bonnet ? " 
 gave her a very comfortable notion of her own importance and 
 habits of business a sort of title to be the superintendent of a 
 family and the wife of a rector. Caroline had disappeared so 
 had Lord Vargrave ; but the first was supposed to be with 
 Evelyn; the second, employed in writing letters; at least, it was 
 so when they had been last observed. Mrs. Leslie was alone 
 in the drawing-room, and absorbed in anxious and benevolent 
 thoughts on the critical situation of her young favorite, about 
 to enter an age and a world the perils of which Mrs. Leslie had 
 not forgotten. 
 
 It was at this time that Evelyn, forgetful of Lord Vargrave 
 and his suit of every one of every thing but the grief of the 
 approaching departure found herself alone in a little arbor, 
 that had been built upon the cliff to command the view of the 
 sea below. That day she had been restless, perturbed ; she 
 had visited every spot consecrated by youthful recollections ; 
 she had clung with fond regret to everyplace in which she had 
 held sweet converse with her mother. Of a disposition singu- 
 larly warm and affectionate, she had often in her secret heart 
 pined for a more yearning and enthusiastic love than it seemed 
 in the subdued nature of Lady Vargrave to bestow. In the 
 affection of the latter, gentle and never fluctuating as it was, 
 there seemed to her a something wanting, which she could not 
 define. She had watched that beloved face all the morning. 
 She had hoped to see the tender eyes fixed upon her, and hear 
 the meek voice exclaim, " I cannot part with my child ! " All 
 the gay pictures which the light-hearted Caroline drew of the 
 scenes she was to enter had vanished away now that the hour
 
 42 ALICE J OR, THE MYSrERIES. 
 
 approached when her mother was to be left alone. Why was 
 she to go ? It seemed to her an unnecessary cruelty. 
 
 As she thus sate, she did not observe that Mr. Aubrey, who 
 had seen her at a distance, was now bending his way to her ; 
 and not till he had entered the arbor and taken her hand did 
 she waken from those reveries in which youth, the Dreamer 
 and the Desirer, so morbidly indulges. 
 
 "Tears, my child ! " said the curate. "Nay, be not ashamed 
 of them ; they become you in this hour. How we shall miss 
 you ! and you, too, will not forget us ! " 
 
 " Forget you ! Ah no, indeed. But why should I leave you ? 
 Why will you not speak to my mother implore her to let me 
 remain ? We were so happy till these strangers came. We did 
 not think there was any other world here there is world enough 
 for me ! " 
 
 "My poor Evelyn," said Mr. Aubrey gently, "I have spoken 
 to your mother, and to Mrs. Leslie ; they have confided to me 
 all the reasons for your departure, and I cannot but subscribe 
 to their justice. You do not want many months of the age 
 when you will be called upon to decide whether Lord Vargrave 
 shall be your husband. Your mother shrinks from the respon- 
 sibility of influencing your decision ; and here, my child, in- 
 experienced and having seen so little of others, how can you 
 know your own heart ? " 
 
 " But, oh, Mr. Aubrey," said Evelyn, with an earnestness 
 that overcame embarrassment, "have I a choice left to me? 
 Can I be ungrateful disobedient to him who was a father to 
 me ? Ought I not to sacrifice my own happiness ? And how 
 willingly would I do so, if my mother would smile on me ap- 
 provingly ! " 
 
 "My child," said the curate gravely, "an old man is a bad 
 judge of the affairs of youth ; yet in this matter I think your 
 duty plain. Do not resolutely set yourself against Lord Var- 
 grave's claim do not persuade yourself that you must be un- 
 happy in a union with him. Compose your mind think seri- 
 ously upon the choice before you refuse all decision at the 
 present moment wait until the appointed time arrives, or at 
 least more nearly approaches. Meanwhile, I understand that 
 Lord Vargrave is to be a frequent visitor at Mrs. Merlon's 
 there you will see him with others his character will show 
 itself study his principles his disposition examine whether 
 he is one whom you can esteem and render happy; there may 
 be a love without enthusiasm and yet sufficient for domestic 
 felicity, and for the employment of the affections. You will
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 43 
 
 insensibly, too, learn from others parts of his character which he 
 does not exhibit to us. If the result of time and examination 
 be, that you can cheerfully obey the late lord's dying wish 
 unquestionably it will be the happier decision. If not if you 
 still shrink from vows at which your heart now rebels as un- 
 questionably you may, with an acquitted conscience, become 
 free. The best of us are imperfect judges of the happiness of 
 others. In the woe or weal of a whole life we must decide for 
 ourselves. Your benefactor could not mean you to be wretched : 
 and if he now, with eyes purified from all worldly mists, look 
 down upon you, his spirit will approve your choice. For when 
 we quit the world all worldly ambition dies with us. What 
 now to the immortal soul can be the title and the rank which 
 on earth, with the desires of earth, your benefactor hoped to 
 secure to his adopted child? This is my advice. Look on the 
 bright side of things, and wait calmly for the hour when Lord 
 Vargrave can demand your decision." 
 
 The words of the priest, which well defined her duty, inex- 
 pressibly soothed and comforted Evelyn ; and the advice upon 
 other and higher matters which the good man pressed upon a 
 mind so softened at that hour to receive religious impressions, 
 was received with gratitude and respect. Subsequently their 
 conversation fell upon Lady Vargrave a theme dear to both 
 of them. The old man was greatly touched by the poor girl's 
 unselfish anxiety for her mother's comfort by her fears that 
 she might be missed in those little attentions which filial love 
 alone can render ; he was almost yet more touched when, with 
 a less disinterested feeling, Evelyn added mournfully : 
 
 " Yet why, after all; should I fancy she will so miss me ? 
 Ah, though I will not dare complain of it, I feel still that she 
 does not love me as I love her." 
 
 " Evelyn," said the curate with mild reproach, " have I not 
 said that your mother has known sorrow ? and though sorrow 
 does not annihilate affection, it subdues its expression, and 
 moderates its outward signs." 
 
 Evelyn sighed, and said no more. 
 
 As the good old man and his young friend returned to the 
 cottage, Lord Vargrave and Caroline approached them, emerg- 
 ing from an opposite part of the grounds. The former hastened 
 to Evelyn with his usual gaiety and frank address : and there 
 was so much charm in the manner of a man whom apparently 
 the world and its cares had never rendered artificial or reserved, 
 that the curate himself was impressed by it. He thought that 
 Evelyn might be happy with one amiable enough for a com-
 
 44 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 panion and wise enough for a guide. But old as he was he had 
 loved, and he knew that there are instincts in the heart which 
 defy all our calculations. 
 
 While Lumley was conversing the little gate that made the 
 communication betfween the gardens and the neighboring 
 churchyard, through which was the nearest access to the village, 
 creaked on its hinges, and the quiet and solitary figure of Lady 
 Vargrave threw its shadow over the grass. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 " And I can listen to thee yet, 
 
 Can lie upon the plain 
 And listen till I do beget 
 
 That golden time again." WORDSWORTH. 
 
 IT was past midnight hostess and guests had retired to re- 
 pose when Lady Vargrave's door opened gently. The lady 
 herself was kneeling at the foot of the bed : the moonlight came 
 through the half-drawn curtains of the casement ; and by its 
 ray her pale, calm features looked paler and yet more hushed. 
 
 Evelyn, for she was the intruder, paused at the threshold 
 till her mother rose from her devotions, and then she threw 
 herself on Lady Vargrave's breast, sobbing as if her heart 
 would break hers were the wild, generous, irresistible emotions 
 of youth. Lady Vargrave, perhaps, had known them once ; at 
 least, she could sympathize with them now. 
 
 She strained her child to her bosom she stroked back her 
 hair, and kissed her fondly, and spoke to her soothingly. 
 
 " Mother," sobbed Evelyn, " I could not sleep I could not 
 rest. Bless me again kiss me again ; tell me that you love 
 me you cannot love me as I do you but tell me that I am 
 dear to you tell me you will regret me but not too much 
 tell me " Here Evelyn paused, and could say no more. 
 
 " My best, my kindest Evelyn," said Lady Vargrave, "there 
 is nothing on earth I love like you. Do not fancy I am un- 
 grateful." 
 
 "Why do you say ungrateful ? your own child your only 
 child ! " and Evelyn covered her mother's face and hands with 
 passionate tears and kisses. 
 
 At that moment certain it is, that Lady Vargrave's heart re- 
 proached her with not having, indeed, loved this sweet girl as 
 she deserved. True, no mother was more mild, more atten- 
 tive, more fostering, more anxious for a daughter's welfare;
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 45 
 
 but Evelyn was right ! the gushing fondness, the mysterious 
 entering into every subtle thought and feeling, which should 
 have characterized the love of such a mother to such a child, 
 had been to outward appearance wanting. Even in this pres- 
 ent parting there had been a prudence, an exercise of reason- 
 ing, that savored more of duty than love. Lady Vargrave felt 
 all this with remorse she gave way to emotions new to her 
 at least to exhibit she wept with Evelyn, and returned her 
 caresses with almost equal fervor. Perhaps, too, she thought 
 at that moment of what love that warm nature was susceptible; 
 and she trembled for her future fate. It was as a full recon- 
 ciliation that mournful hour between feelings on either side, 
 which something mysterious seemed to have checked before : 
 and that last night the mother and child did not separate 
 the same couch contained them ; and when worn out with 
 some emotions which she could not reveal Lady Vargrave fell 
 into the sleep of exhaustion, Evelyn's arm was round her, and 
 Evelyn's eyes watched her with pious and anxious love as the 
 gray morning dawned. 
 
 She left her mother still sleeping when the sun rose, and 
 went silently down into the dear room below, and again busied 
 herself in a thousand little provident cares, which she wondered 
 she had forgot before. 
 
 The carriages were at the door before the party had assem- 
 bled at the melancholy breakfast-table. Lord Vargrave was 
 the last to appear. 
 
 " I have been like all cowards," said he, seating himself ; - 
 "anxious to defer an evil as long as possible ; a bad policy, for 
 it increases the worst of all pains that of suspense." 
 
 Mrs. Merton had undertaken the duties that appertain to the 
 "hissing urn." "You prefer coffee, Lord Vargrave ? Caro- 
 line, my dear " 
 
 Caroline passed the cup to Lord Vargrave, who looked at 
 her hand as he took it there was a ring on one of those slen- 
 der fingers never observed there before. Their eyes met, and 
 Caroline colored. Lord Vargrave turned to Evelyn, who, pale 
 as death, but tearless and speechless, sate beside her mother ; 
 he attempted in vain to draw her into conversation. Evelyn, 
 who desired to restrain her feelings, would not trust herself to 
 speak. 
 
 Mrs. Merton, ever undisturbed and placid, continued to talk 
 on : to offer congratulations on the weather it was such a 
 lovely day and they should be off so early it would be so 
 well arranged they should be in such good time to dine at
 
 46 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES/ 
 
 , and then go three stages after dinner the moon would 
 
 be up. 
 
 " But," said Lord Vargrave, "as I am to go with you as far as 
 
 , where our roads separate, I hope I am not condemned to 
 
 go alone, with my red box, two old newspapers, and the blue 
 devils. Have pity on me." 
 
 "Perhaps you will take grandmamma, then?" whispered 
 Caroline archly. 
 
 Lumley shrugged his shoulders and replied in the same tone, 
 " Yes, provided you keep to the proverb, 'Les extremes se tou- 
 chentj and the lovely grandchild accompany the venerable 
 grandmamma." 
 
 "What would Evelyn say?" retorted Caroline. 
 
 Lumley sighed and made no answer. 
 
 Mrs. Merton, who had hung fire while her daughter was 
 carrying on this " aside," now put in : 
 
 "Suppose I and Caroline take your britzka, and you go in 
 our old coach with Evelyn and Mrs. Leslie?" 
 
 Lumley looked delightedly at the speaker and then glanced 
 at Evelyn ; but Mrs. Leslie said very gravely, " No, we shall 
 feel too much in leaving this dear place to be gay companions 
 for Lord Vargrave. We shall all meet at dinner; or," she 
 added, after a pause, "if this be uncourteous to Lord Vargrave, 
 suppose Evelyn and myself take his carriage and he accompa- 
 nies you?" 
 
 "Agreed," said Mrs. Merton quietly; "and now I will just 
 go and see about the strawberry-plants and slips it was so 
 kind in you, dear Lady Vargrave, to think of them." 
 
 An hour had elapsed and Evelyn was gone ! She had left 
 her maiden home she had wept her last farewell on her 
 mother's bosom the sound of the carriage-wheels had died 
 away ; but still Lady Vargrave lingered on the threshold still 
 she gazed on the spot where the last glimpse of Evelyn had 
 been caught. A sense of dreariness and solitude passed into 
 her soul : the very sunlight the spring the songs of the 
 birds made loneliness more desolate. 
 
 Mechanically, at last, she moved away and with slow steps 
 and downcast eyes passed through the favorite walk that led 
 into the quiet burial-ground. The gate closed upon her and 
 now the lawn the gardens the haunts of Evelyn were soli- 
 tary as the desert itself ; but the daisy opened to the sun, and 
 the bee murmured along the blossoms not the less blithely 
 for the absence of all human life. In the bosom of Nature 
 there beats no heart for man !
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 BOOK II. 
 
 TOf fjWe, irepnrAOfifvuv eviavr&v 
 
 Etf 'Wdnrfv, ov6' ivda Tretyvy/nevoz tjev ae6?wv. 
 
 ROM. Od.,\\b. i.,1. 16. 
 
 The hour arrived years having rolled away 
 When his return the Gods no more delay. 
 Lo ! Ithaca the Fates award ; and there 
 New trials meet the Wanderer. - 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 * : There is continual spring and harvest here- 
 
 Continual, both meeting at one time : 
 For both the boughs do laughing blossoms bear, 
 And with fresh colors deck the wanton prime 
 And eke at once the heavy trees they climb, 
 Which seem to labor under their fruits' load." 
 
 SPENSER : The Garden of Adonir. 
 
 * * * "Vis boni 
 
 In ipsa inesset forma." TERENT. 
 
 BEAUTY, thou art twice blessed ; thou blessest the gazer and 
 the possessor ; often, at once the effect and the cause of good- 
 ness ! A sweet disposition a lovely soul an affectionate 
 nature will speak in the eyes the lips the brow and be- 
 come the cause of beauty. On the other hand, they who have 
 a gift that commands love, a key that opens all hearts, are ordi- 
 narily inclined to look with happy eyes upon the world to be 
 cheerful and serene to hope and to confide. There is more 
 wisdom than the vulgar dream of in our admiration of a fair 
 face. 
 
 Evelyn Cameron was beautiful : a beauty that came from 
 the heart, and went to the heart a beauty, the very spirit of 
 which was love ! Love smiled on her dimpled lips it reposed 
 on her open brow it played in the profuse and careless ringlets 
 of darkest yet sunniest auburn, which a breeze could lift from 
 her delicate and virgin cheek. Love, in all its tenderness, in 
 all its kindness, its unsuspecting truth, Love colored every 
 thought ; murmured in her low melodious voice ; in all its 
 symmetry and glorious womanhood, Love swelled the swan-like 
 neck, and moulded the rounded limb. 
 
 * Even in beauty, there exists the power of virtue.
 
 48 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 She was just the kind of person that takes the judgment by 
 storm : whether gay or grave, there was so charming and irre- 
 sistible a grace about her. She seemed born, not only to capti- 
 vate the giddy, but to turn the heads of the sage. Roxalana was 
 nothing to her. How, in the obscure hamlet of Brook-Green, 
 she had learned all the arts of pleasing, it it impossible to say. 
 In her arch smile, the pretty toss of her head, the half shyness, 
 half freedom of her winning ways, it was as if Nature had made 
 her to delight one heart, and torment all others. 
 
 Without being learned the mind of Evelyn was cultivated 
 and well informed. Her heart, perhaps, helped to instruct 
 her understanding ; for by a kind of intuition she could appre- 
 ciate all that was beautiful and elevated. Her unvitiated and 
 guileless taste had a logic of its own : no schoolman had ever a 
 quicker penetration into truth no critic ever more readily de- 
 tected the meretricious and the false. The book that Evelyn 
 could admire was sure to be stamped with the impress of the 
 noble, the lovely, or the true ! 
 
 But Evelyn had faults the faults of her age ; or, rather, she 
 had tendencies that might conduce to error. She was of so 
 generous a nature, that the very thought of sacrificing herself 
 for another had a charm. She ever acted from impulse im- 
 pulses pure and good, but often rash and imprudent. She was 
 yielding to weakness, persuaded into anything so sensitive, 
 that even a cold look from one moderately liked cut her to the 
 heart ; and by the sympathy that accompanies sensitiveness, no 
 pain to her was so great as the thought of giving pain to another. 
 Hence it was that Vargrave might form reasonable hopes of his 
 ultimate success. It was a dangerous constitution for happiness ! 
 How many chances must combine to preserve to the mid-day of 
 characters like this, the sunshine of their dawn ! The butterfly, 
 that seems the child of the summer and the flowers, what wind 
 will not chill its mirth what touch will not brush away its hues ? 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 " These, on a general survey, are the modes 
 Of public oratory, which agree 
 With no unletter'd audience." POLWHELE. 
 
 MRS. LESLIE had returned from her visit to the Rectory to 
 her own home, and Evelyn had now been some weeks at Mrs. 
 Merton's. As was natural, she had grown in some measure 
 reconciled and resigned to her change, of abode. In fact, no
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 49 
 
 sooner did she pass Mrs. Merlon's threshold, than for ihe first 
 lime she was made aware of her consequence in life. 
 
 The Rev. Mr. Merlon was a man of Ihe nicesl perceplion in 
 all things apperlaining lo worldly consideration : the second son 
 of a very wealthy baronet (who was the first commoner of his 
 counly), and of ihe daughter of a rich and highly-descended 
 peer, Mr. Merton had been brought near enough to rank and 
 power to appreciate all their advantages. In early life he had 
 been something of a "tuft-hunter ;" but as his understanding 
 was good and his passions not very strong, lie had soon per- 
 ceived thai that vessel of clay, a young man with a moderate 
 fortune, cannot long sail down ihe same slream with the metal 
 vessels of rich earls and extravagant dandies. Besides, he was 
 destined for the church, because there was one of ihe finest 
 livings in England in the family. He, therefore, took orders 
 at six-and-twenly ; married Mrs. Leslie's daughler, who had 
 thirty thousand pounds ; and setlled al ihe Reclory of Merton, 
 within a mile of the family seat. He became a very respect- 
 able and extremely popular man. He was singularly hospitable, 
 and built a new wing containing a large dining-room, and six 
 capital bedrooms to Ihe rectory, which had now much more 
 the appearance of a country villa than a country parsonage. 
 His brother succeeding lo the estates and residing chiefly in the 
 neighborhood, became, like his father before him, member for 
 the county, and was one of the country gentlemen most looked 
 up to in the House of Commons. A sensible and frequent, 
 though uncommonly prosy speaker, singularly independent (for 
 he had a clear fourteen thousand pounds a-year and did not desire 
 office), and valuing himself on not being a party man, so that 
 his vote on critical questions was often a matter of greal doubt, 
 and, therefore, of great moment Sir John Merton gave con- 
 siderable importance to the Reverend Charles Merton. The 
 latler kepi up all Ihe more selecl of his old London acquain- 
 tances ; and few country houses, al certain seasons of the year, 
 were filled more arislocratically than Ihe pleasanl rectory-house. 
 Mr. Merton, indeed, contrived to make the Hall a reservoir for 
 the Parsonage, and periodically drafted off the<?7/V<?of ihevisilors 
 al ihe former, lo spend a few days at the latler. This was Ihe 
 more easily done, as his brother was a widower, and his conver- 
 sation was all of one sorl ihe slale of the nalion, and the 
 agricultural interest. Mr. Merton was upon very friendly lerms 
 wilh his brolher looked after the property in Ihe absence of 
 Sir John kepi up ihe family inleresl was an excellent elec- 
 tioneerer a good speaker, at a pinch an able magistrate a
 
 JJO ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 man, in short, most useful in the county : on the whole, he was 
 more popular than his brother, and almost as much looked up 
 to perhaps, because he was much less ostentatious. He had 
 very good taste, had the Reverend Charles Merton ! his table 
 plentiful, but plain his manners affable to the low, though 
 agreeably sycophantic to the high ; and there was nothing about 
 him that ever wounded self-love. To add to the attractions of 
 his house, his wife, simple and good tempered, could talk with 
 any body, take off the bores, and leave people to be comfort- 
 able in their own way ; while he had a large family of fine 
 children of all ages, that had long given easy and constant 
 excuse, under the name of "little children's parties," for getting 
 up an impromptu dance, or a gipsy dinner enlivening the 
 neighborhood, in short. Caroline was the eldest ; then came a 
 son, attached to a foreign ministry, and another, who, though only 
 nineteen, was a private secretary to one of our Indian satraps. 
 The acquaintance of these young gentlemen, thus engaged, it 
 was therefore Evelyn's misfortune to lose the advantage of cul- 
 tivating a loss which both Mr. and Mrs. Merton assured her 
 was very much to be regretted. But to make up to her for such 
 a privation, there were two lovely little girls, one ten and the 
 other seven years old, who fell in love with Evelyn at first sight. 
 Caroline was one of the beauties of the county, clever and 
 conversible "drew young men," and set the fashion to young 
 ladies, especially when she returned from spending the season 
 with Lady Elizabeth. 
 
 It was a delightful family ! 
 
 In person Mr. Merton was of the middle height, fair and 
 inclined to stoutness, with small features, beautiful teeth, and 
 great suavity of address. Mindful still of the time when he had 
 been " about town," he was very particular in his dress : his black 
 coat, neatly relieved in the evening by a white underwaistcoat, 
 and a shirt-front admirably plaited, with plain studs of dark 
 enamel his well-cut trowsers and elaborately-polished shoes 
 (he was good-humoredly vain of his feet and hands) won for 
 him the common praise of the dandies (who occasionally hon- 
 ored him with a visit to shoot his game and flirt with his daughter), 
 " that old Merton was a most gentlemanlike fellow so d :d 
 neat for a parson ! " 
 
 Such, mentally, morally, and physically, was the Reverend 
 Charles Merton, rector of Merton, brother of Sir John, and 
 possessor of an income that, what with his rich living, his wife's 
 fortune, and his own, which was not inconsiderable, amounted 
 to between four and five thousand pounds a-year which income,
 
 ALICE; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 51 
 
 managed with judgment, as well as liberality, could not fail to 
 secure to him all the good things of this world the respect of 
 his friends amongst the rest. Caroline was right when she told 
 Evelyn that her papa was very different from a mere country 
 parson. 
 
 Now this gentleman could not fail to see all the claims that 
 Evelyn might fairly advance upon the esteem, nay, the venera- 
 tion, of himself and family : a young beauty with a fortune of 
 about a quarter of a million was a phenomenon that might fairly 
 be called celestial. Her pretensions were enhanced by her en- 
 gagement to Lord Vargrave an engagement which might be 
 broken ; so that, as he interpreted it, the worst that could happen 
 to the young lady was to marry an able and rising Minister of 
 State a peer of the realm ; but she was perfectly free to marry 
 a still greater man, if she could find him ; and who knows but 
 what perhaps the attach^ if he could get leave of absence ? 
 Mr. Merton was too sensible to pursue that thought further for 
 the present. 
 
 The good man was greatly shocked at the too-familiar manner 
 in which Mrs. Merton spoke to this high-fated heiress at Eve- 
 lyn's travelling so far without her own maid at her very primitive 
 wardrobe poor, ill-used child ! Mr. Merton was a connoisseur 
 in ladies' dress. It was quite painful to see that the unfortunate 
 girl had been so neglected. Lady Vargrave must be a very 
 strange person. He inquired compassionately whether she was 
 allowed any pocket-money? and finding to his relief that in that 
 respect Miss Cameron was munificently supplied, he suggested 
 that a proper Abigail should be immediately engaged ; that 
 proper orders to Madame Devy should be immediately trans- 
 mitted to London, with one of Evelyn's dresses, as a pattern 
 for nothing but length and breadth. He almost stamped with 
 vexation when he heard that Evelyn had been placed in one of 
 the neat little rooms generally appropriated to young lady visitors. 
 
 "She is quite contented, my dear Mr. Merton; she is so 
 simple ; she has not been brought up in the style you think for." 
 
 "Mrs. Merton," said the rector, with great solemnity, "Miss 
 Cameron may know no better now ; but what will she think of 
 us herea f ter ? It is my maxim to recollect what people will be, and 
 show them that respect which may leave pleasing impressions 
 when they have it in their power to show us civility in return." 
 
 With many apologies, which quite overwhelmed poor Evelyn, 
 she was transferred from the little chamber, with its French bed 
 and bamboo colored washhand-stand, to an apartment with a 
 buhl wardrobe and a four-post bed with green silk curtains,
 
 52 ALICE; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 usually appropriated to the regular Christmas visitant, the 
 Dowager Countess of Chipperton : a pretty morning-room com- 
 municated with the sleeping apartment, and thence a private 
 staircase conducted into the gardens. The whole family were 
 duly impressed and re-impressed with her importance. No queen 
 could be more made of. Evelyn mistook it all for pure kind- 
 ness, and returned the hospitality with an affection that extended 
 to the whole family, but particularly to the two little girls and 
 a beautiful black spaniei. Her dresses came down from Lon- 
 don her Abigail arrived the buhl wardrobe was duly filled 
 and Evelyn at last learned that it is a fine thing to be rich. An 
 account of all these proceedings was forwarded to Lady Var- 
 grave in a long and most complacent letter by the rector him- 
 self. The answer was short, but it contented the excellent clergy- 
 man ; for it approved of all he had done and begged that Miss 
 Cameron might have everything that seemed proper to her station. 
 
 By the same post came two letters to Evelyn herself one 
 from Lady Vargrave, one from the curate. They transported 
 her from the fine room and the buhl wardrobe, to the cottage 
 and the lawn ; and the fine Abigail, when she came to dress 
 her young lady's hair, found her weeping. 
 
 It was a matter of great regret to the rector that it was that 
 time of year when precisely because the country is most beauti- 
 ful every one worth knowing is in town. Still, however, some 
 stray guests found their way to the rectory for a day or two, 
 and still there were some aristocratic old families in the neigh- 
 borhood who never went up to London ; so that two days in 
 the week the rector's wine flowed, the whist-tables were set out, 
 and the piano called into requisition. 
 
 Evelyn the object of universal attention and admiration 
 was put at her ease by her station itself ; for good manners 
 come like an instinct to those on whom the world smiles. In- 
 sensibly she acquired self-possession and the smoothness of 
 society ; and if her childlike playfulness broke out from all con- 
 ventional restraint, it only made more charming and brilliant 
 the great heiress, whose delicate and fairy cast of beauty so 
 well became her graceful abandon of manner, and who looked 
 so unequivocally ladylike to the eyes that rested on Madame 
 Devy's blondes and satins. 
 
 Caroline was not so gay as she had been at the cottage. 
 Something seemed to weigh upon her spirits : she was often 
 moody and thoughtful. She was the only one in the family not 
 good-tempered ; and her peevish replies to her parents when 
 no visitor imposed a check on the family circle inconceivably
 
 ALICE J OR, THE MYSTERIES. 53 
 
 pained Evelyn, and greatly contrasted the flow of spirits which 
 distinguished her when she found somebody worth listening to. 
 Still Evelyn who where she once liked found it difficult to 
 withdraw regard sought to overlook Caroline's blemishes, and 
 to persuade herself of a thousand good qualities below the sur- 
 face ; and her generous nature found constant opportunity of 
 venting itself in costly gifts selected from the London parcels 
 with which the officious Mr. Merton relieved the monotony of 
 the rectory. These gifts Caroline could not refuse without 
 paining her young friend. She took them reluctantly, for, to 
 do her justice, Caroline, though ambitious, was not mean. 
 
 Thus time passed in the rectory in gay variety and constant 
 entertainment ; and all things combined to spoil the heiress, 
 if, indeed, goodness ever is spoiled by kindness and prosperity. 
 Is it to the frost or to the sunshine that the flower opens its 
 petals, or the fruit ripens from the blossom ? 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 " Rod. How sweet these solitary places are 
 
 ***** 
 
 Ped. What strange musick 
 
 Was that we heard afar off ? 
 
 Curio. We've told you what he is what time we've sought him 
 His nature and his name." 
 
 BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER : The Pilgrim. 
 
 ONE day as the ladies were seated in Mrs. Merton's morning 
 room Evelyn, who had been stationed by the window hearing 
 the little Cecilia go through the French verbs, and had just 
 finished that agreeable task, exclaimed, 
 
 "Do tell me to whom that old house belongs with the 
 picturesque gable-end and Gothic turrets there, just peeping 
 through the trees I have always forgot to ask you." 
 
 "Oh, my dear Miss Cameron," said Mrs. Merton, "that is 
 Burleigh have you not been there? How stupid in Caroline 
 not to show it to you. It is one of the lions of the place. It 
 belongs to a man you have often heard of Mr. Maltravers." 
 
 "Indeed !" cried Evelyn; and she gazed with new interest 
 on the gray melancholy pile, as the sunshine brought it into 
 strong contrast with the dark pines around it. " And Mr. Mal- 
 travers himself ?" 
 
 " Is still abroad, I believe ; though I did hear the other day 
 that he was shortly expected at Burleigh. It is a curious old
 
 54 ALICE J OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 place, though much neglected. I believe, indeed, it ha. not 
 been furnished since the time of Charles the First. (Cissy, my 
 love, don't stoop so.) Very gloomy, in my opinion ; and not 
 any fine room in the house except the library, which was once 
 a chapel. However, people come miles to see it." 
 
 "Will you go there to-day? "said Caroline, languidly ; "it is a 
 very pleasant walk through the glebe-land and the wood not 
 above half-a-mile by the foot-path." 
 
 "I should like it so much." 
 
 "Yes," said Mrs. Merton, "and you had better go before he 
 returns he is so strange. He does not allow it to be seen when 
 he is down. But, indeed, he has only been once at the old place 
 since he was of age (Sophy, you will tear Miss Cameron's scarf 
 to pieces ; do be quiet, child.) That was before he was a great 
 man he was then very odd saw no society only dined once 
 with us though Mr. Merton paid him every attention. They 
 show the room in which he wrote his books." 
 
 "I remember him very well, though I was then but a child," 
 said Caroline, "a handsome, thoughtful face." 
 
 "Did you think so, my dear? fine eyes and teeth, certainly, 
 and a commanding figure but nothing more." 
 
 "Well," said Caroline, "if you like to go, Evelyn, I am at 
 your service." 
 
 "And I Evy, dear I may go," said Cecilia, clinging to 
 Evelyn. 
 
 "And me too," lisped Sophia the youngest hope "there's 
 such a pretty peacock." 
 
 " Oh, yes they may go, Mrs. Merton, we'll take such care of 
 them." 
 
 "Very well, my dear Miss Cameron quite spoils you." 
 
 Evelyn tripped away to put on her bonnet and the children 
 ran after her, clapping their hands, they could not bear to lose 
 sight of her for a moment. 
 
 "Caroline," said Mrs. Merton affectionately, "are you not 
 well? you have seemed pale lately, and not in your usual 
 spirits." 
 
 "Oh, yes, I'm well enough," answered Caroline, rather 
 peevishly : " but this place is so dull now very provoking that 
 Lady Elizabeth does not go to London this year." 
 
 " My dear, it will be ^ayer, I hope, in July, when the races 
 at Knaresdean begin ; and Lord Vargrave has promised to 
 come." 
 
 " Has Lord Vargrave written to you lately ? " 
 
 "No, ray dear,"
 
 ALICE ; OR, fHE MYSTE&lES. 55 
 
 " Very odd." 
 
 " Does Evelyn ever talk of him ? " 
 
 " Not much," said Caroline, rising and quitting the room. 
 
 It was a most cheerful, exhilarating day, the close of sweet 
 May ; the hedges were white with blossoms, a light breeze 
 rustled the young leaves, the butterflies had ventured forth, and 
 the children chased them over the grass, as Evelyn and Caro- 
 line, who walked much too slow for her companion (Evelyn 
 longed to run), followed them soberly towards Burleigh. 
 
 They passed the glebe-fields ; and a little bridge thrown 
 over a brawling rivulet conducted them into a wood. 
 
 " This stream," said Caroline, " forms the boundary between 
 my uncle's estates and those of Mr. Maltravers. It must be 
 very unpleasant to so proud a man as Mr. Maltravers is said to 
 be to have the land of another proprietor so near his house. 
 He could hear my uncle's gun from his very drawing-room. 
 However, Sir John takes care not to molest him. On the other 
 side the Burleigh estates extend for some miles ; indeed, Mr. 
 Maltravers is the next great proprietor to my uncle in this part 
 of the county. Very strange that he does not marry ! There, 
 now you can see the house." 
 
 The mansion lay somewhat low, with hanging woods in the 
 rear; and the old-fashioned fish-ponds gleaming in the sunshine, 
 and overshadowed by gigantic trees, increased the venerable 
 stillness of its aspect. Ivy and innumerable creepers covered 
 one side of the house ; and long weeds cumbered the de- 
 serted road. 
 
 " It is sadly neglected," said Caroline ; " and was so, even in 
 the last owner's life. Mr. Maltravers inherits the place from his 
 mother's uncle. We may as well enter the house by the private 
 way. The front entrance is kept locked up." 
 
 Winding by a path that conducted into a flower-garden, 
 divided from the park by a ha-ha over which a plank and a 
 small gate rusting off its hinges were placed, Caroline led the 
 way towards the building. At this point of view presented a 
 large bay-window, that by a flight of four steps led into the 
 garden. On one side rose a square, narrow turret, surmounted 
 by a gilt dome and quaint weathercock, below the architrave of 
 which was a sun-dial, set in the stone-work ; and another dial 
 stood in the garden, with the common and beautiful motto 
 
 "Non numero horas, nisi serenas ! " * 
 
 On the other side of the bay-window a huge buttress cast its 
 mass of shadow. There was something in the appearance of 
 
 * " I number not the hours unless sunny."
 
 56 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 the whole place that invited to contemplation and repose 
 something almost monastic. The gaiety of the teeming spring- 
 time could not divest the spot of a certain sadness, not displeas- 
 ing, however, whether to the young, to whom there is a luxury 
 in the vague sentiment of melancholy, or to those who, having 
 known real griefs, seek for an anodyne in meditation and memory. 
 The low lead-colored door, set deep in the turret, was locked, 
 and the bell inside it broken. Caroline turned impatiently 
 away. " We must go round to the other side," said she, " and 
 try to make the deaf old man hear us." 
 
 " Oh, Carry ! " cried Cecilia, " the great window is open ; " 
 and she ran up the steps. 
 
 " That is lucky," said Caroline ; and the rest followed Cecilia. 
 
 Evelyn now stood within the library of which Mrs. Mertou 
 had spoken. It was a large room, about fifty feet in length 
 and proportionally wide ; somewhat dark, for the light came 
 only from the one large window through which they entered ; 
 and though the window rose to the cornice of the ceiling and 
 took up one side of the apartment, the daylight was subdued 
 by the heaviness of the stonework in which the narrow panes 
 were set, and by the glass stained with armorial bearings in the 
 upper part of the casement. The bookcases, too, were of the 
 dark oak which so often absorbs the light ; and the gliding, 
 formerly meant to relieve them, was discolored by time. 
 
 The room was almost disproportionably lofty ; the ceiling, 
 elaborately coved, and richly carved with grotesque masks, pre- 
 served the Gothic character of the age in which it had been de- 
 voted to a religious purpose. Two fireplaces, with high chimney- 
 pieces of oak, in which were inserted two portraits, broke the 
 symmetry of the tall bookcases. In one of these fireplaces were 
 half-burnt logs ; and a hugf armchair, with a small reading- 
 desk beside it, seemed to bespeak the recent occupation of the 
 room. On the fourth side, opposite the window, the wall was 
 covered with faded tapestry, representing the meeting of Solomon 
 and the Queen of Sheba ; the arras was nailed over doors, on 
 either hand ; the chinks between the door and the wall serving, 
 in one instance, to cut off in the middle his wise majesty, who 
 was making a low bow ; while in the other it took the ground 
 from under the wanton queen, just as she was descending from 
 her chariot. 
 
 Near the window stood a grand piano, the only modern 
 article in the room, save one of the portraits, presently to be 
 described. On all this Evelyn gazed silently and devoutly; 
 she had naturally that reverence for genius which is common
 
 ALtCE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 57 
 
 to the enthusiastic and young ; and there is, even to the dullest, 
 a certain interest in the homes of those who have implanted 
 within us a new thought. But here there was, she imagined, 
 a rare and singular harmony between the place and the 
 mental characteristics of the owner. She fancied she 
 no\v better understood the shadowy and metaphysical repose 
 of thought that had distinguished the earlier writings of 
 Maltravers the writings composed or planned in this still 
 retreat. 
 
 But what particularly caught her attention was one of the 
 two portraits that adorned the mantelpieces. The further one 
 was attired in the rich and fanciful armor of the time of Eliza- 
 beth ; the head bare, the helmet on a table on which the hand 
 rested. It was a handsome and striking countenance ; and an 
 inscription announced it to be a Digby, an ancestor of Mal- 
 travers. 
 
 But the other was a beautiful girl of about eighteen, in the 
 now almost antiquated dress of forty years ago. The features 
 were delicate, but the colors somewhat faded, and there was 
 something mournful in the expression. A silk curtain drawn 
 on one side seemed to denote how carefully it was prized by 
 the possessor. 
 
 Evelyn turned for explanation to her cicerone. 
 
 "This is the second time I have seen that picture," said Caro- 
 line ; "for it is only by great entreaty and as a mysterious favor 
 that the old housekeeper draws aside the veil. Some touch of 
 sentiment in Maltravers makes him regard it as sacred. It is the 
 picture of his mother before she married ; she died in giving 
 him birth." 
 
 Evelyn sighed ; how well she understood the sentiment which 
 seemed to Caroline so eccentric ! The countenance fascinated 
 her ; the eye seemed to follow her as she turned. 
 
 "Asa proper pendant to this picture," said Caroline, " he 
 ought to have dismissed the effigies of yon warlike gentleman, 
 and replaced it by one of poor Lady Florence Lascelles, for 
 whose loss he is said to have quitted his country ; but, perhaps, 
 it was the loss of her fortune." 
 
 "How can you say so? fie ! " cried Evelyn, with a burst of 
 generous indignation. 
 
 "Ah, my dear, you heiresses have a fellow-feeling with each 
 other ! Nevertheless, clever men are less sentimental than we 
 deem them heigho ! this quiet room gives me the spleen, I 
 fancy." 
 
 "Dearest Evy," whispered Cecilia, "I think you have a look
 
 58 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 of that pretty picture, only you are much prettier. Do take off 
 your bonnet ; your hair just falls down like hers." 
 
 Evelyn shook her head gravely ; but the spoiled child hastily 
 untied the ribands and snatched away the hat, and Evelyn's 
 sunny ringlets fell down in beautiful disorder. There was no 
 resemblance between Evelyn and the portrait, except in the 
 color of the hair and the careless fashion it no\v by chance 
 assumed. Yet Evelyn was pleased to think that a likeness did 
 exist, though Caroline declared it was a most unflattering com- 
 pliment. 
 
 "I don't wonder," said the latter, changing the theme, "I 
 don't wonder Mr. Maltravers lives so little in this 'Castle Dull ;' 
 yet it might be much improved. French windows and plate-glass, 
 for instance ; and if those lumbering bookshelves and horrid 
 old chimneypieces were removed, and the ceiling painted white 
 and gold, like that in my uncle's saloon, and a rich, lively paper, 
 instead of the tapestry, it would really make a very fine ballroom." 
 
 "Let us have a dance here now," cried Cecilia. "Come, stand 
 up, Sophy;" and the children began to practise a waltz step, 
 tumbling over each other and laughing in full glee. 
 
 " Hush, hush ! " said Evelyn, softly. She had never before 
 checked the children's mirth, and she could not tell why she 
 did so now. 
 
 "I suppose the old butler has been entertaining the bailiff 
 here," said Caroline, pointing to the remains of the fire. 
 
 "And is this the room he chiefly inhabited the room that 
 you say they show as his ? " 
 
 " No ; that tapestry door to the right leads into a little study 
 where he wrote." So saying, Caroline tried to open the door, 
 but it was locked from within. She then opened the other door, 
 which showed a long wainscoted passage, hung with rusty pikes 
 and a few breastplates of the time of the Parliamentary Wars. 
 " This leads to the main body of the house," said Caroline, 
 "from which the room we are now in and the little study are 
 completely detached, having, as you know, been the chapel in 
 popish times. I have heard that Sir Kenelm Digby, an ancestral 
 connexion of the present owner, first converted them into their 
 present use, and in return built the village church on the 
 other side of the park." 
 
 Sir Kenelm Digby, the old cavalier-philosopher ! a new name 
 of interest to consecrate the place ! Evelyn could have lingered 
 all day in the room ; and, perhaps, as an excuse for a longer 
 sojourn hastened to the piano it was open she ran her fairy 
 fingers over the keys, and the sound from the untuned and
 
 ALICE : OR, THE MYSTERIES. 59 
 
 neglected instrument thrilled wild and spiritlike through the 
 melancholy chamber. 
 
 "Oh ! do sing us something, Evy," cried Cecilia, running up 
 to and drawing a chair to the instrument. 
 
 "Do, Evelyn," said Caroline, languidly; "it will serve to 
 bring one of the servants to us, and save us a journey to the 
 offices." 
 
 It was just what Evelyn wished. Some verses which her 
 mother especially loved ; verses written by Maltravers upon 
 returning, after absence, to his own home, had rushed into her 
 mind as she had touched the keys. They were appropriate to the 
 place, and had been beautifully set to music. So the children 
 hushed themselves and nestled at her feet ; and, after a little 
 prelude, keeping the accompaniment under, that the spoiled 
 instrument might not mar the sweet words and sweeter voice, 
 she began the song. 
 
 Meanwhile, in the adjoining room, the little study which Caro- 
 line had spoken of, sate the owner of the house ! He had returned 
 suddenly and unexpectedly the previous night. The old steward 
 was in attendance at the moment, full of apologies, congratula- 
 tions, and gossip ; and Maltravers, grown a stern and haughty 
 man, was already impatiently turning away, when he heard the 
 sudden sound of the children's laughter and loud voices in the 
 room beyond. Maltravers frowned. 
 
 "What impertinence is this?" said he, in a tone that, though 
 very calm, made the steward quake in his shoes. 
 
 "I don't know, really, your honor; there be so many grand 
 folks come to see the house in the fine weather, that " 
 
 "And you permit your master's house to be a raree-show ? 
 you do well, sir." 
 
 " If your honor were more amongst us, there might be more 
 discipline like," said the steward stoutly; "but no one in my 
 time has cared so little for the old place as those it belongs to." 
 
 "Fewer words with me, sir," said Maltravers, haughtily; 
 "and now go and inform those people that I am returned, and 
 wish for no guests but those I invite myself-" 
 
 "Sir!" 
 
 " Do you not hear me ? Say, that if it so please them, ftiese 
 old ruins are my property, and are not to be jobbed out to the 
 insolence of public curiosity. Go, sir." 
 
 "But I beg pardon, your honor if they be great folks? " 
 
 " Great folks ! great ! Ay, there it is. Why, if they be great 
 folks, they have great houses of their own, Mr. Justis." 
 
 The steward stared. " Perhaps, your honor," he put in, depreca-
 
 60 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 tingly, "they be Mr. Merton's family they come very often 
 when the London gentlemen are with them." 
 
 " Merton ! oh, the cringing parson. Harkye ! one word 
 more with me, sir, and you quit my service to-morrow." 
 
 Mr. Justis lifted his eyes and hands to heaven : but there was 
 something in his master's voice and look which checked reply, 
 and he turned slowly to the door when a voice of such heavenly 
 sweetness was heard without, that it arrested his own step and 
 made the stern Maltravers start in his seat. He held up his 
 hand to the steward to delay his errand, and listened, charmed 
 and spellbound. His own words came on his ear words long 
 unfamiliar to him and at first but imperfectly remembered 
 words connected with the early and virgin years of poetry and 
 aspiration words that were as the ghosts of thoughts now far 
 too gentle for his altered soul. He bowed down his head, and 
 the dark shade left his brow. 
 
 The song ceased. Maltravers moved with a sigh, and his 
 eyes rested on the form of the steward with his hand on the 
 door. 
 
 " Shall I give your honor's message ? " said Mr. Justis, 
 gravely. 
 
 " No take care for the future : leave me now." 
 
 Mr. Justis made one leg, and then, well pleased, took to both. 
 
 " Well," thought he, as he departed, " how foreign parts do 
 spoil a gentleman ! so mild as he was once ! I must botch up 
 the accounts, I see the squire has grown sharp." 
 
 As Evelyn concluded her song she whose charm in singing 
 was that she sang from the heart was so touched by the mel- 
 ancholy music of the air and words, that her voice faltered 
 and the last line died inaudibly on her lips. 
 
 The children sprang up and kissed her. 
 
 "Oh," cried Cecilia, "there is the beautiful peacock ! " And 
 there, indeed, on the steps without perhaps attracted by the 
 music, stood the picturesque bird. The children ran out to 
 greet their old favorite, who was extremely tame ; and presently 
 Cecilia returned. 
 
 " Oh, Carry ! do see what beautiful horses are coming up the 
 park ! " 
 
 Caroline, who was a good rider, and fond of horses, and 
 whose curiosity was always aroused by things connected with 
 show and station suffered the little girl to draw her into the 
 garden. Two grooms, each mounted on a horse of the pure 
 Arabian breed, and each leading another, swathed and band- 
 aged, were riding slowly up the road ; and Caroline was so
 
 ALICE J OR, THE MYSTERIES. 6r 
 
 attracted by the novel appearance of the animals in a place so 
 deserted, that she followed the children towards them, to learn 
 who could possibly be their enviable owner. Evelyn, forgotten 
 for the moment, remained alone. She was pleased at being so, 
 and once more turned to the picture which had so attracted her 
 before. The mild eyes fixed on her with an expression that 
 recalled to her mind her own mother. 
 
 " And," thought she, as she gazed, " this fair creature did 
 not live to know the fame of her son to rejoice in his success 
 or to soothe his grief. And he, that son a disappointed and 
 solitary exile in distant lands, while strangers stand within his 
 deserted hall ! " 
 
 The images she had conjured up moved and absorbed her, 
 and she continued to stand before the picture, gazing upward 
 with moistened eyes. It was a beautiful vision as she thus 
 stood, with her delicate bloom, her luxuriant hair (for the hat 
 was not yet replaced) her elastic form, so full of youth, and 
 health, and hope the living form beside the faded canvas of 
 the dead once youthful, tender, lovely as herself ! Evelyn 
 turned away with a sigh the sigh was re-echoed yet more 
 deeply. She started : the door that led to the study was 
 opened, and in the aperture was the figure of a man in the 
 prime of life. His hair, still luxuriant as in his earliest youth, 
 though darkened by the suns of the East, curled over a fore- 
 head of majestic expanse. The high and proud features, that 
 well became a stature above the ordinary standard the pale 
 but bronzed complexion the large eyes of deepest blue, shaded 
 by dark brows and lashes and, more than all, that expression 
 at once of passion and repose which characterizes the old Italian 
 portraits, and seems to denote the inscrutable power that ex- 
 perience imparts to intellect constituted an ensemble which, if 
 not faultlessly handsome, was eminently striking and formed at 
 once to interest and command. It was a face, once seen, never 
 to be forgotten ; it was a face that had long, half unconsciously, 
 haunted Evelyn's young dreams ; it was a face she had seen 
 before, though then, younger, and milder, and fairer, it wore a 
 different aspect. 
 
 Evelyn stood rooted to the spot, feeling herself blush to her 
 very temples an enchanting picture of bashful confusion and 
 innocent alarm. 
 
 " Do not let me regret my return," said the stranger, approach- 
 ing after a short pause, and with much gentleness in his voice 
 and smile, " and think that the owner is doomed to scare away 
 the fair spirits that haunted the spot in his absence,"
 
 62 ALICE J OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 "The owner!" repeated Evelyn, almost inaudibly, and in 
 increased embarrassment : " are you then the the ?" 
 
 "Yes," courteously interrupted the stranger, seeing her con- 
 fusion ; " my name is Maltravers ; and I am to blame for not 
 having informed you of my sudden return, or for now trespass- 
 ing on your presence. But you see my excuse ; " and he 
 pointed to the instrument. "You have the magic that draws 
 even the serpent from his hole. But you are not alone?" 
 
 "Oh, no! no, indeed ! Miss Merton is with me. I know 
 not where she is gone. I will seek her." 
 
 " Miss Merton ! You are not then one of that family?" 
 
 " No, only a guest. I will find her she must apologize for 
 us. We were not aware that you were here indeed we were 
 not." 
 
 "That is a cruel excuse," said Maltravers, smiling at her 
 eagerness ; and the smile and the look reminded her yet more 
 forcibly of the time when he had carried her in his arms, and 
 soothed her suffering, and praised her courage, and pressed the 
 kiss almost of a lover on her hand. At that thought she blushed 
 yet more deeply, and yet more eagerly turned to escape. 
 
 Maltravers did not seek to detain her, but silently followed 
 her steps. She had scarcely gained the window before little 
 Cecilia scampered in, crying 
 
 " Only think ! Mr. Maltravers has come back, and brought 
 such beautiful horses ! " . 
 
 Cecilia stopped abruptly, as she caught sight of the stranger ; 
 and the next moment Caroline herself appeared. Her worldly 
 experience and quick sense saw immediately what had chanced : 
 and she hastened to apologize to Maltravers, and congratulate 
 him on his return, with an ease that astonished poor Evelyn, 
 and by no means seemed appreciated by Maltravers himself. 
 He replied with brief and haughty courtesy. 
 
 "My father." continued Caroline, "will be so glad to hear 
 you are come back. He will hasten to pay you his respects, 
 and apologize for his truants. But I have not formally intro- 
 duced you to my fellow-offender. My dear, let me present to 
 you one whom Fame has already made known to you Mr. Mal- 
 travers, Miss Cameron, daughter-in-law," she added, in a lower 
 voice, "to the late Lord Vargrave." 
 
 At the first part of this introduction Maltravers frowned at 
 the last he forgot all displeasure. 
 
 " Is it possible ? I thought I had seen you before, but in a 
 dream. Ah ! then we are not quite strangers ! " 
 
 Evelyn's eye met his, and though she colored and strove to
 
 ALlCii ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. <>3 
 
 look grave, a half smile brought out the dimples that played 
 round her arch lips. 
 
 "But you do not remember me ?" added Maltravers. 
 
 " Oil, yes ! " exclaimed Evelyn, with a sudden impulse ; and 
 then checked herself. 
 
 Caroline came to her friend's relief. 
 
 " What is this ? you surprise me where did you ever see 
 Mr. Maltravers before ? " 
 
 " I can answer that question, Miss Merton. When Miss 
 Cameron was but a child, as high as my little friend here, an 
 accident on the road procured me her acquaintance; and the 
 sweetness and fortitude she then displayed left an impression 
 on me not worn out even to this day. And thus we meet 
 again," added Maltravers, in a muttered voice, as to himself. 
 " How strange a thing life is ! " 
 
 "Well," said Miss Merton, "we must intrude on you no 
 more you have so much to do. I am so sorry Sir John is not 
 down to welcome you ; but I hope we shall be good neighbors. 
 Ait revoir ! " 
 
 And fancying herself most charming, Caroline bowed, smiled, 
 and walked off with her train. Maltravers paused irresolute. 
 If Evelyn had looked back, he would have accompanied them 
 home ; but Evelyn did not look back, and he stayed. 
 
 Miss Merton rallied her young friend unmercifully as they 
 walked homeward, and she extracted a very brief and imperfect 
 history of the adventure that had formed the first acquaintance, 
 and of the interview by which it had been renewed. But 
 Evelyn did not heed her ; and the moment they arrived at the 
 rectory she hastened to shut herself in her room, and write the 
 account of her adventure to her mother. How often in her 
 girlish reveries had she thought of that incident that stranger ! 
 And now, by such a chance, and after so many years, to meet 
 the Unknown, by his own hearth ! and that Unknown to be 
 Maltravers ! It was as if a dream had come true. While she 
 was yet musing and the letter not yet begun she heard the 
 sound of joy-bells in the distance at once she divined the 
 cause ; it was the welcome of the wanderer to his solitary 
 home !
 
 64 ALICE J OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 " Mais en connaissant votre condition naturelle, usez des moyens qui lui 
 sont propres, et ne pretendez pas regner par une autre voie que par celle qui 
 vous fait roi." PASCAL.* 
 
 IN the heart, as in the ocean, the great tides ebb and flow. 
 The waves which had once urged on the spirit of Ernest Mal- 
 travers to the rocks and shoals of active life, had long since 
 receded back upon the calm depths, and left the strand bare. 
 With a melancholy and disappointed mind, he had quitted the 
 land of his birth ; and new scenes, strange and wild, had risen 
 before his wandering gaze. Wearied with civilization, and 
 sated with many of the triumphs for which civilized men drudge 
 and toil and disquiet themselves in vain, he had plunged 
 amongst hordes scarce redeemed from primeval barbarism. 
 The adventures through which he had passed, and in which 
 life itself could only be preserved by wary vigilance and ready 
 energies, had forced him for a while from the indulgence of 
 morbid contemplations. His heart, indeed, had been left in- 
 active ; but his intellect and his physical powers had been kept 
 in hourly exercise. He returned to the world of his equals 
 with a mind laden with the treasures of a various and vast ex- 
 perience, and with much of the same gloomy moral as that 
 which, on emerging from the Catacombs, assured the restless 
 speculations of Rasselas of the vanity of human life' and the 
 folly of moral aspirations. 
 
 Ernest Maltravers, never a faultless or completed character, 
 falling short in practise of his own capacities, moral and intel- 
 lectual, from his very desire to overpass the limits of the Great 
 and Good, was seemingly as far as heretofore from the grand 
 secret of life. It was not so in reality his mind had acquired 
 what before it wanted hardness ; and we are nearer to true 
 virtue and true happiness when we demand too little from men, 
 than when we exact too much. 
 
 Nevertheless, partly from the strange life that had thrown 
 him amongst men whom safety itself made it necessary to com- 
 mand despotically, partly from the habit of power and disdain 
 of the world, his nature was incrusted with a stern imperious- 
 ness of manner, often approaching to the harsh and morose, 
 though beneath it lurked generosity and benevolence. 
 
 Many of his younger feelings, more amiable and complex, had 
 
 * But in understanding your natural condition, use the means which are proper to it, and 
 pretend not to govern by any other way than by that which constitutes you governor.
 
 ALICE J OR, THE MYSTERIES. 65 
 
 settled into one predominant quality, which more or less had 
 always characterized him Pride ! Self-esteem made inactive, 
 and Ambition made discontented, usually engender haught- 
 iness. In Maltravers this quality, which, properly controlled 
 and duly softened, is the essence and life of honor, was carried 
 to a vice. He was perfectly conscious of its excess, but he 
 cherished it as a virtue. Pride had served to console him in 
 sorrow, and, therefore, it was a friend ; it had supported him 
 when disgusted with fraud, or in resistance to violence, and, 
 therefore, it was a champion and a fortress. It was a pride of 
 a peculiar sort it attached itself to no one point in especial 
 not to talent, knowledge, mental gifts still less to the vulgar 
 commonplaces of birth and fortune ; it rather resulted from a 
 supreme and wholesale contempt of all other men, and all their 
 objects of ambition of glory of the hard business of life. 
 His favorite virtue was fortitude ; it was on this that he now 
 mainly valued himself. He was proud of his struggles against 
 others prouder still of conquests over his own passions. He 
 looked upon FATE as the arch enemy against whose attacks we 
 should ever prepare. He fancied that against fate he had 
 thoroughly schooled himself. In the arrogance of his heart he 
 said, "I can defy the future." He believed in the boast of the 
 vain old sage " I am a world to myself ! " In the wild career 
 through which his later manhood had passed, it is true that he 
 had not carried his philosophy into a rejection of the ordinary 
 world. The shock occasioned by the death of Florence yielded 
 gradually to time and change ; and he had passed from the 
 deserts of Africa and the East to the brilliant cities of Europe. 
 But neither his heart nor his reason had ever again been en- 
 slaved by his passions. Never again had he known the soft- 
 ness of affection. Had he done so, the ice had been thawed, 
 and the fountain had flowed once more into the great deeps. 
 He had returned to England ; he scarce knew wherefore or 
 with what intent ; certainly not with any idea of entering again 
 upon the occupations of active life ; it was, perhaps, only the 
 weariness of foreign scenes and unfamiliar tongues, and the 
 vague, unsettled desire of change, that brought him back to 
 the fatherland. But he did not allow so unphilosophical a 
 cause to himself ; and, what was strange, he would not allow 
 one much more amiable, and which was, perhaps, the truer 
 cause the increasing age and infirmities of his old guardian 
 Cleveland, who prayed him affectionately to return. Mal- 
 travers did not like to believe that his heart was still so kind. 
 Singular form of pride ! No, he rather sought to persuade
 
 66 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 himself that he intended to sell Burleigh, to arrange his affairs 
 finally, and then quit for ever his native land. To prove to 
 himself that this was the case, he had intended at Dover to 
 hurry at once to Burleigh, and merely write to Cleveland that 
 he was returned to England. But his heart would not suffer 
 him to enjoy this cruel luxury of self-mortification, and his 
 horses' heads were turned to Richmond when within a stage 
 of London. He had spent two days with the good old man, 
 and those two days had so warmed and softened his feelings, 
 that he was quite appalled at his own dereliction from fixed 
 principles ! However, he went before Cleveland had time to 
 discover that he was changed ; and the old man had promised 
 to visit him shortly. 
 
 This, then, was the state of Ernest Maltravers, at the age of 
 thirty-six an age in which frame and mind are in their fullest 
 perfection an age in which men begin most keenly to feel that 
 they are citizens. With all his energies braced and strength- 
 ened with his mind stored with profusest gifts in the vigor 
 of a constitution to which a hardy life had imparted a second 
 and fresher youth so trained by stern experience as to redeem, 
 with an easy effort, all the deficiencies and faults which had 
 once resulted from too sensitive an imagination, and too high a 
 standard for human actions ; formed to render to his race the 
 most brilliant and durable service, and to secure to himself the 
 happiness which results from sobered fancy a generous heart, 
 and an approving conscience ; here was Ernest Maltravers, 
 backed, too, by the appliances and gifts of birth and fortune 
 perversely shutting up genius, life, and soul, in their own thorny 
 leaves and refusing to serve the fools and rascals, who were 
 formed from the same clay, and gifted by the same God. 
 Morbid and morose philosophy, begot by a proud spirit on a 
 lonely heart ! 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 " Let such amongst us as are willing to be children again, if it be only for 
 an hour, resign ourselves to the sweet enchantment that steals upon the spirit 
 when it indulges in the memory of early and innocent enjoyment." D. L. 
 RICHARDSON. 
 
 AT dinner, Caroline's lively recital of their adventures was 
 received with much interest, not only bytheMerton family, but 
 by some of the neighboring gentry who shared the rector's 
 hospitality. The sudden return of any proprietor to his old 
 hereditary seat after a prolonged absence makes some sensation
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 67 
 
 in a provincial neighborhood. In this case, where the proprie- 
 tor was still young, unmarried, celebrated, and handsome, the 
 sensation was of course proportionably increased. Caroline 
 and Evelyn were beset by questions, to which the former alone 
 gave any distinct reply. Caroline's account was, on the whole, 
 gracious and favorable, and seemed complimentary to all but 
 Evelyn, who thought that Caroline was a very indifferent por- 
 trait-painter. 
 
 It seldom happens that a man is a prophet in his own neigh- 
 borhood ; but Maltravers had been so little in the county, and 
 in his former visit his life had been so secluded, that he was 
 regarded as a stranger. He had neither outshone the estab- 
 lishment, nor interfered with the sporting, of his fellow-squires ; 
 and, on the whole, they made just allowance for his habits of 
 distant reserve. Time, and his retirement from the busy scene 
 long enough to cause him to be missed, not long enough 
 for new favorites to supply his place, had greatly served to 
 mellow and consolidate his reputation, and his country was 
 proud to claim him. Thus (though Maltravers would not have 
 believed it, had an angel told him) he was not spoken ill of 
 behind his back ; a thousand little anecdotes of his personal 
 habits, of his generosity, independence of spirit, and eccentric- 
 ity, were told. Evelyn listened in rapt delight to all ; she had 
 never passed so pleasant an evening ; and she smiled almost 
 gratefully on the rector, who was a man that always followed 
 the stream, when he said with benign affability, " We must really 
 show our distinguished neighbor every attention we must be 
 indulgent to his little oddities : his politics are not mine, to be 
 sure : but a man who has a stake in the country has a right to 
 his own opinion that was always my maxim : thank Heaven, 
 I am a very moderate man we must draw him amongst us: it 
 will be our own fault, I am sure, if he is not quite domesticated 
 at the rectory." 
 
 " With such attraction yes," said the thin curate, timidly 
 bowing to the ladies. 
 
 "It would be a nice match for Miss Caroline," whispered an 
 old lady ; Caroline overheard, and pouted her pretty lip. 
 
 The whist-tables were now set out the music begun and 
 Maltravers was left in peace. 
 
 The next day Mr. Merton rode his pony over to Burleigh. 
 Maltravers was not at home. He lefc his card, and a note of 
 friendly respect, begging Mr. Maltravers to wave ceremony, and 
 dine with them the next day. Somewhat to the surprise of the 
 rector he found that the active spirit of Maltravers was already
 
 68 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 at work. The long-deserted grounds were filled with laborers ; 
 the carpenters were busy at the fences ; the house looked alive 
 and stirring; the grooms were exercising the horses in the park : 
 all betokened the return of the absentee. This seemed to denote 
 that Maltravers had come to reside ; and the rector thought of 
 Caroline and was pleased at the notion. 
 
 The next day was Cecilia's birthday ; and birthdays were 
 kept at Merton Rectory : the neighboring children were 
 invited. They were to dine on the lawn, in a large marquee, 
 and to dance in the evening. The hothouses yielded their early 
 strawberries, and the cows, decorated with blue ribands, were 
 to give syllabubs. The polite Caroline was not greatly fasci- 
 nated by pleasure of this kind : she graciously appeared at 
 dinner kissed the prettiest of the children helped them to 
 soup, and then, having done her duty, retired to her room to 
 write letters. The children were not sorry, for they were a 
 little afraid of the grand Caroline ; and they laughed much 
 more loudly, and made much more noise, when she was gone 
 and the cakes and strawberries appeared. 
 
 Evelyn was in her element ; she had, as a child, mixed so 
 little with children she had so often yearned for playmates 
 she was still so childlike : besides, she was so fond of Cecilia 
 she had looked forward with innocent delight to the day ; and 
 a week before had taken the carriage to the neighboring town, 
 to return with a carefully concealed basket of toys dolls, sashes, 
 and picture-books. But somehow or other she did not feel so 
 childlike as usual that morning ; her heart was away from the 
 pleasure before her ; and her smile was at first languid. But 
 in children's mirth there is something so contagious to those 
 who love children ; and now, as the party scattered themselves 
 on the grass, and Evelyn opened the basket and bade them Avith 
 much gravity keep quiet and be good children, she was the 
 happiestof the whole group. But she knew how to give pleasure : 
 and the basket was presented to Cecilia, that the little queen of 
 the day might enjoy the luxury of being generous ; and to 
 prevent jealousy the notable expedient of a lottery was suggested. 
 
 "Then Evy shall be Fortune!" cried Cecilia; "nobody will 
 be sorry to get anything from Evy and if any one is discon- 
 tented, Evy shan't kiss her." 
 
 Mrs. Merton, whose motherly heart was completely won by 
 Evelyn's kindness to the children, forgot all her husband's 
 lectures, and willingly ticketed the prizes and wrote the numbers 
 of the lots on slips of paper carefully folded. A large old Indian 
 jar was dragged from the drawing-room and constituted the
 
 ALiCE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES 60 
 
 fated urn the tickets were deposited therein, and Cecilia was 
 tying the handkerchief round Evelyn's eyes while Fortune 
 struggled archly not to be as blind as she ought to be and the 
 children, seated in a circle, were in full joy and expectation, 
 when there was a sudden pause the laughter stopped so did 
 Cissy's little hands. What could it be? Evelyn slipped the 
 bandage and her eyes rested on Maltravers ! 
 
 "Well, really, my dear Miss Cameron," said the rector, who 
 was by the side of the intruder, and who, indeed, had just 
 brought him to the spot, "I don't know what these little folks 
 will do to you next." 
 
 "I ought rather to be their victim," said Maltravers, good- 
 humoredly ; "the fairies always punish us grown-up mortals 
 for trespassing on their revels." 
 
 While he spoke his eyes those eyes, the most eloquent in 
 the world dwelt on Evelyn (as, to cover her blushes, she took 
 Cecilia in her arms, and appeared to attend to nothing else), 
 with a look of such admiration and delight as a mortal might 
 well be supposed to cast on some beautiful fairy. 
 
 Sophy, a very bold child, ran up to him. "How do, sir?" 
 she lisped, putting up her face to be kissed "How's the pretty 
 peacock?" 
 
 This opportune audacity served at once to renew the charm 
 that had been broken to unite the stranger with the children. 
 Here was acquaintance claimed and allowed in an instant. 
 The next moment Maltravers was one of the circle on the turf 
 with the rest as gay, and almost as noisy that hard, proud 
 man, so disdainful of the trifles of the world ! 
 
 "But the gentleman must have a prize, too," said Sophy, 
 proud of her tall new friend : " what's your other name? why 
 do you have such a long, hard name?" 
 
 " Call me Ernest," said Maltravers. 
 
 "Why don't we begin?" cried the children. 
 
 " Evy, come, be a good child, miss," said Sophy, as Evelyn, 
 vexed and ashamed, and half ready to cry, resisted the bandage. 
 
 Mr. Merton interposed his authority; but the children clam- 
 ored, and Evelyn hastily yielded. It was Fortune's duty to 
 draw the tickets from the urn, and give them to each claimant 
 whose name was called : when it came to the turn of Maltravers, 
 the bandage did not conceal the blush and smile of the enchant- 
 ing goddess ; and the hand of the aspirant thrilled as it touched 
 hers. 
 
 The children burst into screams of laughter when Cecilia 
 gravely awarded to Maltravers the worst prize in the lot a
 
 ^6 ALICE J OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 blue riband which Sophy, however, greedily insisted on having ; 
 but Maltravers would not yield it. 
 
 Maltravers remained all day at the rectory, and shared in the 
 ball yes, he danced with Evelyn he Maltravers who had 
 never been known to dance since he was twenty-two ! The ice 
 was fairly broken Maltravers was at home with the Mertons. 
 And when he took his solitary walk to his solitary house over 
 the little bridge and through the shadowy wood astonished, 
 perhaps, with himself every one of the guests, from the oldest 
 to the youngest, pronounced him delightful. Caroline, perhaps, 
 might have been piqued some months ago that he did not 
 dance with her j but now, her heart such as it was felt pre- 
 occupied. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 " L'esprit de 1'homme est plus penetrant que consequent, et embrasse plus 
 qu'ilne peut Her." * VAUVENARGUES. 
 
 AND now Maltravers was constantly with theMerton family; 
 there was no need of excuse for familiarity on his part. Mr. 
 Merton, charmed to find his advances not rejected, thrust in- 
 timacy upon him. 
 
 One day they spent the afternoon at Burleigh, and Evelyn and 
 Caroline finished their survey of the house tapestry and armor, 
 pictures and all. This led to a visit to the Arabian horses. Caro- 
 line observed that she was very fond of riding, and went into 
 ecstasies with one of the animals the one, of course, with the 
 longest tail. The next day the horse was in the stables at the 
 rectory, and a gallant epistle apologized for the costly gift. 
 
 Mr. Merton demurred, but Caroline always had her own way; 
 and so the horse remained (no doubt, in much amazement and 
 disdain) with the parson's pony and the brown carriage horses. 
 The gift naturally conduced to parties on horseback it was 
 cruel entirely to separate the Arab from his friends and how 
 was Evelyn to be left behind ? Evelyn, who had never yet rid- 
 den anything more spirited than an old pony ? A beautiful 
 little horse belonging to an elderly lady now growing too stout 
 to ride, was to be sold hard by. Maltravers discovered the treas- 
 ure, and apprised Mr. Merton of it he was too delicate to affect 
 liberality to the rich heiress. The horse was bought ; nothing 
 could go quieter Evelyn was not at all afraid. They made two 
 or three little excursions. Sometimes only Mr. Merton and Mal- 
 
 * The spirit of man is more penetrating than logical, and gathers more than it can garner.
 
 ALICE; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 71 
 
 travers accompanied the young ladies sometimes the party was 
 more numerous. Maltravers appeared to pay equal attention to 
 Caroline and her friend still Evelyn's inexperience in eques- 
 trian matters was an excuse for his being ever by her side. 
 They had a thousand opportunities to converse ; and Evelyn 
 now felt more at home with him ; her gentle gaiety, her fanci- 
 ful yet chastened intellect, found a voice. Maltravers was not 
 slow to discover that beneath her simplicity there lurked sense, 
 judgment, and imagination. Insensibly his own conversation 
 took a higher flight. With the freedom which his mature years 
 and reputation gave him, he mingled eloquent instruction with 
 lighter and more trifling subjects : he directed her earnest and 
 docile mind, not only to new fields of written knowledge, but to 
 many of the secrets of nature subtle or sublime. He had a wide 
 range of scientific as well as literary lore : the stars, the flowers, 
 the phenomena of the physical world, afforded themes on which 
 he descanted with the fervent love of a poet and the easy knowl- 
 edge of a sage. 
 
 Mr. Merton, observing that little or nothing of sentiment 
 mingled with their familiar intercourse, felt perfectly at ease ; 
 and knowing that Maltravers had been intimate with Lumley, 
 he naturally concluded that he was aware of the engagement 
 between Evelyn and his friend. Meanwhile Maltravers appeared 
 unconscious that such a being as Lord Vargrave existed. 
 
 It is not to be wondered at that the daily presence the deli- 
 cate flattery of attention from a man like Maltravers should 
 strongly impress the imagination, if not the heart, of a suscepti- 
 ble girl. Already prepossessed in his favor, and wholly unac- 
 customed to a society which combined so many attractions, Eve- 
 lyn regarded him with unspeakable veneration ; to the darker 
 shades in his character she was blind to her, indeed, they did 
 not appear. True that, once or twice in mixed society, his dis- 
 dainful and imperious temper broke hastily and harshly forth. 
 To folly to pretension to presumption he showed but slight 
 forbearance. The impatient smile, the biting sarcasm, the cold 
 repulse, that might gall, yet could scarce be openly resented, be- 
 trayed that he was one who affected to free himself from the 
 polished restraints of social intercourse. He had once been too 
 scrupulous in not wounding vanity ; he was now too indifferent 
 to it. But if sometimes this unamiable trait of character, as 
 displayed to others, chilled or startled Evelyn, the contrast of 
 his manner towards herself was a flattery too delicious not to 
 efface all other recollections. To her ear his voice always soft- 
 ened its tone to her capacity his mind ever bent as by sympa.-
 
 72 ALICE J OR, THE MASTERIES. 
 
 thy not condescension ; to her the young, the timid, the half- 
 informed to her alone he did not disdain to exhibit all the 
 stores of his knowledge all the best and brightest colors of his 
 mind. She modestly wondered at so strange a preference. Per- 
 haps a sudden and blunt compliment which Maltravers once 
 addressed to her may explain it : one day, when she had con- 
 versed more freely and more fully than usual, he broke in upon 
 her with this abrupt exclamation 
 
 " Miss Cameron, you must have associated from your child- 
 hood with beautiful minds. I see already that from the world, 
 vile as it is, you have nothing of contagion to fear. I have heard 
 you talk on the most various matters on many of which your 
 knowledge is imperfect ; but you have never uttered one mean 
 idea or one false sentiment. Truth seems intuitive to you." 
 
 It was, indeed, this singular purity of heart which made to 
 the world-wearied man the chief charm in Evelyn Cameron. 
 From this purity came, as from the heart of a poet, a thousand 
 new and heaven-taught thoughts, which had in them a wisdom 
 of their own thoughts that often brought the stern listener 
 back to youth, and reconciled him with life. The wise Mal- 
 travers learned more from Evelyn than Evelyn did from Mal- 
 travers. 
 
 There was, however, another trait deeper than that of tem- 
 per in Maltravers, and which was, unlike the latter, more 
 manifest to her than to others ; his contempt for all the things 
 her young and fresh enthusiasm had been taught to prize the 
 fame that endeared and hallowed him to her eyes the excite- 
 ment of ambition and its rewards. He spoke with such bitter 
 disdain of great names and great deeds "Children of a larger 
 growth they were," said he, one day, in answer to her defence 
 of the luminaries of their kind; "allured by baubles as poor as the 
 rattle and the doll's house how many have been made great, 
 as the word is, by their vices ! Paltry craft won command to 
 Themistocles. To escape his duns the profligate Caesar heads 
 an army and achieves his laurels. Brutus, the aristocrat, stabs 
 his patron, that patricians might again trample on plebeians, and 
 that posterity might talk of him. The love of posthumous 
 fame what is it but as puerile a passion for notoriety as that 
 which made a Frenchman I once knew lay out two thousand 
 pounds in sugar-plums ? To be talked of how poor a desire ! 
 Does it matter whether it be by the gossips of this age or the 
 next ? Some men are urged on to fame by poverty that is an 
 excuse for their trouble ; but there is no more nobleness in the 
 motive, thap. ;n that which makes yon poor ploughman sweat in
 
 ALICE J OR, THE MY3TE1UES. 73 
 
 the eye of Phoebus. In fact the larger part of eminent men, in- 
 stead of being inspired by any lofty desire to benefit their species 
 or enrich the human mind, have acted or composed without 
 any definite object beyond the satisfying a restless appetite for 
 excitement, or indulging the dreams of a selfish glory. And 
 when nobler aspirations have fired them, it has too often been 
 but to wild fanaticism and sanguinary crime. What dupes of 
 glory ever were animated by a deeper faith, a higher ambition, 
 than the frantic followers of Mahomet ? taught to believe that 
 it was virtue to ravage the earth, and that they sprang from the 
 battlefield into Paradise. Religion and liberty love of coun- 
 try what splendid motives to action ! Lo, the results, when 
 the motives are keen the action once commenced ! Behold 
 the Inquisition ; the Days of Terror ; the Council of Ten ; and 
 the Dungeons of Venice ! " 
 
 Evelyn was scarcely fit to wrestle with these melancholy fal- 
 lacies ; but her instinct of truth suggested an answer. 
 
 " What would society be if all men thought as you do, and 
 acted up to the theory ! No literature, no art, no glory, no pa- 
 triotism, no virtue, no civilization ! You analyze men's mo- 
 tives how can you be sure you judge rightly? Look to the 
 results our benefit, our enlightenment ! If the results be great, 
 Ambition is a virtue, no matter what motive awakened it. Is 
 it not so?" 
 
 Evelyn spoke blushingly and timidly. Maltravers, despite 
 his own tenets, was delighted with her reply. 
 
 "You reason well," said he, with a smile. "But how are 
 we sure that the results are such as you depict them ? Civ- 
 ilization enlightenment they are vague terms hollow sounds. 
 Never fear that the world will reason as I do. Action will never 
 be stagnant while there are such things as gold and power. The 
 vessel will move on let the galley-slaves have it to themselves. 
 What I have seen of life convinces me that progress is not al- 
 ways improvement. Civilization has evils unknown to the sav- 
 age state ; and vice versa. Men in all states seem to have much 
 the same proportion of happiness. We judge others with eyes 
 accustomed to dwell on our own circumstances. I have seen 
 the slave, whom we commiserate, enjoy his holiday with a rapt- 
 ure unknown to the grave freeman. I have seen that slave made 
 free, and enriched by the benevolence of his master ; and he 
 has been gay no more. The masses of men in all countries are 
 much the same. If there are greater comforts in the hardy 
 North, Providence bestows a fertile earth and a glorious heaven, 
 and a mind susceptible to enjoyment as flowers to light, on the
 
 74 ALICE J OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 voluptuous indulgence of the Italian, or the contented apathy 
 of the Hindoo. In the mighty organization of good and evil 
 what can we vain individuals effect ? They who labor most, 
 how doubtful is their reputation ? Who shall say whether Vol- 
 taire or Napoleon, Cromwell or Caesar, Walpole or Pitt, has 
 done most good or most evil. It is a question casuists may dis- 
 pute on. Some of us think that poets have been the delight and 
 the lights of men. Another school of philosophy has treated 
 them as the corrupters of the species panders to the false glory 
 of war, to the effeminacies of taste, to the pampering of the pas- 
 sions above the reason. Nay, even those who have effected in- 
 ventions that change the face of the earth the printing-press, 
 gunpowder, the steam-engine, men hailed as benefactors by 
 the unthinking herd or the would-be sages have introduced 
 ills unknown before ; adulterating and often counterbalancing 
 the good. Each new improvement in machinery deprives hun- 
 dreds of food. Civilization is the eternal sacrifice of one gene- 
 ration to the next. An awful sense of the impotence of human 
 agencies has crushed down the sublime aspirations for mankind 
 which I once indulged. For myself, I float on the great waters, 
 without pilot or rudder, and trust passively to the winds, that 
 are the breath of God." 
 
 This conversation left a deep impression upon Evelyn ; it 
 inspired her with a new interest in one in whom so many noble 
 qualities lay dulled and torpid by the indulgence of a self- 
 sophistry, which, girl as she was, she felt wholly unworthy of his 
 powers. And it was this error in Maltravers that, levelling his 
 superiority, brought him nearer to her heart. Ah ! if she could 
 restore him to his race ! it was a dangerous desire but it in- 
 toxicated and absorbed her. 
 
 Oh ! how sweetly were those fair evenings spent the even- 
 ings of happy June ! And then, as Maltravers suffered the chil- 
 dren to tease him into talk about the wonders he had seen in 
 the regions far away, how did the soft and social hues of his 
 character unfold themselves ! There is in all real genius so 
 much latent playfulness of nature, it almost seems as if genius 
 never could grow old. The inscription that youth writes upon 
 the tablets of an imaginative mind are, indeed, never wholly ob- 
 literated they are as an invisible writing, which gradually be- 
 comes clear in the light and warmth. Bring genius familiarly 
 with the young, and it is as young as they are. Evelyn did not 
 yet, therefore, observe the disparity of years between herself and 
 Maltravers. But the disparity of knowledge and power served 
 for the present to interdict to her that sweet feeling of equality
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 75 
 
 in commune without which love is rarely a very intense affec- 
 tion in women. It is not so with men. But by degrees she grew 
 more and more familiar with her stern friend ; and in that fa- 
 miliarity there was perilous fascination to Maltravers. She could 
 laugh him at any moment out of his most moody reveries con- 
 tradict with a pretty wilfulness his most favorite dogmas nay, 
 even scold him, with bewitching gravity, if he was not always 
 at the command of her wishes or caprice. At this time it 
 seemed certain that Maltravers would fall in love with Evelyn; 
 but it rested on more doubtful probabilities whether Evelyn 
 would fall in love with him. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 * * * " Contrahe vela 
 
 Et te littoribus cymba propinqua vehat." SENECA.* 
 
 " HAS not Miss Cameron a beautiful countenance ? " said Mr. 
 Merton to Maltravers, as Evelyn, unconscious of the compli- 
 ment, sate at a little distance bending down her eyes to Sophy, 
 who was weaving daisy chains on a stool at her knee, and whom 
 she was telling not to talk loud for Merton had been giving 
 Maltravers some useful information respecting the management 
 of his estate ; and Evelyn was already interested in all that 
 could interest her friend. She had one excellent thing in 
 woman, had Evelyn Cameron ; despite her sunny cheerfulness 
 of temper she was quiet ; and she had insensibly acquired, under 
 the roof of her musing and silent mother, the habit of never 
 disturbing others. What a blessed secret is that in the inter- 
 course of domestic life ! 
 
 " Has not Miss Cameron a beautiful countenance?" 
 
 Maltravers started at the question it was a literal translation 
 of his own thought at that moment he checked the enthusiasm 
 that rose to his lip, and calmly re-echoed the word 
 
 " Beautiful, indeed ! " 
 
 "And so sweet-tempered and unaffected she has been ad- 
 mirably brought up. I believe Lady Vargrave is a most exem- 
 plary woman. Miss Cameron will, indeed, be a treasure to her 
 betrothed husband. He is to be envied." 
 
 " Her betrothed husband ! " said Maltravers, turning very 
 pale. 
 
 " Yes ; Lord Vargrave. Did you not know that she was 
 engaged to him from her childhood ? It was the wish, nay, 
 
 * Furl your sails, and let the next boat carry you to the shore.
 
 f 6 ALICE I OR, tHE MYSTERIES. 
 
 command, of the late lord, who bequeathed her his vast for- 
 tune, if not on that condition, at least on that understanding. 
 Did you never hear of this before ? " 
 
 While Mr. Merton spoke a sudden recollection returned to 
 Maltravers. He had heard Lumley himself refer to the engage- 
 ment, but it had been in the sick chamber of Florence little 
 heeded at the time, and swept from his mind by a thousand 
 after-thoughts and scenes. Mr. Merton continued : 
 
 " We expect Lord Vargrave down soon. He is an ardent 
 lover, I conclude ; but public life chains him so much to Lon- 
 don. He made an admirable speech in the Lords last night ; 
 at least, our party appear to think so. They are to be married 
 when Miss Cameron attains the age of eighteen." 
 
 Accustomed to endurance, and skilled in the proud art of 
 concealing emotion, Maltravers betrayed to the eye of Mr. Mer- 
 ton no symptom of surprise or dismay at this intelligence. If 
 the rector had conceived any previous suspicion that Mal- 
 travers was touched beyond mere admiration for beauty, the 
 suspicion would have vanished, as he heard his guest coldly 
 reply : 
 
 " I trust Lord Vargrave may deserve his happiness. But to 
 return to Mr. Justis you corroborate my own opinion of that 
 smooth-spoken gentleman." 
 
 The conversation flowed back to business. At last, Mal- 
 travers rose to depart. 
 
 "Will you not dine with us to-day?" said the hospitable rec- 
 tor. 
 
 " Many thanks no ; I have much business to attend to at 
 home for some days to come." 
 
 "Kiss Sophy, Mr. Ernest Sophy very good girl to-day. Let 
 the pretty butterfly go, because Evy said it was cruel to put it 
 in a card-box Kiss Sophy." 
 
 Maltravers took the child (whose heart he had completely 
 won) in his arms, and kissed her tenderly ; then, advancing to 
 Evelyn, he held out his hand, while his eyes were fixed upon her 
 with an expression of deep and mournful interest, which she 
 could not understand. 
 
 " God bless you, Miss Cameron ! " he said, and his lips 
 quivered. 
 
 Days passed, and they saw no more of Maltravers. He ex- 
 cused himself on pretence, now of business now of other en- 
 gagements from all the invitations of the rector. Mr. Merton, 
 unsuspectingly, accepted the excuse ; for he knew that Mal- 
 travers was necessarily much occupied.
 
 ALICE J OR, THE MYSTERIES. 77 
 
 His arrival had now spread throughout the country ; and 
 such of his equals as were still in B shire hastened to offer con- 
 gratulations, and press hospitality. Perhaps it was the desire to 
 make his excuses to Merton valid, which prompted the master 
 of Burleigh to yield to the other invitations that crowded on 
 him. But this was not all Maltravers acquired in the neigh- 
 borhood the reputation of a man of business. Mr. Justis was 
 abruptly dismissed ; with the help of the bailiff, Maltravers be- 
 came his own steward. His parting address to this personage 
 was characteristic of the mingled harshness and justice of 
 Maltravers. 
 
 "Sir," said he, as they closed their accounts, "I discharge 
 you because you are a rascal there can be no dispute about 
 that : you have plundered your owner, yet you have ground his 
 tenants, and neglected the poor. My villages are filled with 
 paupers my rent-roll is reduced a fourth and yet, while some 
 of my tenants appear to pay nominal rents (why, you best 
 know !), others are screwed up higher than any man's in the 
 county. You are a rogue, Mr. Justis your own account-books 
 show it ; and if I send them to a lawyer, you would have to 
 refund a sum that I could apply very advantageously to the 
 rectification of your blunders." 
 
 " I hope, sir," said the steward, conscience-stricken and 
 appalled, " I hope you will not ruin me ; indeed, indeed, if 
 I was called upon to refund, I should go to gaol." 
 
 "Make yourself easy, sir. It is just that I should suffer as 
 well as you. My neglect of my own duties tempted you to 
 roguery. You were honest under the vigilant eye of Mr. Cleve- 
 land. Retire with your gains ; if you are quite hardened, no 
 punishment can touch you ; if you are not, it is punishment 
 enough to stand there gray-haired, with one foot in the grave, 
 and hear yourself called a rogue, and know that you cannot 
 defend yourself go ! " 
 
 Maltravers next occupied himself in all the affairs that a 
 mismanaged estate brought upon him. He got rid of some ten- 
 ants he made new arrangements with others he called labor 
 into requisition by a variety of improvements he paid minute 
 attention to the poor, not in the weakness of careless and indis- 
 criminate charity, by which popularity is so cheaply purchased, 
 and independence so easily degraded ; no, his main care was to 
 stimulate industry and raise hope. The ambition and emula- 
 tion that he so vainly denied in himself, he found his most use- 
 ful levers in the humble laborers whose characters he had stud- 
 ied, whose condition he sought to make themselves desire to
 
 78 ALICE ; Ok, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 elevate. Unconsciously his whole practice began to refute his 
 theories. The abuses of the old Poor-Laws were rife in his 
 neighborhood ; his quick penetration, and, perhaps, his impe- 
 rious habits of decision, suggested to him many of the best pro- 
 visions of the law now called into operation ; but he was too 
 wise to be the Philosopher Square of a system. He did not 
 attempt too much ; and he recognized one principle, which, as 
 yet, the administrators of the new Poor-Laws have not suffic- 
 iently discovered. One main object of the new code was, by 
 curbing public charity, to task the activity of individual benev- 
 olence. If the proprietor or the clergyman find under his own 
 eye isolated instances of severity, oppression, or hardship, in 
 a general and salutary law, instead of railing against the law, 
 he ought to attend to the individual instances ; and private 
 benevolence ought to keep the balance of the scales even, and 
 be the makeweight wherever there is a just deficiency of 
 national charity. * It was this which, in the modified and dis- 
 creet regulations that he sought to establish on his estates, Mal- 
 travers especially and pointedly attended to. Age, infirmity, 
 temporary distress, unmerited destitution, found him a steady, 
 watchful, indefatigable friend. In these labors, commenced 
 with extraordinary promptitude, and the energy of a single pur- 
 pose and stern mind, Maltravers was necessarily brought into 
 contact with the neighboring magistrates and gentry. He was 
 combating evils and advancing objects in which all were in- 
 terested ; and his vigorous sense, and his past parliamentary 
 reputation, joined with the respect which in provinces always 
 attaches to ancient birth, won unexpected and general favor to 
 his views. At the rectory they heard of him constantly, not 
 only through occasional visitors, but through Mr. Merton, who 
 was ever thrown in his way ; but he continued to keep himself 
 aloof from the house. Every one (Mr. Merton excepted) missed 
 him ; even Caroline, whose able though worldly mind could 
 appreciate his conversation ; the children mourned for their 
 playmate, who was so much more affable than their own stiff- 
 neckclothed brothers ; and Evelyn was at least more serious 
 and thoughtful than she had ever been before ; and the talk of 
 others seemed to her wearisome, trile, and dull. 
 
 Was Maltravers happy in his new pursuits ? His state of 
 mind at that time is not easy to read. His masculine spirit and 
 haughty temper were wrestling hard against a feeling that had 
 
 * The object of parochial reform is not that of economy alone ; not merely to reduce 
 >r-rates. The rate-payer ought to remember, that the more he.wrests from the gripe 
 the sturdy mendicant, the more he ought to bestow on undeserved distress. Without 
 the mitigations of private virtue, every law that benevolists could make would be harsh. 
 
 poor-: 
 of '
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 79 
 
 been fast ripening into passion ; but at night, in his solitary 
 and cheerless home, a vision, too exquisite to indulge, would 
 force itself upon him, till he started from the revery and said to 
 his rebellious heart, " A few more years, and thou wilt be 
 still. What in this brief life is a pang more or less ? Better to 
 have nothing to care for, so wilt thou defraud Fate, thy deceit- 
 ful foe ! Be contented that thou art alone ! " 
 
 Fortunate was it, then, for Maltravers, that he was in his na- 
 tive land! not in climes where excitement is in the pursuit of 
 pleasure rather than in the exercise of duties ! In the hardy 
 air of the liberal England he was already, though unknown to 
 himself, bracing and ennobling his dispositions and desires. It 
 is the boast of this island, that the slave whose foot touches the 
 soil is free. The boast may be enlarged. Where so much is 
 left to the people where the life of civilization, not locked up 
 in the tyranny of Central Despotism, spreads, vivifying, restless, 
 ardent, through every vein of the healthful body, the most dis- 
 tant province, the obscurest village, has claims on our exertions, 
 our duties, and forces us into energy and citizenship. The 
 spirit of liberty, that strikes the chain from the slave, binds the 
 freeman to his brother. This is the Religion of Freedom. And 
 hence it is that the stormy struggles of free states have been 
 blessed with results of Virtue, of Wisdom, and of Genius by 
 Him who bade us love one another not only that love in 
 itself is excellent, but that from love, which in its widest sense 
 is but the spiritual term for liberty, whatever is worthiest of our 
 solemn nature has its birth.
 
 8o ALICE J OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 BOOK III. 
 
 a faiaivei, Jtavei ndpov. 
 
 Ex. SOLON Eleg. 
 
 Harsh things he mitigates, and pride subdues. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 "You still are what you were, sir ! 
 * * * * 
 
 ..." With most quick agility could turn 
 And return ; make knots and undo them 
 Give forked counsel." Volpone, or the Fox. 
 
 BEFORE a large table, covered with parliamentary papers, sate 
 Lumley Lord Vargrave. His complexion, though still healthy, 
 had faded from the freshness of hue which distinguished him in 
 youth. His features, always sharp, had grown yet more angular: 
 his brows seemed to project more broodingly over his eyes, 
 which, though of undiminished brightness, were sunk deep in 
 their sockets, and had lost much of their quick restlessness. 
 The character of his mind had begun to stamp itself on the 
 physiognomy, especially on the mouth when in repose, it was 
 a face, striking for acute intelligence for corcentrated energy 
 but there was a something written in it, -A-hich said " BE- 
 WARE ! " It would have inspired any one, who had mixed much 
 amongst men, with a vague suspicion and distrust. 
 
 Lumley had been always careful, though plain, in dress ; but 
 there was now a more evident attention bestowed on his person 
 than he had ever manifested in youth, while there was some- 
 thing of the Roman's celebrated foppery in the skill with which 
 his hair was arranged on his high forehead, so as either to 
 conceal or relieve a partial baldness at the temples. Perhaps, 
 too, from the possession of high station, or the habit of living 
 only amongst the great, there was a certain dignity insensibly 
 diffused over his whole person, that was not noticeable in his 
 earlier years when a certain ton de garnison was blended with 
 his ease of manners ; yet, even now, dignity was not his preva- 
 lent characteristic ; and in ordinary occasions, or mixed society, 
 he still found a familiar frankness a more useful species of 
 simulation. At the time we now treat of, Lord Vargrave was 
 leaning his cheek on one hand, while the other rested idly on 
 the papers methodically arranged before him. He appeared
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. Si 
 
 to have suspended his labors, and to be occupied in thought. It 
 was, in truth, a critical period in the career of Lord Vargrave. 
 From the date of his accession t'o the peerage, the rise of 
 Lumley Ferrers had been less rapid and progressive than he 
 himself could have foreseen. At first, all was sunshine before 
 him ; he had contrived to make himself useful to his party he 
 had also made himself personally popular. To the ease and 
 cordiality of his happy address, he added the seemingly care- 
 less candor so often mistaken for honesty ; while, as there was 
 nothing showy or brilliant in his abilities or oratory nothing 
 that aspired far above the pretensions of others, and aroused 
 envy by mortifying self-love he created but little jealousy even 
 amongst the rivals before whom he obtained precedence. For 
 some time, therefore, he went smoothly on, continuing to rise in 
 the estimation of his party, and commanding a certain respect 
 from the neutral public, by acknowledged and eminent talents 
 in the details of business ; for his quickness of penetration, and 
 a logical habit of mind, enabled him to grapple with and 
 generalize the minutiae of official labor, or of legislative enact- 
 ments, with a masterly success. But as the road became 
 clearer to his steps, his ambition became more evident and 
 daring. Naturally dictatorial and presumptuous, his early 
 suppleness to superiors was now exchanged for a self-willed 
 pertinacity, which often displeased the more haughty leaders of 
 his party, and often wounded the more vain. His pretensions 
 were scanned with eyes more jealous and less tolerant than at 
 first. Proud aristocrats began to recollect that a mushroom 
 peerage was supported but by a scanty fortune the men of 
 more dazzling genius began to sneer at the red-tape minister as 
 a mere official manager of details ; he lost much of the personal 
 popularity which had been one secret of his power. But what 
 principally injured him in the eyes of his party and the public, 
 were certain ambiguous and obscure circumstances connected 
 with a short period, when himself and his associates were 
 thrown out of office. At this time, it was noticeable that the 
 journals of the Government that succeeded were peculiarly 
 polite to Lord Vargrave, while they covered all his coadjutors 
 with obloquy ; and it was more than suspected that secret negotia- 
 tions between himself and the new ministry were going on, 
 when, suddenly, the latter broke up, and Lord Vargrave's proper 
 party were reinstated. The vague suspicions that attached 
 to Vargrave were somewhat strengthened in the opinion of the 
 public, by the fact that he was at first left out of the restored 
 administration ; and when subsequently, after a speech which
 
 02 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 showed that he could be mischievous if not propitiated, he was 
 readmitted, it was precisely to the same office lie had held be- 
 fore an office which did not admit him into the Cabinet. 
 Lumley, burning with resentment, longed to decline the offer ; 
 but, alas! he was poor; and, what was worse, in debt; "his 
 poverty, but not his will, consented." He was reinstated ; but 
 though prodigiously improved as a debater, he felt that he had 
 not advanced as a public man. His ambition inflamed by his 
 discontent, he had, since his return to office, strained every 
 nerve to strengthen his position. He met the sarcasms on his 
 poverty, by greatly increasing his expenditure ; and by advertis- 
 ing everywhere his engagement to an heiress whose fortune, 
 great as it was, he easily contrived to magnify. As his old 
 house in Great George Street well fitted for the bustling 
 commoner was no longer suited to the official and fashionable 
 peer, he had, on his accession to the title, exchanged that re- 
 spectable residence for a large mansion in Hamilton Place : and 
 his sober dinners were succeeded by splendid banquets. Natur- 
 ally, he had no taste for such things ; his mind was too nervous, 
 and his temper too hard, to take pleasure in luxury or ostenta- 
 tion. But now, as ever he acted upon a system. Living in a 
 country governed by the mightiest and wealthiest aristocracy in 
 the world, which, from the first class almost to the lowest, osten- 
 tation pervades he felt that to fall far short of his rivals in 
 display was to give them an advantage which he could not 
 compensate, either by the power of his connections or the sur- 
 passing loftiness of his character and genius. Playing for a 
 great game, and with his eyes open to all the consequences, he 
 cared not for involving his private fortunes in a lottery in 
 which a great prize might be drawn. To do Vargrave justice, 
 money with him; had never been an object, but a means he 
 was grasping, but not avaricious. If men much richer than 
 Lord Vargrave find state distinctions very expensive, and often 
 ruinous, it is not to be supposed that his salary, joined to so 
 moderate a private fortune, could support the style in which he 
 lived. His income was already deeply mortgaged, and debt 
 accumulated upon debt. Nor had this man, so eminent for the 
 management of public business, any of that talent which springs 
 f rom justice, and makes its possessor a skilful manager of his own 
 affairs. Perpetually absorbed in intrigues and schemes, he was 
 too much engaged in cheating others on a large scale, to have 
 time to prevent being himself cheated on a small one. He 
 never looked into bills till he was compelled to pay them ; and 
 he never calculated the amount of an expense that seemed the
 
 ALICE J OR, THE MYSTERIES. 83 
 
 lease necessary to his purposes. But still Lord Vargrave relied 
 upon his marriage with the wealthy Evelyn to relieve him from 
 all his embarrassments ; and if a doubt of the realization of 
 that vision ever occurred to him, still public life had splendid 
 prizes. Nay, should he fail with Miss Cameron, he even thought 
 that, by good management, he might ultimately make it worth 
 while to his colleagues to purchase his absence with the gorgeous 
 bribe of the Governor-Generalship of India. 
 
 As oratory is an art in which practice and the dignity of 
 station produce marvellous improvement, so Lumley had of late 
 made effects in the House of Lords of which he had once been 
 judged incapable. It is true that no practice and no station 
 can give men qualities in which they are wholly deficient ; but 
 these advantages can bring out in the best light all the qualities 
 they do possess. The glow of a generous imagination the 
 grasp of a profound statesmanship the enthusiasm of a noble 
 nature these no practice could educe from the eloquence of 
 Lumley Lord Vargrave, for he had them not : but bold wit 
 fluent and vigorous sentences effective arrangement of parlia- 
 mentary logic readiness of retort plausibility of manner, aided 
 by a delivery peculiar for self-possession and ease a clear and 
 ringing voice (to the only fault of which, shrillness without 
 passion, the ear of the audience had grown accustomed) and 
 a countenance impressive from its courageous intelligence, 
 all these had raised the promising speaker into the matured 
 excellence of a nervous and formidable debater. But precisely 
 as he rose in the display of his talents, did he awaken envies 
 and enmities hitherto dormant. And it must be added, that, 
 with all his craft and coldness, Lord Vargrave was often a very 
 dangerous and mischievous speaker for the interests of his 
 party. His colleagues had often cause to tremble when he 
 rose ; nay, even when the cheers of his own faction shook tlie 
 old tapestried walls. A man who has no sympathy with the 
 public must commit many and fatal indiscretions when the 
 public, as well as his audience, is to be his judge. Lord Var- 
 grave's utter incapacity to comprehend political morality his 
 contempt for all the objects of social benevolence frequently 
 led him into the avowal of doctrines which, if they did not 
 startle the men of the world whom he addressed (smoothed 
 away, as such doctrines were, by speciousness of manner and 
 delivery), created deep disgust in those, even in his own politics, 
 who read their naked exposition in the daily papers. Never 
 did Lord Vargrave utter one of those generous sentiments 
 which, no matter whether propounded by Radical or Tory, sink
 
 84 ALICE J OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 deep into the heart of the people, and do lasting service to the 
 cause they adorn. But no man defended an abuse, however 
 glaring, with a more vigorous championship, or hurled defiance 
 upon a popular demand with a more courageous scorn. In some 
 times, when the anti-popular principle is strong, such a leader 
 may be useful ; but at the moment of which we treat, he was a 
 most equivocal auxiliary. A considerable proportion of the 
 ministers, headed by the Premier himself, a man of wise views 
 and unimpeachable honor, had learned to view Lord Vargrave 
 with dislike and distrust they might have sought to get rid of 
 him ; but he was not one whom slight mortifications could in- 
 duce to retire of his own accord ; nor was the sarcastic and 
 bold debater a person whose resentment and opposition could 
 be despised. Lord Vargrave, moreover, had secured a party of 
 his own a party more formidable than himself. He went 
 largely into society he was the special favorite of the female 
 diplomats, whose voices at that time were powerful suffrages, 
 and with whom, by a thousand links of gallantry and intrigue, 
 the agreeable and courteous minister formed a close alliance. 
 All that salons could do for him was done. Added to this, he 
 was personally liked by his royal master ; and the Court gave 
 him their golden opinions; while the poorer, the corrupter, and 
 the more bigoted portion of the ministry regarded him with 
 avowed admiration. 
 
 In the House of Commons, too, and in the Bureaucracy, he 
 had no inconsiderable strength ; for Lumley never contracted 
 the habits of personal abruptness and discourtesy common to 
 men in power, who wish to keep applicants aloof. He was bland 
 and conciliating to all men of all ranks : his intellect and self- 
 complacency raised him far above the petty jealousies that great 
 men feel for rising men. Did any tyro earn the smallest dis- 
 tinction in parliament, no man sought his acquaintance so eagerly 
 as Lord Vargrave ; no man complimented, encouraged, " brought 
 on" the new aspirants of his party, with so hearty a good-will. 
 
 Such a minister could not fail of having devoted followers 
 among the able, the ambitious, and the vain. It must also be 
 confessed that Lord Vargrave neglected no baser and less 
 justifiable means to cement his power, by placing it on the sure 
 rock of self-interest. No jobbing was too gross for him. He 
 was shamefully corrupt in the disposition of his patronage ; and 
 no rebuffs, no taunts from his official brethren, could restrain 
 him from urging the claims of any of his creatures upon the 
 public purse. His followers regarded this charitable selfishness 
 as the sta.nQhness and zeal of friendship ; and the ambition of
 
 ALICE J OR, THE MYSTERIES. 5 
 
 hundreds was wound up in the ambition of the unprincipled 
 minister. 
 
 But besides the notoriety of his public corruption. Lord Var- 
 grave was secretly suspected by some of personal dishonesty 
 suspected of selling his state information to stock-jobbers of 
 having pecuniary interests in some of the claims he urged with 
 so obstinate a pertinacity. And though there was not the 
 smallest evidence of such utter abandonment of honor ; though 
 it was probably but a calumnious whisper ; yet the mere sus- 
 picion of such practices served to sharpen the aversion of his 
 enemies, and justify the disgust of his rivals. 
 
 In this position now stood Lord Vargrave ; supported by 
 interested, but able and powerful partisans ; hated in the country, 
 feared by some of those whom he served, despised by others, 
 looked up to by the rest. It was a situation that less daunted 
 than delighted him ; for it seemed to render necessary and ex- 
 cuse the habits of scheming and manoeuvre which were so genial 
 to his crafty and plotting temper. Like an ancient Greek, his 
 spirit loved intrigue for intrigue's sake. Had it led to no end, 
 it would still have been sweet to him as a means. He rejoiced 
 to surround himself with the most complicated webs and 
 meshes ; to sit in the centre of a million plots. He cared not 
 how rash and wild some of them were. He relied on his own 
 ingenuity, promptitude, and habitual good fortune, to make 
 every spring he handled conducive to the purpose of the 
 machine SELF. 
 
 His last visit to Lady Vargrave, and his conversation with 
 Evelyn, had left on his mind much dissatisfaction and fear. In 
 the earlier years of his intercourse with Evelyn, his good-humor, 
 gallantry, and presents had not failed to attach the child to the 
 agreeable and liberal visitor she had been taught to regard as a 
 relation. It was only as she grew up to womanhood, and 
 learned to comprehend the nature of the tie between them, that 
 she shrunk from his familiarity ; and then only had he learned 
 to doubt of the fulfilment of his uncle's wish. The last visit 
 had increased this doubt to a painful apprehension ; he saw 
 that he was not loved ; he saw that it required great address, 
 and the absence of happier rivals, to secure to him the hand of 
 Evelyn ; and he cursed the duties and the schemes which neces- 
 sarily kept him from her side. He had thought of persuading 
 Lady Vargrave to let her come to London, where he could be 
 ever at hand ; and as the season was now set in, his representa- 
 tions on this head would appear sensible and just. But then again, 
 this was to incur greater clangers than those he would
 
 86 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 London ! a beauty and an heiress, in her first dtbut in Lon- 
 don ! What formidable admirers would flock around her ! 
 Vargrave shuddered to think of the gay. handsome, well-dressed, 
 seductive young Jle'gans, who might seem, to a girl of seventeen, 
 suitors far more fascinating than the middle-aged politician. 
 This was perilous ; nor was this all ; Lord Vargrave knew that 
 in London gaudy, babbling, and remorseless London all that 
 he could most wish to conceal from the young lady would be 
 dragged to day. He had been the lover, not of one, but of a 
 dozen women, for whom he did not care three straws ; but 
 whose favor had served to strengthen him in society ; or whose 
 influence made up for his own want of hereditary political con- 
 nections. The manner in which he contrived to shake off these 
 various Ariadnes, whenever it was advisable, was not the least 
 striking proof of his diplomatic abilities. He never left them 
 enemies. According to his own solution of the mystery, he took 
 care never to play the gallant with Dulcineas under a certain 
 age "middle-aged women," he was wont to say, "are very 
 little different from middle-aged men ; they see things sensibly, 
 and take them coolly." Now Evelyn could not be three weeks, 
 perhaps three days, in London, without learning of one or the 
 other of these liaisons. What an excuse, if she sought one, to 
 break with him ! Altogether, Lord Vargrave was sorely per- 
 plexed, but not despondent. Evelyn's fortune was more than 
 ever necessary to him, and Evelyn he was resolved to obtain, 
 since to that fortune she was an indispensable appendage. 
 
 CHAPTER IT. 
 " You shall be Horace, and Tibullus I." POPE. 
 
 LORD VARGRAVE was disturbed from his revery by the 
 entrance of the Earl of Saxingham. 
 
 "You are welcome!" said Lumley, "welcome! the very 
 man I wished to see." 
 
 Lord Saxingham, who was scarcely altered since we met with 
 him in the last series of this work, except that he had grown 
 somewhat paler and thinner, and that his hair had changed 
 from iron-gray to snow-white, threw himself in the armchair 
 beside Lumley, and replied : 
 
 " Vargrave, it is really unpleasant, our finding ourselves always 
 thus controlled by our own partisans. I do not understand this 
 new-fangled policy this squaring of measures, to please the oppo-
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 87 
 
 sition, and throw sops to that many-headed monster called Public 
 Opinion. I am sure it will end most mischievously." 
 
 "I am satisfied of it," returned Lord Vargrave. "All vigor 
 
 and union seem to have left us : and if they carry the 
 
 question against us, I know not what is to be done." 
 
 "For my part I shall resign," said Lord Saxingham dog- 
 gedly ; " it is the only alternative left to men of honor." 
 
 " You are wrong I know another alternative." 
 
 "What is that?" 
 
 " Make a Cabinet of our own. Look ye, my dear lord ; you 
 have been ill-used your high character, your long experience, 
 are treated with contempt. It is an affront to you the situa- 
 tion you hold. You Privy Seal ! you ought to be Premier 
 ay, and if you are ruled by me, Premier you shall be yet." 
 
 Lord Saxingham colored, and breathed hard. 
 
 "You have often hinted at this before, Lumley ; but you are 
 so partial, so friendly." 
 
 " Not at all. You saw the leading article in the to day ? 
 
 that will be followed up by two evening papers within five hours 
 of this time. We have strength with the Press, with the Com- 
 mons, with the Court only let us hold fast together. This 
 
 question, by which they hope to get rid of us, shall 
 
 destroy them. You shall be Prime-minister before the year is 
 over by Heaven, you shall ! and then, I suppose, I too may 
 be admitted to the Cabinet ! " 
 
 "But how how, Lumley? you are too rash, too daring." 
 
 "It has not been my fault hitherto but boldness is caution 
 in our circumstances. If they throw us out now, I see the 
 inevitable march of events we shall be out for years, perhaps 
 for life. The Cabinet will recede more and more from our 
 principles, our party. Now is the time for a determined stand 
 now can we make or mar ourselves. I will not resign the 
 King is with us our strength shall be known. These haughty 
 imbeciles shall fall in the trap they have dug for us." 
 
 Lumley spoke warmly, and with the confidence of a mind 
 firmly assured of success. Lord Saxingham was moved bright 
 visions flashed across him the premiership a dukedom. Yet 
 he was old and childless, and his honors would die with the last 
 Lord of Saxingham ! 
 
 "See," continued Lumley, "I have calculated our resources 
 as accurately as an electioneering agent would cast up the list 
 
 of voters. In the Press, I have secured and ; and in 
 
 the Commons we have the subtle , and the vigor of , 
 
 and the popular name of , and all the boroughs of j
 
 88 ALICE J OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 in the Cabinet we have , and at Court you know our 
 
 strength. Let us choose our moment a sudden coup an inter- 
 view with the King a statement of our conscientious scruples 
 to this atrocious measure. I know the vain, stiff mind of the 
 Premier ; he will lose temper he will tender his resignation 
 to his astonishment it will be accepted. You will be sent for 
 we will dissolve Parliament we will strain every nerve in the 
 elections we shall succeed, I know we shall. But be silent 
 in the mean while be cautious : let hot a word escape you 
 let them think us beaten lull suspicion asleep let us lament our 
 weakness, and hint, only hint at our resignation, but with assur- 
 ances of continued support. I know how to blind them, if you 
 leave it to me." 
 
 The weak mind of the old earl was as a puppet in the hands 
 of his bold kinsman. He feared one moment, hoped another 
 now his ambition was flattered now his sense of honor was 
 alarmed. .There was something in Lumley's intrigue to oust 
 the government with which he served, that had an appearance 
 of cunning and baseness, of which Lord Saxingham, whose per- 
 sonal character was high, by no means approved. But Vargrave 
 talked him over with consummate address, and when they 
 parted the earl carried his head two inches higher he was 
 preparing himself for his rise in life. 
 
 "That is well that is well !" said Lumley, rubbing his hands 
 when he was left alone ; " the old driveller will be my locum 
 fenens, till years and renown enable me to become his successor. 
 Meanwhile, I shall be really what he is in name." 
 
 Here Lord Vargrave's well-fed servant, now advanced to the 
 dignity of own gentleman and house-steward, entered the room 
 with a letter ; it had a portentous look it was wafered the 
 paper was blue, the hand clerklike there was no envelope it 
 bore its infernal origin on the face of it IT WAS A DUN'S ! 
 
 Lumley opened the epistle with an impatient pshaw ! The 
 man, a silversmith (Lumley's plate was much admired !), had 
 applied for years in vain ; the amount was large an execution 
 was threatened ! an execution ! it is a trifle to a rich man : 
 but no trifle to one suspected of being poor one straining 
 at that very moment at so high an object one to whom public 
 opinion was so necessary one who knew that nothing but his 
 title, and scarcely that, saved him from the reputation of an 
 adventurer ! He must again have recourse to the money-lend- 
 ers his small estate was long since too deeply mortgaged to 
 afford new security. Usury, usury, again ! he knew its price, 
 and he sighed but what was to be done ?
 
 ALICE j OR, THE MYSTERIES. 89 
 
 " It is but for a few months, a few months, and Evelyn must 
 be mine. Saxingham has already lent me what he can ; but 
 he is embarrassed. This d d office, what a tax it is ! and the 
 rascals say we are too well paid ! I, too, who could live happy in 
 a garret, if this purse-proud England would but allow one to 
 exist within one's income. My fellow-trustee, the banker, my 
 uncle's old correspondent ah, well thought of ! He knows 
 the conditions of the will he knows that, at the worst, I must 
 have thirty thousand pounds if I live a few months longer. I 
 will go to him." 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 " Animum mine hoc celerem, nunc dividit illuc." * VIRGIL. 
 
 THE late Mr. Templeton had been a banker in a provincial 
 town, which was the centre of great commercial and agricul- 
 tural activity and enterprise. He had made the bulk of his 
 fortune in the happy days of paper currency and war. Besides 
 his country bank, he had a considerable share in a metropolitan 
 one of some eminence. At the time of his marriage with the 
 present Lady Vargrave he retired altogether from business, and 
 never returned to the place in which his wealth had been 
 amassed. He had still kept up a familiar acquaintance with 
 the principal and senior partner of the metropolitan bank I have 
 referred to ; for he was a man who always loved to talk about 
 money matters with those who understood them. This gentle- 
 man, Mr. Gustavus Douce, had been named, with Lumley, joint 
 trustee to Evelyn's fortune. They had full powers to invest it 
 in whatever stock seemed most safe or advantageous. The 
 trustees appeared well chosen ; as one, being destined to share 
 the fortune, would have the deepest interest in its security ; and 
 the other, from his habits and profession, would be a most ex- 
 cellent adviser. 
 
 Of Mr. Douce, Lord Vargrave had seen but little ; they were 
 not thrown together. But Lord Vargrave, who thought every 
 rich man might, some time or other, become a desirable ac- 
 quaintance, regularly asked him once every year to dinner ; 
 and twice in return he had dined with Mr. Douce, in one of the 
 most splendid villas, and off some of the most splendid plate 
 it had ever been his fortune to witness and to envy ! so that 
 the little favor he was about to ask was but a slight return for 
 Lord Vargrave's condescension. 
 
 He found the banker in his private sanctum his carriage at 
 
 * Now this, now that, distracts the active mind.
 
 90 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 the door for it was just four o'clock, an hour in which Mr. 
 Douce regularly departed to Caserta, as his aforesaid villa was 
 somewhat affectedly styled. 
 
 Mr. Douce was a small man, a nervous man he did not seem 
 quite master of his own limbs ; when he bowed, he seemed to 
 be making you a present of his legs ; when he sate down, he 
 twitched first on one side, then on the other thrust his hands 
 in his pockets, then took them out, and looked at them, as if in 
 astonishment then seized upon a pen, by which they were 
 luckily provided with incessant occupation. Meanwhile, there 
 was what might fairly be called a constant play of countenance : 
 first, he smiled, then looked grave now raised his eyebrows, 
 till they rose like rainbows, to the horizon of his pale, straw- 
 colored hair and next darted them down, like an avalanche, 
 over the twinkling, restless, fluttering, little blue eyes, which 
 then became almost invisible. Mr. Douce had, in fact, all the 
 appearance of a painfully shy man ; which was the more 
 strange, as he had the reputation of enterprise, and even audac- 
 ity, in the business of his profession, and was fond of the society 
 of the great. 
 
 "I have called on you, my dear sir," said Lord Vargrave, 
 after the preliminary salutations, "to ask a little favor, which, 
 if the least inconvenient, have no hesitation in refusing. You 
 know how I am situated with regard to my ward, Miss Cam- 
 eron ; in a few months I hope she will be Lady Vargrave." 
 
 Mr. Douce showed three small teeth, which were all that in 
 the front of his mouth fate had left him ; and then, as if alarmed 
 at the indelicacy of a smile on such a subject, pushed back his 
 chair, and twitched up his blotting-paper colored trousers. 
 
 " Yes, in a few months I hope she will be Lady Vargrave ; 
 and you know then, Mr. Douce, that I shall be in no want of 
 money." 
 
 " I hope that is to say, I am sure that I trust that never 
 will be the ca-ca-case with your lordship," put in Mr. Douce, with 
 timid hesitation. Mr. Douce, in addition to his other good 
 qualities, stammered much in the delivery of his sentences. 
 
 "You are very kind, but it is the case just at present ; I have 
 great need of a few thousand pounds upon my personal secur- 
 ity. My estate is already a little mortgaged, and I don't wish 
 to encumber it more ; besides, the loan would be merely tem- 
 porary : you know, that if at the age of eighteen Miss Cameron 
 refuse me (a supposition out of the question, but in business we 
 must calculate on improbabilities) I claim the forfeit she in- 
 curs thirty thousand pounds you remember."
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 9 1 
 
 " Oh, yes that is upon my word I I don't exactly but 
 your lord 1-1-1-lord-lordship knows best I have been so so 
 busy I forget the exact hem hem ! " 
 
 "If you just turn to the will you will see it as 1 say. Now, 
 could you conveniently place a few thousands to my account, 
 just for a short time? But I see you don't like it. Never 
 mind, I can get it elsewhere ; only, as you were my poor uncle's 
 friend " 
 
 "Your lord 1-1-1-lordship is quite mistaken," said Mr. Douce, 
 with trembling agitation ; "upon my word ; yes, a few thou- 
 thou- thousands to be sure to be sure. Your lordship's 
 banker is is " 
 
 " Drummond disagreeable people by no means obliging. I 
 shall certainly change to your house when my affairs are better 
 worth keeping." 
 
 " You do me great great honor ; I will just step step 
 step out, for a moment and and speak to Mr. Dobs ; not but 
 what you may depend on Excuse me ! Morning Chron-chron- 
 Chronicle, my lord ! " 
 
 Mr. Douce rose, as if by galvanism, and ran out of the room, 
 spinning round as he ran, to declare, again and again, that he 
 would not be gone a moment. 
 
 "Good little fellow that very like an electrified frog ! " mur- 
 mured Vargrave, as he took up the Morning Chronicle, so es- 
 pecially pointed out to his notice : and, turning to the leading 
 article, read a very eloquent attack on himself. Lumley was 
 thick-skinned on such matters he liked to be attacked it 
 showed that he was up in the world. 
 
 Presently Mr. Douce returned. To Lord Vargrave's amaze- 
 ment and delight, he was informed that ten thousand pounds 
 would be immediately lodged with Messrs. Drummond. His 
 bill of promise to pay in three months five per cent, interest 
 was quite sufficient; three months was a short date ; but the 
 bill could be renewed on the same terms, from quarter to quar- 
 ter, till quite convenient to his lordship to pay. " Would Lord 
 Vargrave do him the honor to dine with him at Caserta next 
 Monday ? " 
 
 Lord Vargrave tried to affect apathy at his sudden accession 
 of ready money ; but, really, it almost turned his head ; he 
 griped both Mr. Donee's thin, little shivering hands, and was 
 speechless with gratitude and ecstasy. The sum, which doubled 
 the utmost he expected, would relieve him from all his imme- 
 diate embarrassments. When he recovered his voice, he thanked 
 bis dear Mr, Pouce with a warmth that seemed to make the
 
 92 ALICE ; OR, THE MVSTERIES. 
 
 little man shrink into a nutshell ; and assured him that he would 
 dine with him every Monday in the year if he was asked ! He 
 then longed to depart ; but he thought, justly, that to go as 
 soon as he had got what he wanted would look selfish ; accord- 
 ingly he reseated himself, and so did Mr. Douce, and the con- 
 versation turned upon politics and news : but Mr. Douce, who 
 seemed to regard all things with a commercial eye, contrived, 
 Vargrave hardly knew how, to veer round from the change 
 in the French ministry to the state of the English money- 
 market. 
 
 " It really is indeed, my lord I say it, I am sure, with con- 
 cern, a very bad ti-ti-ti-ti-time for men in business indeed, for 
 all men such poor interest in the English fu-fun-funds and 
 yet speculations are so unsound. I recommended my friend 
 Sir Giles Grimsby to to invest some money in the American 
 canals ; a most rare res-res-respons-responsibility, I may say, 
 for me ; I am cautious in recommending ; but Sir Giles was an 
 old friend con-con-connection, I may say ; but most providen- 
 tially, all turned out that is fell out as I was sure it would 
 thirty per cent. and the value of the sh-sh-sh-shares doubled. 
 But such things are very rare quite godsends, I may say ! " 
 
 "Well, Mr. Douce, whenever I have money to lay out, I must 
 come and consult you." 
 
 " I shall be most happy at all times to to advise your lord- 
 ship ; but it is not a thing I'm very fond of ; there's Miss 
 Cameron's fortune quite 1-1-locked up three per cents and 
 Exchequer bills ; why it might have been a mil-mil-million by 
 this ti-ti-time, if the good old gentleman I beg pardon old 
 old nobleman, my poor, dear friend had been now alive ! " 
 
 " Indeed ! " said Lumley greedily, and pricking up his ears ; 
 " he was a good manager, my uncle ! " 
 
 " None better, none better. I may say a genius for busi 
 hem hem ! Miss Cameron a young woman of bus-bus-busi- 
 ness, my lord ?" 
 
 " Not much of that, I fear. A million, did you say ? " 
 , " At least ! indeed, at least money so scarce speculation so 
 sure in America great people the Americans rising people 
 gi-gi-giants giants ! " 
 
 " I am wasting your whole morning too bad in me," said 
 Vargrave, as the clock struck five ; "the Lords meet this even- 
 ing important business once more a thousand thanks to you 
 good-day." 
 
 " A very good-day to you, my lord ; don't mention it ; glad 
 at any time to ser-ser-serve you," said Mr, Douce, fidgeting,
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 93 
 
 curveting, and prancing round Lord Vargrave, as the latter 
 walked through the outer office to the carriage. 
 
 "Not a step more ; you will catch cold. Good-bye on 
 Monday, then, seven o'clock. The House of Lords." 
 
 And Lumley threw himself back in his carriage in high 
 spirits. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 " Oublie de Tullie, et brave du Senat." * 
 
 VOLTAIRE : Brutus, Act ii. Sc. I. 
 
 IN the Lords that evening the discussion was animated and 
 prolonged it was the last party debate of the session. The 
 astute opposition did not neglect to bring prominently, though 
 incidentally, forward, the question on which it was whispered 
 that there existed some growing difference in the Cabinet. Lord 
 Vargrave rose late ; his temper was excited by the good fortune 
 of his day's negotiation ; he felt himself of more importance 
 than usual, as a needy man is apt to do when he has got a large 
 sum at his banker's ; moreover, he was exasperated by some per- 
 sonal allusions to himself, which had been delivered by a dig- 
 nified old lord who dated his family from the ark, and was as 
 rich as Crcesus. Accordingly, Vargrave spoke wilh more than 
 his usual vigor. His first sentences were welcomed with loud 
 cheers he warmed he grew vehement he uttered the most 
 positive and unalterable sentiments upon the question alluded 
 to he greatly transgressed the discretion which the heads of 
 his party were desirous to maintain ; instead of conciliating 
 without compromising, he irritated, galled, and compromised. 
 The angry cheers of the opposite party were loudly re-echoed 
 by the cheers of the more hot-headed on his own side. The 
 Premier and some of his colleagues observed, however, a moody 
 silence. The Premier once took a note, then reseated himself, 
 and drew his hat more closely over his brows. It was an omi- 
 nous sign for Lumley ; but he was looking the opposition in the 
 face, and did not observe it. He sate down in triumph ; he had 
 made a most effective and most mischievous speech a combi- 
 nation extremely common. The leader of the opposition replied 
 to him with bitter calmness ; and, when citing some of his sharp 
 sentences, he turned to the Premier, and asked: "Are these 
 opinions those also of the noble lord ? I call for a reply I 
 have a right to demand a reply." Lumley was startled to hear 
 
 * Forgotten by Tully and bullied by the Senate.
 
 94 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 the tone in which his chief uttered the comprehensive and sig- 
 nificant ''''Hear, hear!" 
 
 At midnight the Premier wound up the debate. His speech 
 was short, and characterized by moderation. He came to the 
 question put to him the House was hushed you might have 
 heard a pin drop the Commoners behind the throne pressed 
 forward with anxiety and eagerness on their countenances. 
 
 "I am called upon," said the minister, "to declare if those 
 sentiments, uttered by my noble friend, are mine also, as the 
 chief adviser of the Crown. My lords, in the heat of debate, 
 every word is not to be scrupulously weighed, and rigidly inter- 
 preted." ("Hear, hear," ironically from the opposition ap- 
 provingly from the Treasury benches.) "My noble friend will 
 doubtless be anxious to explain what he intended to say. I hope, 
 nay, I doubt not, that his explanation will be satisfactory to the 
 noble lord, to the House, and to the Country. But since I am 
 called upon for a distinct reply to a distinct interrogatory, I will 
 say at once, that if those sentiments be rightly interpreted by 
 the noble lord who spoke last, those sentiments are not mine, 
 and will never animate the conduct of any Cabinet of which I 
 am a member." (Long continued cheering from the opposi- 
 tion.) " At the same time, I am convinced that my noble friend's 
 meaning has not been rightly construed ; and till I hear from 
 himself to the contrary, I will venture to state what I think he 
 designed to convey to your lordships." Here the Premier, 
 with a tact that nobody could be duped by, but every one could 
 admire, stripped Lord Vargrave's unlucky sentences of every 
 syllable that could give offence to anyone ; and left the pointed 
 epigrams and vehement denunciations a most harmless arrange- 
 ment of commonplace. 
 
 The House was much excited; there was a call for Lord Var- 
 grave, and Lord Vargrave promptly rose. It was one of those 
 dilemmas out of which Lumley was just the man to extricate 
 himself with address. There was so much manly frankness in 
 his manner there was so much crafty subtlety in his mind ! He 
 complained, with proud and honest bitterness, of the construc- 
 tion which had been forced upon his words by the opposition. 
 " If," he added (and no man knew better the rhetorical effect of 
 the tit quoque form of argument), " if every sentence uttered 
 by the noble lord opposite in his zeal for liberty, had, in days 
 now gone by, been construed with equal rigor, or perverted with 
 equal ingenuity, that noble lord had long since been prosecuted 
 as an incendiary, perhaps executed as a traitor!" Vehement 
 cheers from the ministerial benches : cries of " Order ! " from
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 95 
 
 the opposition. A military lord rose to order, and appealed to 
 the Woolsack. 
 
 Lumley sate down, as if chafed at the interruption ; he had 
 produced the effect he had desired he had changed the public 
 question at issue into a private quarrel : a new excitement was 
 created dust was thrown into the eyes of the House. Several 
 speakers rose to accommodate matters ; and, after half-an-hour 
 of public time had been properly wasted, the noble lord on one 
 side and the noble lord on the other duly explained ; paid each 
 other the highest possible compliments, and Lumley was left to 
 conclude his vindication, which now seemed a comparatively 
 flat matter after the late explosion. He completed his task so 
 as to satisfy, apparently, all parties for all parties were now 
 tired of the thing, and wanted to go to bed. But the next morn- 
 ing there were whispers about the town articles in the differ- 
 ent papers, evidently by authority rejoicings among the oppo- 
 sition and a general feeling, that, though the Government might 
 keep together that session, its dissensions would break out before 
 the next meeting of Parliament. 
 
 As Lumley was wrapping himself in his cloak after this stormy 
 debate, the Marquess of Raby a peer of large possessions, and 
 one who entirely agreed with Lumley's views came up to him, 
 and proposed that they should go home together in Lord Raby's 
 carriage. Vargrave willingly consented, and dismissed his own 
 servants. 
 
 "You did that admirably, my dear Vargrave!" said Lord 
 Raby, when they were seated in the carriage. " I quite coincide 
 in all your sentiments ; I declare my blood boiled when I heard 
 
 (the Premier) appear half inclined to throw you over. 
 
 Your hit upon was first-rate he will not get over it for a 
 
 month ; and you extricated yourself well." 
 
 " I am glad you approve my conduct it comforts me," said 
 Vargrave, feelingly; " at the same time I see all the consequences: 
 but I can brave all for the sake of character and conscience." 
 
 <l I feel just as you do ! " replied Lord Raby, with some 
 
 warmth : " and if I thought that meant to yield this 
 
 question, I should certainly oppose his administration." 
 
 Vargrave shook his head, and held his tongue, which gave 
 Lord Raby a high idea of his discretion. 
 
 After a few more observations on political matters, Lord Raby 
 invited Lumley to pay him a visit at his country-seat. 
 
 " I am going to Knaresdean next Monday ; you know we have 
 races in the park and really they are sometimes good sport : 
 at all events, it is a very pretty sight. There will be nothing in
 
 96 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 the Lords now the recess is just at hand ; and if you can spare 
 the time, Lady Raby and myself will be delighted to see you." 
 
 " You may be sure, my dear lord, I cannot refuse your invi- 
 tation ; indeed, I intended to visit your county next week. You 
 know, perhaps, a Mr. Merton?" 
 
 " Charles Merton ? to be sure most respectable man capi- 
 tal fellow the best parson in the county no cant, but thor- 
 oughly orthodox ; he certainly keeps in his brother, who, though 
 a very active member, is what I call a waverer on certain ques- 
 tions. Have you known Merton long ? " 
 
 "I don't know him at all as yet my acquaintance is with his 
 wife and daughter, a very fine girl, by the by. My ward, Miss 
 Cameron, is staying with them." 
 
 " Miss Cameron ! Cameron ah ! I understand ; I think I 
 have heard that but gossip does not always tell the truth ! " 
 
 Lumley smiled significantly, and the carriage now stopped at 
 his door. 
 
 " Perhaps you will take a seat in our carriage on Monday ?" 
 said Lord Raby. 
 
 " Monday ? unhappily I am engaged ; but on Tuesday your 
 lordship may expect me." 
 
 " Very well the races begin on Wednesday ; we shall have a 
 full house good-night ! " 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 " Homunculi quanti sunt, cum recogito."* PLAUTUS. 
 
 IT is obvious that, for many reasons, we must be brief upon 
 the political intrigue in which the scheming spirit of Lord Var- 
 grave was employed. It would, indeed, be scarcely possible to 
 preserve the necessary medium between too plain a revelation, 
 and too complex a disguise. It suffices, therefore, very shortly 
 to repeat what the reader has already gathered from what has 
 gone before namely, that the question at issue was one which 
 has happened often enough in all governments one on which 
 the Cabinet was divided, and in which the weaker party was 
 endeavoring to out-trick the stronger. 
 
 The malcontents, foreseeing that sooner or later the head of 
 the gathering must break, were again divided among themselves 
 whether to resign or to stay in, and strive to force a resignation 
 on their dissentient colleagues. The richer and the more honest 
 
 *.When I reflect, how great yoar littl* men are in their own consideration.
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. gf 
 
 were for the former course ; the poorer and more dependent for 
 the latter. We have seen that the latter policy was that espoused 
 and recommended by Vargrave (who, though not in the Cabi- 
 net, always contrived somehow or other to worm out its secrets) 
 at the same time, he by no means rejected the other string to 
 his bow. If it were possible so to arrange and to strengthen his 
 faction, that, by the coup d'ttat of a sudden resignation in a for- 
 midable body, the whole government might be broken up, and 
 a new one formed from among the resignees.it would obviously 
 be the best plan. But then Lord Vargrave was doubtful of his 
 own strength, and fearful to play into the hands of his col- 
 leagues, who might be able to stand even better without himself 
 and his allies, and, by conciliating the opposition, take a step 
 onward in political movement, which might leave Vargrave 
 placeless and powerless for years to come. 
 
 He repented his own rashness in the recent debate, which was, 
 indeed, a premature boldness that had sprung out of momentary 
 excitement for the craftiest orator must be indiscreet some- 
 times. He spent the next few days in alternately seeking to 
 explain away to one party, and to sound, unite, and consolidate 
 the other. His attempts in the one quarter were received by the 
 Premier with the cold politeness of an offended but careful 
 statesman, who believed just as much as he chose, and preferred 
 taking his own opportunity for a breach with a subordinate, to 
 risking any imprudence by the gratification of resentment. In 
 the last quarter, the penetrating adventurer saw that his ground 
 was more insecure than he had anticipated. He perceived, in 
 dismay and secret rage, that many of those most loud in his 
 favor while he was with the Government would desert him the 
 soonest if thrown out. Liked as a subordinate minister, he was 
 viewed with very different eyes the moment it was a question 
 whether, instead of cheering his sentiments, men should trust 
 themselves to his guidance. Some did not wish to displease the 
 Government ; others did not seek to weaken, but to correct 
 them. One of his stanchest allies in the Commons was a can- 
 didate for a peerage another suddenly remembered that he was 
 second cousin to the Premier ; some laughed at the idea of a 
 puppet premier in Lord Saxingham others insinuated to Var- 
 grave that he himself was not precisely of that standing in the 
 country which would command respect to a new party, of which, 
 if not the head, he would be the mouthpiece ; for themselves 
 they knew, admired, and trusted him ; but those d d country 
 gentlemen and the dull public ! 
 
 Alarmed, wearied, and disgusted, the schemer saw himself
 
 t)& ALtCE ; Oil, THE MYSTEktES. 
 
 reduced to submission, for the present at least ; and more thai! 
 ever he felt the necessity of Evelyn's fortune to fall back upon, 
 if the chance of the cards should rob him of his salary. He 
 was glad to escape for a breathing while from the vexations and 
 harassments that beset him, and looked forward with the eager 
 interest of a sanguine and elastic mind always escaping from 
 one scheme to another to his excursion into B shire. 
 
 At the villa of Mr. Douce, Lord Vargrave met a young 
 nobleman who had just succeeded to a property not only large 
 and unencumbered, but of a nature to give him importance in 
 the eyes of politicians. Situated in a very small county, the 
 estates of Lord Doltimore secured to his nomination at least 
 one of the representatives, while a little village at the back 
 of his pleasure-grounds constituted a borough, and returned 
 two members to Parliament. Lord Doltimore, just returned 
 from the Continent, had not even taken his seat in the Lords ; 
 and though his family connections, such as they were and 
 they were not very high, and by no means in the fashion were 
 ministerial, his own opinions were as yet unrevealed. 
 
 To this young nobleman Lord Vargrave was singularly atten- 
 tive ; he was well formed to attract men younger than himself ; 
 and he eminently succeeded in his designs upon Lord Dolti- 
 inore's affection. 
 
 His lordship was a small, pale man, with a very limited share 
 of understanding, supercilious in manner, elaborate in dress, 
 not ill-natured au fond, and with much of the English gentle- 
 man in his disposition, that is, he was honorable in his ideas 
 and actions, whenever his natural dulness and neglected edu- 
 cation enabled him clearly to perceive (through the midst of 
 prejudices, the delusions of others, and the false lights of the 
 dissipated society in which he had lived) what was right and 
 what wrong. But his leading characteristics were vanity and 
 conceit. He had lived much with younger sons, cleverer than 
 himself, who borrowed his money, sold him their horses, and 
 won from him at cards. In return, they gave him all that 
 species of flattery which young men can give with so hearty an 
 appearance of cordial admiration. "You certainly have the 
 best horses in Paris. You are really a devilish good fellow, 
 Doltimore. Oh, do you know, Doltimore, what little Ddsirt 
 says of you ! You have certainly turned the girl's head." 
 
 This sort of adulation from one sex was not corrected by any 
 great acerbity from the other. Lord Doltimore, at the age of 
 twenty-two, was a very good parti ; and, whatever his other 
 deficiencies, he had sense enough to perceive that he received
 
 AtlCJE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 much greater attention whether from opera-dancers in search 
 of a friend, or virtuous young ladies in search of a husband 
 than any of the companions, good-looking though many of them 
 were, with whom he had habitually lived. 
 
 " You will not long remain in town now the season is over?" 
 said Vargrave, as after dinner he found himself, by the depart- 
 ure of the ladies, next to Lord Doltimore. 
 
 " No, indeed ; even in the season, I don't much like London. 
 Paris has rather spoiled me for any other place." 
 
 " Paris is certainly very charming the ease of French life 
 has a fascination that our formal ostentation wants. Never- 
 theless, to a man like you, London must have many attrac- 
 tions." 
 
 " Why, I have a good many friends here ; but still, after Ascot, 
 it rather bores me." 
 
 " Have you any horse on the turf ? " 
 
 " Not yet ; but Legard (you know Legard, perhaps a very 
 good fellow) is anxious that I should try my luck. I was very 
 fortunate in the races at Paris you know we have established 
 racing there. The French take to it quite naturally." 
 
 " Ah, indeed ! it is so long since I have been in Paris most 
 exciting amusement ! Apropos of races I am going down to 
 Lord Raby's to-morrow ; I think I saw in one of the morning 
 papers, that you had very largely backed a horse entered at 
 Knaresdean." 
 
 " Yes, Thunderer I think of buying Thunderer. Legard 
 Colonel Legard (he was in the Guards, but he sold out) is a 
 good judge, and recommends the purchase. How very odd 
 that you too should be going to Knaresdean ! " 
 
 "Odd, indeed, but most lucky ! we can go together, if you 
 are not better engaged." 
 
 Lord Doltimore colored and hesitated. On the one hand, 
 he was a little afraid of being alone with so clever a man ; on 
 the other hand, it was an honor it was something for him to 
 talk of to Legard. Nevertheless, the shyness got the better o? 
 the vanity he excused himself he feared he was engaged to 
 take down Legard. 
 
 Lumley smiled, and changed the conversation ; and so agree- 
 able did he make himself, that when the party broke up, and 
 Lumley had just shaken hands with his host, Doltimore came 
 to him, and said in a little confusion 
 
 " I think I can put off Legard if if you " 
 
 " That's delightful ! What time shall we start ? need not 
 get down much before dinner one o'clock?"
 
 f&d ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 "Oli, yes ! not too long before dinner one o'clock will be 
 a little too early." 
 
 " Two, then. Where are you staying ? " 
 
 "At Fenton's." 
 
 " I will call for you good-night ! I long to see Thunderer ! " 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 " La sante de I'&me n'est pas plus assuree que cette du corps ; et quoique 
 Ton paraisse eloigne des passions, on n'est pas moins en danger de s'y laisser 
 emporter, que de tomber malade quand on se porte bien." * LA ROCHEFOU- 
 CAULD. 
 
 IN spite of the efforts of Maltravers to shun all occasions of 
 meeting Evelyn, they were necessarily sometimes thrown to- 
 gether in the round of provincial hospitalities ; and, certainly, 
 if either Mr. Merton or Caroline (the shrewder observer of the 
 two) had ever formed any suspicion that Evelyn had made a 
 conquest of Maltravers, his manner at such times effectually 
 removed it. 
 
 Maltravers was a man to feel deeply ; but no longer a boy to 
 yield to every tempting impulse. I have said that FORTITUDE 
 was his favorite virtue but fortitude is the virtue of great and 
 rare occasions ; there was another, equally hard-favored and 
 unshovvy, which he took as the staple of active and every-day 
 duties and that virtue was JUSTICE. Now, in earlier life, he 
 had been enamoured of the conventional Florimel that we call 
 HONOR a shifting and shadowy phantom, that is but the reflex 
 of the opinion of the time and clime. But justice has in it 
 something permanent and solid ; and out of justice arises the 
 real, not the false honor. 
 
 " Honor ! " said Maltravers " honor is to justice as the 
 flower to the plant its efflorescence, its bloom, its consumma- 
 tion ! But honor that does not spring from justice is but a 
 piece of painted rag, an artificial rose, which the men-milliners 
 of society would palm upon us as more natural than the true." 
 
 This principle of justice Maltravers sought to carry out in 
 all things not, perhaps, with constant success ; for what prac- 
 tice can always embody theory ? but still, at least, his endeavor 
 at success was constant. This, perhaps, it was which had ever 
 kept him from the excesses to which exuberant and liberal 
 natures are prone from the extravagances of pseudo-genius. 
 
 * The health of the soul is not more sure than that of the body, and although we may 
 appear free from passions, there is not the less danger of their attack, than of falling sick 
 t the moment we are well.
 
 OR, THE MVSTERtEg. 161 
 
 "No man," for instance, he was wont to say, "can be em- 
 barrassed in his own circumstances, and not cause embarrass- 
 ment toothers. Without economy, who can be just? And 
 what are charity generosity but the poetry and the beauty 
 of justice? " 
 
 No man ever asked Maltravers twice for a just debt ; and no 
 man ever once asked him to fulfil a promise. You felt that, 
 come what would, you might rely upon his word. To him 
 might have been applied the witty eulogium passed by Johnson 
 upon a certain nobleman : " If he had promised you an acorn, 
 and the acorn-season failed in England, he would have sent to 
 Norway for one ! " 
 
 It was not, therefore, the mere Norman and chivalrous spirit 
 of honor, which he had worshipped in youth as a part of the 
 Beautiful and Becoming, but which in youth had yielded to 
 temptation, as a sentiment ever must yield to a passion but it 
 was the more hard, stubborn, and reflective principle, which was 
 the later growth of deeper and nobler wisdom, that regulated the 
 conduct of Maltravers in this crisis of his life. Certain it is, 
 that he had never but once loved as he loved Evelyn ; and 
 yet that he never yielded so little to the passion. 
 
 "If engaged to another," thought he, " that engagement it is 
 not for a third person to attempt to dissolve. I am the last to 
 form a right judgment of the strength or weakness of the bonds 
 which unite her to Vargrave for my emotions would prejudice 
 me despite myself. I may fancy that her betrothed is not 
 worthy of her but that is for her to decide. While the bond 
 lasts, who can be justified in tempting her to break it?" 
 
 Agreeably to those notions, which the world may, perhaps, 
 consider overstrained, whenever Maltravers met Evelyn he 
 entrenched himself in a rigid and almost a chilling formality. 
 How difficult this was with one so simple and ingenuous ! Poor 
 Evelyn ! she thought she had offended him she longed to ask 
 him her offence perhaps, in her desire to rouse his genius into 
 exertion, she had touched some secret sore, some latent wound 
 of the memory? She recalled all their conversations again and 
 again. Ah ! why could they not be renewed ? Upon her 
 fancy and her thoughts Maltravers had made an impression not 
 to be obliterated. She wrote more frequently than ever to 
 Lady Vargrave, and the name of Maltravers was found in every, 
 page of her correspondence. 
 
 One evening, at the house of a neighbor, Miss Cameron (with 
 the Mertons) entered the room almost in the same instant as 
 Maltravers. The party was small, and so few had yet arrived,
 
 162 ALICE ; Ok, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 that it was impossible for Maltravers, without marked rudeness, 
 to avoid his friends from the rectory ; and Mrs. Merton, placing 
 herself next to Evelyn, graciously motioned to Maltravers to 
 occupy the third vacant seat on the sofa, of which she filled the 
 centre. 
 
 "We grudge all your improvements, Mr. Maltravers, since 
 they cost us your society. But we know that our dull circle 
 must seem tame to one who has seen so much. However, we 
 expect to offer you an inducement soon in Lord Vargrave. 
 What a lively, agreeable person he is ! " 
 
 Maltravers raised his eyes to Evelyn, calmly and penetrat- 
 ingly, at the latter part of this speech. He observed that she 
 turned pale, and sighed involuntarily. 
 
 " He had great spirits when I knew him," said he ; " and he 
 had then less cause to make him happy." 
 
 Mrs. Merton smiled, and turned rather pointedly towards 
 Evelyn. 
 
 Maltravers continued : " I never met the late lord. He had 
 none of the vivacity of his nephew, I believe." 
 
 " I have heard that he was very severe," said Mrs. Merton, 
 lifting her glass towards a party that had just entered. 
 
 " Severe ! " exclaimed Evelyn. " Ah, if you could have 
 known him the kindest the most indulgent no one ever 
 loved me as he did." She paused, for she felt her lip quiver. 
 
 " I beg your pardon, my dear," said Mrs. Merton, coolly. 
 Mrs. Merton had no idea of the pain inflicted by treading upon 
 a feeling. Maltravers was touched, and Mrs. Merton went on, 
 " No wonder he was kind to you, Evelyn a brute would be 
 that ; but he was generally considered a stern man." 
 
 "I never saw a stern look I never heard a harsh word; nay, 
 I do not remember that he ever even used the word 'command,' " 
 said Evelyn, almost angrily. 
 
 Mrs. Merton was about to reply, when, suddenly, seeing a 
 lady whose little girl had been ill of the measles, her motherly 
 thoughts flowed into a new channel, and she fluttered away in 
 that sympathy which unites all the heads of a growing family. 
 Evelyn and Maltravers were left alone. 
 
 "You do not remember your father, I believe?" said Mal- 
 travers. 
 
 " No father but Lord Vargrave : while he lived, I never knew 
 'the loss of one." 
 
 "Does your mother resemble you?" 
 
 " Ah, I wish I could think so; it is the sweetest countenance ! " 
 
 "Have you no picture of her?"
 
 ALICE J OR, THE MYSTERIES. 103 
 
 " None she would never consent to sit." 
 
 "Your father was a Cameron : I have known some of that 
 name." 
 
 " No relations of ours : my mother says we have none living." 
 
 "And have we no chance of seeing Lady Vargrave in B 
 
 shire?" 
 
 " She never leaves home: but I hope soon to return to Brook- 
 Green." 
 
 Maltravers sighed, and the conversation took a new turn. 
 
 "I have to thank you for the books you so kindly sent I 
 ought to have returned them ere this," said Evelyn. 
 
 "I have no use for them. Poetry has lost its charm for me; 
 especially that species of poetry which unites with the method 
 and symmetry something of the coldness of Art. How did you 
 like Alfieri?" 
 
 " His language is a kind of Spartan French," answered Eve- 
 lyn, in one of those happy expressions which every now and then 
 showed the quickness of her natural talent. 
 
 " Yes," said Maltravers, smiling ; " the criticism is acute. 
 Poor Alfieri ! in his wild life and his stormy passions, he threw 
 out all the redundance of his genius ; and his poetry is but the 
 representative of his thoughts not his emotions. Happier the 
 man of genius who lives upon his reason, and wastes feeling 
 only on his verse ! " 
 
 " You do not think that we waste feeling upon human beings ?" 
 said Evelyn, with a pretty laugh. 
 
 "Ask me that question when you have reached my years, and 
 can look upon fields on which you have lavished your warmest 
 hopes your noblest aspirations your tenderest affections 
 and see the soil all profitless and barren. 'Set not your heart 
 on the things of earth,' saith the Preacher." 
 
 Evelyn was affected by the tone, the words, and the melan- 
 choly countenance of the speaker. 
 
 " You, of all men, ought not to think thus," said she, with a 
 sweet eagerness ; "you who have done so much to awaken and 
 to soften the heart in others you who " she stopped short, 
 and added, more gravely, "Ah, Mr. Maltravers, I cannot reason 
 with you, but I can hope you will refute your own philosophy." 
 
 "Were your own wish fulfilled," answered Maltravers, almost 
 with sternness and with an expression of great pain in his com- 
 pressed lips, " I should have to thank you for much misery." 
 He rose abruptly, and turned away. 
 
 " How have I offended him ! " thought Evelyn, sorrowfully ; 
 " I never speak but to wound him what have \ done ! "
 
 104 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 She could have wished, in her simple kindness, to follow him, 
 and make peace ; but he was now in a coterie of strangers ; and 
 shortly afterwards he left the room, and she did not see him 
 again for weeks. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 " Nihil est aliud magnum quam multa minuta." * VET. AUCT. 
 
 AN anxious event disturbed the smooth current of cheerful 
 life at Merton Rectory. One morning when Evelyn came down 
 she missed little Sophy, who had contrived to establish for her- 
 self the undisputed privilege of a stool beside Miss Cameron at 
 breakfast. Mrs. Merton appeared with a much graver face 
 than usual. Sophy was unwell, was feverish ; the scarlet fever 
 had been in the neighborhood. Mrs. Merton was very uneasy. 
 
 "It is the more unlucky, Caroline," added the mother, turn- 
 ing to Mrs. Merton, "because to-morrow, you know, we were 
 to have spent a few days at Knaresdean, to see the races. If 
 poor Sophy does not get better, I fear you and Miss Cameron 
 must go without me. I can send Mrs. Hare to be your chap- 
 eron ; she would be delighted." 
 
 " Poor Sophy ! " said Caroline ; "I am very sorry to hear she 
 is unwell ; but I think Taylor would take great care of her ; you 
 surely need not stay, unless she is much worse." 
 
 Mrs. Merton, who, tame as she seemed, was a fond and atten- 
 tive mother, shook her head and said nothing ; but Sophy was 
 much worse by noon. The doctor was sent for and pronounced 
 it to be the scarlet fever. 
 
 It was now necessary to guard against the infection. Caro- 
 line had had the complaint, and she willingly shared in her 
 mother's watch of love for two or three hours. Mrs. Merton 
 gave up the party. Mrs. Hare (the wife of a rich squire in the 
 neighborhood) was written to, and that lady willingly agreed to 
 take charge of Caroline and her friend. 
 
 Sophy had been left asleep. When Mrs. Merton returned to 
 her bed, she found Evelyn quietly stationed there. This alarmed 
 her, for Evelyn had never had the scarlet fever and had been 
 forbidden the sick room. But poor little Sophy had waked and 
 querulously asked for her dear Evy ; and Evy, who had been 
 hovering round the room, heard the inquiry from the garrulous 
 nurse, and come in she would ; and the child gazed at her so 
 beseechingly, when Mrs. Merton entered, and said so piteously, 
 
 * There is nothing so great, as the collection of the minute.
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 105 
 
 " Don't take Evy away," that Evelyn stoutly declared that she 
 was not the least afraid of infection, and stay she must. Nay, 
 her share in the nursing would be the more necessary, since 
 Caroline was to go to Knaresdean the next day. 
 
 " But you go too, my dear Miss Cameron?" 
 
 " Indeed I could not : I don't care for races, I never wished 
 to go ; I would much sooner have stayed ; and I am sure 
 Sophy will not get well without me will you, dear?" 
 
 "Oh, yes, yes if I'm to keep you from the nice races I 
 should be worse if I thought that." 
 
 " But I don't like the nice races, Sophy, as your sister Carry 
 does ; she must go; they can't do without her ; but nobody 
 knows me, so I shall not be missed." 
 
 "I can't hear of such a thing," said Mrs. Merton with tears 
 in her eyes; and Evelyn said no more then; but the next morn- 
 ing Sophy was still worse, and the mother was too anxious and 
 too sad to think more of ceremony and politeness, so Evelyn 
 stayed. 
 
 A momentary pang shot across Evelyn's breast when all was 
 settled ; but she suppressed the sigh which accompanied the 
 thougiit that she had lost the only opportunity she might have 
 for weeks of seeing Maltravers ; to that chance she had indeed 
 looked forward, with interest and timid pleasure, the chance 
 was lost but why should it vex her what was he to her? 
 
 Caroline's heart smote her, as she came into the room in her 
 lilac bonnet and new dress ; and little Sophy, turning on her 
 eyes which, though languid, still expressed a child's pleasure at 
 the sight of finery, exclaimed, " How nice and pretty you look, 
 Carry ! do take Evy with you Evy looks pretty too ! " 
 
 Caroline kissed the child in silence, and paused irresolute ; 
 glanced at her dress, and then at Evelyn, who smiled on her 
 without a thought of envy ; and she had half a mind to stay too, 
 when her mother entered with a letter from Lord Vargrave. It 
 was short : he should be at the Knaresdean races hoped to 
 meet them there, and accompany them home. This information 
 re-decided Caroline, while it rewarded Evelyn. In a few min- 
 utes more, Mrs. Hare arrived ; and Caroline, glad to escape, per- 
 haps, her own compunction, hurried into the carriage, with a 
 hasty " God bless you all ! don't fret I'm sure she will be well 
 to-morrow and mind, Evelyn, you don't catch the fever!" 
 
 Mr. Merton looked grave and sighed, as he handed her into 
 the carriage ; but when, seated there, she turned round and 
 kissed her hand at him, she looked so handsome and distin- 
 guished, that a sentiment of paternal pride smoothed down his
 
 IO6 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 vexation at her want of feeling. He himself gave up the visit ; 
 but a little time after, when Sophy fell into a tranquil sleep, he 
 thought he might venture to canter across the country to the 
 race-ground, and return to dinner. 
 
 Days nay, a whole week passed the races were over but 
 Caroline had not returned. Meanwhile Sophy's fever left her; 
 she could quit her bed her room she could come downstairs 
 again and the family was happy. It is astonishing how the 
 least ailment in those little things stops the wheels of domestic 
 life ! Evelyn fortunately had not caught the fever ; she was 
 pale and somewhat, reduced by fatigue and confinement ; but 
 she was amply repaid by the mother's swimming look of quiet 
 gratitude the father's pressure of the hand Sophy's recovery 
 and her own good heart. They had heard twice from Caroline, 
 putting off her return: Lady Raby was so kind, she could not 
 away till the party broke up; she was so glad to hear such an 
 account of Sophy. 
 
 Lord Vargrave had not yet arrived at the rectory to stay ; 
 but he had twice ridden over, and remained there some hours. 
 He exerted himself to the utmost to please Evelyn ; and she 
 who, deceived by his manners, and influenced by the recollec- 
 tions of long and familiar acquaintance, was blinded to his real 
 character reproached herself more bitterly than ever for her 
 repugnance to his suit and her ungrateful hesitation to obey the 
 wishes of her stepfather. 
 
 To the Mertons, Lumley spoke with good-natured praise of 
 Caroline ; she was so much admired ; she was the beauty at 
 Knaresdean. A certain young friend of his, Lord Doltimore, 
 was evidently smitten. The parents thought much over the ideas 
 conjured up by that last sentence. 
 
 One morning, the garrulous Mrs. Hare the gossip of the 
 neighborhood called at the rectory ; she had returned, two 
 days before, from Knaresdean ; and she, too, had her tale to 
 tell of Caroline's conquests. 
 
 " I assure you, my dear Mrs. Merton, if we had not all known 
 that his heart was pre-occupied, we should have thought that 
 Lord Vargrave was her warmest admirer. Most charming man, 
 Lord Vargrave ! but as for Lord Doltimore, it was quite a 
 flirtation. Excuse me no scandal, you know, ha, ha ! a fine 
 young man, but stiff and reserved not the fascination of Lord 
 Vargrave." 
 
 " Does Lord Raby return to town, or is he now at Knares- 
 dean for the autumn, ? "
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 107 
 
 " He goes on Friday, I believe : very few of the guests are 
 left now. Lady A., and Lord B., and Lord Vargrave and your 
 daughter, and Mr. Legard, and Lord Doltimore, and Mrs. and 
 the Misses Cipher ; all the rest went the same day I did." 
 
 " Indeed ! " said Mr. Merton, in some surprise. 
 
 "Ah, I read your thoughts ; you wonder that Miss Caroline 
 has not come back is not that it ? But perhaps Lord Dolti- 
 more ha, ha! no scandal now do excuse me!" 
 
 "Was Mr. Maltravers at Knaresdean?" asked Mrs. Merton, 
 anxious to change the subject, and unprepared with any other 
 question. Evelyn was cutting out a paper horse for Sophy, 
 who, all her high spirits flown was lying on the sofa, and wist- 
 fully following her fairy fingers " Naughty Evy, you have cut 
 off the horse's head ! " 
 
 "Mr. Maltravers no, I think not; no, he was not there. 
 Lord Raby asked him pointedly to come, and was, I know, much 
 disappointed that he did not. But apropos of Mr. Maltravers : 
 I met him not a quarter of an hour ago, this morning, as I was 
 coming to you. You know we have leave to come through his 
 park, and as I was in the park at the time, I stopped the carriage 
 to speak to him. I told him that I was coming here, and that 
 you had had the scarlet fever in the house, which was the rea- 
 sn you had not gone to the races ; and he turned quite pale, 
 and seemed so alarmed. I said we were all afraid that Miss 
 Cameron should catch it; and excuse me ha, ha ! no scandal, 
 I hope but " 
 
 "Mr. Maltravers," said the butler, throwing open the door. 
 
 Maltravers entered with a quick and even a hurried step ; he 
 stopped short when he saw Evelyn; and his whole countenance 
 was instantly lightened up by a joyous expression, which as sud- 
 denly died away. 
 
 " This is kind indeed," said Mrs. Merton ; "it is so long since 
 we have seen you." 
 
 " I have been very much occupied," muttered Maltravers, 
 almost inaudibly, and seated himself next Evelyn. " I only 
 just heard that that you had sickness in the house Miss 
 Cameron, you look pale you you have not suffered, I 
 hope ?" 
 
 "No I am quite well," said Evelyn, with a smile ; and she 
 felt happy that her friend was kind to her once more. 
 
 "It's only me, Mr. Ernest," said Sophy; "you have forgot 
 me ! " 
 
 Maltravers hastened to vindicate himself from the charge, and 
 Sophy and he were soon made excellent friends again.
 
 :o8 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 Mrs. Hare, whom surprise at this sudden meeting had hitherto 
 silenced, and who longed to shape into elegant periphrasis the 
 common adage "Talk of, etc.," now once more opened her bud- 
 get. She tattled on: first to one, then to the other, then to all; 
 till she had tattled herself out of breath ; and then the orthodox 
 half-hour had expired, and the bell was rung, and the carriage 
 ordered, and Mrs. Hare rose to depart. 
 
 " Do just come to the door, Mrs. Merton," said she, " and 
 look at my pony-phaeton, it is so pretty Lady Raby admires 
 it so much ; you ought to have just such another." As she 
 spoke, she favored Mrs. Merton with a significant glance, that 
 said, as plainly as glance could say, "I have something to com- 
 municate." Mrs. Merton took the hint, and followed the good 
 lady out of the room. 
 
 " Do you know, my dear Mrs. Merton," said Mrs. Hare, in a 
 whisper, when they were safe in the billiard-room, that interposed 
 between the apartment they had left and the hall ; " do you 
 know whether Lord Vargrave and Mr. Maltravers are very good 
 friends ?" 
 
 " No, indeed ; why do you ask ?" 
 
 "Oh, because when I was speaking to Lord Vargrave about 
 him, he shook his head ; and really I don't remember what his 
 lordship said ; but he seemed to speak as if there was a little 
 soreness. And then he inquired, very anxiously, if Mr. Maltra- 
 vers was much at the rectory ! and looked discomposed when 
 he found you were such near neighbors. You'll excuse me, 
 you know ha, ha ! but we're such old friends ! and if Lord 
 Vargrave is coming to stay here, it might be unpleasant to 
 meet you'll excuse me. I took the liberty to tell him, he need 
 not be jealous of Mr. Maltravers ha, ha! not a marrying man 
 at all. But I did think Miss Caroline was the attraction you'll 
 excuse me no scandal ha, ha! But, af ter all, Lord Doltimore 
 must be the man ; well, good-morning. I thought I'd just 
 give you this hint. Is not the phaeton pretty? Kind compli- 
 ments to Mr. Merton." 
 
 And the lady drove off. 
 
 During this confabulation, Maltravers and Evelyn were left 
 alone with Sophy. Maltravers had continued to lean over the 
 child, and appeared listening to her prattle; while Evelyn, hav- 
 ing risen to shake hands with Mrs. Hare, did not reseat herself, 
 but went to the window, and busied herself with a flower-stand 
 in the recess. 
 
 "Oh, very fine, Mr. Ernest," said Sophy (always pronouncing 
 that proper name as if it ended in th\ "you care very much for
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 109 
 
 us to stay away so long don't he, Evy? I've a great mind 
 not to speak to you, sir, that I have ! " 
 
 "That would be too heavy a punishment, Miss Sophy only, 
 luckily, it would punish yourself ; you could not live without 
 talking talk talk talk ! " 
 
 ''But! might never have talked more, Mr. Ernest, if mamma 
 and pretty Evy had not been so kind to me ;" and the child 
 shoo>k her head mournfully, as if she had //"/// de soi-meme. 
 "But you won't stay away so long again, will you? Sophy play 
 to-morrow come to-morrow, and swing Sophy no nice swing- 
 ing since you've been gone." 
 
 While Sophy spoke, Evelyn turned half round, as if to hear 
 Maltravers answer ; he hesitated and Evelyn spoke 
 
 " You must not tease Mr. Maltravers so : Mr. Maltravers 
 has too much to do to come to us." 
 
 Now this was a very pettish speech in Evelyn, and her cheek 
 glowed while she spoke ; but an arch, provoking smile was on 
 her lips. 
 
 "It can be a privation only to me, Miss Cameron," said Mal- 
 travers, rising, and attempting in vain to resist the impulse that 
 drew him towards the window. The reproach in her tone and 
 words at once pained and delighted him ; and then this scene 
 the suffering child brought back to him his first interview with 
 Evelyn herself. He forgot, for the moment, the lapse of time 
 the new ties she had formed his own resolutions. 
 
 "That is a bad compliment to us," answered Evelyn ingenu- 
 ously : " do you think we are so little worthy your society as 
 not to value it? But, perhaps" (she added, sinking her voice) 
 "perhaps you have been offended perhaps I I said some- 
 thing that that hurt you ! " 
 
 " You ! " repeated Maltravers, with emotion. 
 
 Sophy, who had been attentively listening, here put in 
 "Shake hands and make it up with Evy you've been quarrel- 
 ling, naughty Ernest ! " 
 
 Evelyn laughed, and tossed back her sunny ringlets. "I think 
 Sophy is right," said she, with enchanting simplicity; "let us 
 make it up ;" and she held out her hand to Maltravers. 
 
 Maltravers pressed the fair hand to his lips. "Alas !" said 
 he, affected with various feelings which gave a tremor to his 
 deep voice, "your only fault is, that your society makes me dis- 
 contented with my solitary home ; and as solitude must be my 
 fate in life, I seek to enure myself to it betimes." 
 
 Here, whether opportunely or not, it is for the reader to 
 decide Mrs. Merton returned to the room.
 
 110 ALICE; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 She apologized for her absence talked of Mrs. Hare, and 
 the little Master Hares fine boys, but noisy ; and then she 
 asked Maltravers if he had seen Lord Vargrave since his lord- 
 ship had been in the county. 
 
 Maltravers replied with coldness, that he had not had that 
 honor ; that Vargrave had called on him in his way from the 
 rectory the other day, but that he was from home, and that he 
 had not seen him for some years. 
 
 " He is a person of most prepossessing manners," said Mrs. 
 Merton. 
 
 " Certainly most prepossessing." 
 
 "And very clever." 
 
 "He has great talents." 
 
 "He seems most amiable." 
 
 Maltravers bowed, and glanced towards Evelyn, whose face, 
 however, was turned from him. 
 
 The turn the conversation had taken was painful to the visitor, 
 and he rose to depart. 
 
 "Perhaps," said Mrs. Merton, "you will meet Lord Vargrave 
 at dinner to-morrow ; he will stay with us a few days as long 
 as he can be spared." 
 
 Maltravers meet Lord Vargrave ! the happy Vargrave ! 
 the betrothed to Evelyn ! Maltravers witness the familiar 
 rights the enchanting privileges accorded to another ! and 
 that other one whom he could not believe worthy of Evelyn ! 
 He writhed at the picture the invitation conjured up. 
 
 " You are very kind, my dear Mrs. Merton, but I expect a 
 visitor at Burleigh an old and dear friend, Mr. Cleveland." 
 
 " Mr. Cleveland ! we shall be delighted to see him too. We 
 knew him many years ago, during your minority, when he used 
 to visit Burleigh two or three times a year." 
 
 " He is changed since then ; he is often an invalid. I fear I 
 cannot answer for him ; but he will call as soon as he arrives, 
 and apologize for himself." * 
 
 Maltravers then hastily took his departure. He would not 
 trust himself to do more than bow distantly to Evelyn ; she 
 looked at him reproachfully. So, then, it was really premedi- 
 tated and resolved upon his absence from the rectory and 
 why ? she was grieved she was offended but more grieved 
 than offended perhaps because esteem, interest, admiration, 
 are more tolerant and charitable than Love !
 
 ALICE; OR, THE MYSTERIES. in 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 " Arethusa. 'Tis well, my lord, you're courting of ladies. 
 ****** 
 
 Claremont. Sure this lady has a good turn done her against her will." 
 
 PHILASTER. 
 
 IN the breakfast-room at Knaresdean, the same day, and 
 almost at the same hour, in which occurred the scene and con- 
 versation at the rectory recorded in our last chapter, sate Lord 
 Vargrave and Caroline alone. The party had dispersed, as was 
 usual, at noon. They heard at a distance the sounds of the bil- 
 liard balls. Lord Doltimore was playing with Colonel Legard, 
 one ef the best players in Europe, but who, fortunately for Dol- 
 timore, had, of late, made it a rule never to play for money. 
 Mrs. and the Misses Cipher, and most of the guests, were in the 
 billiard-room looking on. Lady Raby was writing letters, and 
 Lord Raby riding over his home farm. Caroline and Lumley 
 had been for some time in close and earnest conversation. Miss 
 Merton was seated in a large armchair, much moved, with her 
 handkerchief to her eyes. Lord Vargrave with his back to the 
 chimney-piece, was bending down, and speaking in a very low 
 voice, while his quick eye glanced, ever and anon, from the 
 lady's countenance to the windows to the doors, to be prepared 
 against any interruption. 
 
 " No, my dear friend," said he, " believe me that I am sincere. 
 My feelings for you are, indeed, such as no words can paint." 
 
 " Then why " 
 
 "Why wish you wedded to another why wed another my- 
 self? Caroline, I have often before explained to you that we 
 are in this the victims of an inevitable fate. It is absolutely 
 necessary that I should wed Miss Cameron. I never deceived 
 you from the first. I should have loved her, my heart would 
 have accompanied my hand, but for your too seductive beauty, 
 your superior mind ! yes, Caroline, your mind attracted me 
 more than your beauty. Your mind seemed kindred to my 
 own inspired with the proper and wise ambition which regards 
 the fools of the world as puppets as counters as chessmen. 
 For myself, a very angel from heaven could not make me give 
 up the game of life ! yield to my enemies slip from the lad- 
 der unravel the web I have woven ! Share my heart my 
 friendship my schemes ! this is the true and dignified affection 
 that should exist between minds like ours ; all the rest is the 
 prejudice of children."
 
 ii2 ALICE; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 " Vargrave, I am ambitious worldly : I own it, but I could 
 give up all for you ! " 
 
 " You think so, for you do not know the sacrifice. You see 
 me now apparently rich in power courted ; and this fate you 
 are willing to share ; and this fate you should share, were it the 
 real one I could bestow on you. But reverse the medal. De- 
 prived of office fortune gone debts pressing destitution no- 
 torious the ridicule of embarrassments the disrepute attached 
 to poverty and defeated ambition an exile in some foreign town 
 on the poor pension *o which alone I should be entitled a men- 
 dicant on the public purse ; and that, too, so ate into by de- 
 mands and debts, that there is not a grocer in the next market- 
 town who would envy the income of the retired minister ! Re- 
 tire, fallen despised, in the prime of life in the zenith of my 
 hopes ! Suppose that I could bear this for myself could 1 bear 
 it for you ? You, born to be the ornament of courts ! and 
 you, could you see me thus ? life embittered career lost and 
 feel, generous as you are, that your love had entailed on me 
 on us both on our children this miserable lot ! Impossible, 
 Caroline ! we are too wise for such romance. It is not because 
 we love too little, but because our love is worthy of each other, 
 that we disdain to make love a curse ! We cannot wrestle 
 against the world, but we may shake hands with it, and worm 
 the miser out of its treasures. My heart must be ever yours 
 my hand must be Miss Cameron's. Money I must have ! my 
 whole career depends on it. It is literally with me the highway- 
 man's choice money or life." 
 
 Vargrave paused, and took Caroline's hand. 
 
 " I cannot reason with you," said she ; " you know the strange 
 empire you have obtained over me, and, certainly, in spite of all 
 that has passed (and Caroline turned pale) I could bear any- 
 thing rather than that you should hereafter reproach me for 
 selfish disregard of your interests your just ambition." 
 
 " My noble friend ! I do not say that I shall not feel a deep 
 and sharp pang at seeing you wed another, but I shall be con- 
 soled by the thought that I have assisted to procure for you a 
 station worthier of your merits than that which I can offer. 
 Lord Doltimore is rich you will teach him to employ his riches 
 well he is weak your intellect will govern him ; he is in love 
 your beauty will suffice to preserve his regard. Ah, we shall be 
 dear friends to the last ! " 
 
 More but to the same effect did this able and crafty eillain 
 continue to address to Caroline, whom he alternately soothed, 
 irritated, flattered, and revolted, Love him she certainly did,
 
 ALICE; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 113 
 
 as far as love in her could extend ; but perhaps his rank, his 
 reputation, had served to win her affection ; and, not knowing 
 his embarrassments, she had encouraged a worldly hope that if 
 Evelyn should reject his hand it might be offered to her. Under 
 this impression she had trifled, she had coquetted, she had 
 played with the serpent till it had coiled around her and she 
 could not escape its fascination and its folds.. She was sincere 
 she could have resigned much for Lord Vargrave ; but his pic- 
 ture startled and appalled her. For difficulties in a palace she 
 might be prepared perhaps even for some privations in a cot- 
 tage ornte but certainly not for penury in a lodging-house ! 
 She listened by degrees with more attention to Vargrave's de- 
 scription of the power and homage that would be hers if she 
 could secure Lord Doltimore : she listened, and was in part 
 consoled. But the thought of Evelyn again crossed her ; and, 
 perhaps, with natural jealousy was mingled some compunction 
 at the fate to which Lord Vargrave thus coldly appeared to con- 
 demn one so lovely and so innocent. 
 
 " But do not, Vargrave," she said, "do not be too sanguine ; 
 Evelyn may reject you. She does not see you with my eyes ; it 
 is only a sense of honor that, as yet, forbids her openly to refuse 
 the fulfilment of an engagement from which I know that she 
 shrinks ; and if she does refuse, and you be free, and I an- 
 other's " 
 
 " Even in that case," interrupted Vargrave, " I must turn to 
 the Golden Idol ; my rank and name must buy me an heiress, 
 if not so endowed as Evelyn, wealthy enough, at least, to take 
 from my wheels the drag-chain of disreputable debt. But Eve- 
 lyn I will not doubt of her ! her heart is still unoccupied ?" 
 
 " True, as yet her affections are not engaged." 
 
 " And this Maltravers she is romantic, I fancy did he seem 
 captivated by her beauty or her fortune?" 
 
 " No, indeed, I think not ; he has been very little with us of 
 late. He talked to her more as to a child ; there is a disparity 
 of years." 
 
 "I am many years older than Maltravers," muttered Vargrave, 
 moodily. 
 
 " You ! but your manner is livelier, and, therefore, younger ! " 
 
 " Fair flatterer ! Maltravers does not love me : I fear his 
 report of my character " 
 
 " I never heard him speak of you, Vargrave ; and I will do 
 Evelyn the justice to say, that precisely as she does not love she 
 esteems and respects you." 
 
 "Esteerns respects these are. the feelings for 3 prudent
 
 H4 ALICE; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 Hymen," said Vargrave, with a smile. " But, hark ! I don't 
 hear the billiard balls ; they may find us here we had better 
 separate." 
 
 Lord Vargrave lounged into the billiard-room. The young 
 men had just finished playing, and were about to visit Thun- 
 derer, who had won the race, and was now the property of Lord 
 Doltimore. 
 
 Vargrave accompanied them to the stables ; and, after con- 
 cealing his ignorance of horseflesh as well as he could, beneath 
 a profusion of compliments on fore-hand, hind-quarters, breed- 
 ing, bone, substance, and famous points, he contrived to draw 
 Doltimore into the courtyard, while Colonel Legard remained 
 in converse high with the head-groom. 
 
 " Doltimore, I leave Knaresdean to-morrow ; you go to Lon- 
 don, I suppose ? Will you take a little packet for me to the 
 Home Office?" 
 
 "Certainly, when I go ; but I think of staying a few days with 
 Legard's uncle, the old admiral ; he has a hunting-box in the 
 neighborhood, and has asked us both over." 
 
 " Oh ! I can detect the attraction ; but certainly it is a fair 
 one the handsomest girl in the county ; pity she has no money." 
 
 "I don't care for money," said Lord Doltimore, coloring and 
 settling his neckcloth ; "but you are mistaken ; I have no thoughts 
 that way. Miss Merton is a very fine girl ; but I doubt much if 
 she cares for me. I would never marry any woman who was 
 not very much in love with me." And Lord Doltimore laughed 
 rather foolishly. 
 
 " You are more modest than clear-sighted," said Vargrave, 
 smiling ; " but mark my words : I predict that the beauty of next 
 season will be a certain Caroline Lady Doltimore ! " 
 
 The conversation dropped. 
 
 " I think that will be settled well," said Vargrave to himself, 
 as he was dressing for dinner. " Caroline will manage Dolti- 
 more, and I shall manage one vote in the Lords and three in the 
 Commons. I have already talked him into proper politics ; a 
 trifle, all this to be sure : but I had nothing else to amuse me, 
 and one must never lose an occasion. Besides, Doltimore is 
 rich, and rich friends are always useful. I have Caroline, too, 
 in my power, and she may be of service with respect to this 
 Evelyn, whom, instead of loving, I half hate : she has crossed 
 my path, robbed me of wealth ; and now if she does refuse 
 me but no, I will not think of that!"'
 
 ALICE; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 115 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 " Out of our reach the gods have laid 
 
 Of time to come the event ; 
 And laugh to see the fools afraid 
 Of what the knaves invent." SEDLEV, from Lycophron. 
 
 THE next day Caroline returned to the rectory in Lady Raby's 
 carriage ; and two hours after her arrival came Lord Vargrave. 
 Mr. Merton had secured the principal persons in the neighbor- 
 hood to meet a guest so distinguished, and Lord Vargrave, bent 
 on shining in the eyes of Evelyn, charmed all with his affability 
 and wit. Evelyn he thought seemed pale and dispirited. He 
 pertinaciously devoted himself to her all the evening. Her 
 ripening understanding was better able than heretofore to appre- 
 ciate his abilities ; yet, inwardly, she drew comparisons between 
 his conversation and that of Maltravers, not to the advantage of 
 the former. There was much that amused, but nothing that 
 interested, in Lord Vargrave's fluent ease. When he attempted 
 sentiment, the vein was hard and hollow ; he was only at home 
 on worldly topics. Caroline's spirits were, as usual in society, 
 high, but her laugh seemed forced, and her eye absent. 
 
 The next day, after breakfast, Lord Vargrave walked alone to 
 Burleigh : as he crossed the copse that bordered the park, a 
 large Persian greyhound sprang towards him, barking loudly ; 
 and, lifting his eyes, he perceived the form of a man walking 
 slowly along one of the paths that intersected the wood. He 
 recognized Maltravers. They had not till then encountered 
 since their meeting a few weeks before Florence's death ; and a 
 pang of conscience came across the schemer's cold heart. Years 
 rolled away from the past ; he recalled the young, generous, 
 ardent man, whom, ere the character and career of either had 
 been developed, he had called his friend. He remembered their 
 wild adventures and gay follies, in climes where they had been 
 all in all to each other ; and the beardless boy, whose heart and 
 purse were ever open to him, and to whose very errors of youth 
 and inexperienced passion, he, the elder and the wiser, had led 
 and tempted, rose before him in contrast to the grave and mel- 
 ancholy air of the baffled and solitary man, who now slowly 
 approached him, the man whese proud career he had served 
 to thwart ; whose heart his schemes had prematurely soured ; 
 whose best years had been consumed in exile ; a sacrifice to the 
 grave, which a selfish and dishonorable villainy had prepared ! 
 Cesarini, the inmate of a madhouse ; Florence in her shroud, 
 such were the visions the sight of Maltravers conjured up. And
 
 n6 ALICE; oz, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 to the soul which the unwonted and momentary remorse awak- 
 ened, a boding voice whispered, "And thinkest thou that thy 
 schemes shall prosper, and thy aspirations succeed ?" For the 
 first time in his life, perhaps, the unimaginative Vargrave felt 
 the mystery of a presentiment of warning and of evil. 
 
 The two men met ; and with an emotion which seemed that 
 of honest and real feeling, Lumley silently held out his hand, 
 and half turned away his head. 
 
 "Lord Vargrave !" said Maltravers, with an equal agitation, 
 "it is long since we have encountered." 
 
 " Long very long," answered Lumley, striving hard to re- 
 gain his self-possession ; "years have changed us both ; but I 
 trust it has still left in you, as it has in me, the remembrance 
 of our old friendship." 
 
 Maltravers was silent, and Lord Vargrave continued 
 
 "You do not answer me, Maltravers: can political differ- 
 ences, opposite pursuits, or the mere lapse of time, have suf- 
 ficed to create an irrevocable gulf between us ? Why may we 
 not be friends again ? " 
 
 " Friends ! " echoed Maltravers ; " at our age that word is 
 not so lightly spoken that tie is not so unthinkingly formed 
 as when we were younger men." 
 
 "But may not the old tie be renewed?" 
 
 " Our ways in life are different ; and were I to scan your 
 motives and career with the scrutinizing eyes of friendship, it 
 might only serve to separate us yet more. I am sick of the 
 great juggle of ambition, and I have no sympathy left for 
 those who creep into the pint-bottle, or swallow the naked 
 sword." 
 
 " If you despise the exhibition, why, then, let us laugh at it 
 together, for I am as cynical as yourself." 
 
 " Ah ! " said Maltravers with a smile, half mournful, half 
 bitter, "but are you not one of the Impostors?" 
 
 " Who ought better to judge of the Eleusiniana than one of 
 the Initiated ? But, seriously, why on earth should political 
 differences part private friendships? Thank Heaven! such has 
 never been my maxim." 
 
 " If the differences be the result of honest convictions on 
 either side, No. But are you honest, Lumley ? " 
 
 " Faith, I have got into the habit of thinking so ; and habit's 
 a second nature. However, I dare say we shall meet yet in 
 the arena, so I must not betray my weak points. How is it, 
 Maltravers, that they see so little of you at the rectory ? you 
 are a great favorite there. Have you any living that Charley
 
 ALICE; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 117 
 
 Mcrton could hold with his own ? You shake your head. 
 And what think you of Miss Cameron, my intended ?" 
 
 " You speak lightly. Perhaps you " 
 
 " Feel deeply you were going to say. I do. In the hand 
 of my ward, Evelyn Cameron, 1 trust to obtain at once the 
 domestic happiness to which I have as yet been a stranger, and 
 the wealth necessary to my career." 
 
 Lord Vargrave continued, after a short pause, " Though my 
 avocations have separated us so much, I have no doubt of her 
 steady affection, and I may add, of her sense of honor. She 
 alone can repair to me what else had been injustice in my 
 uncle." He then proceeded to repeat the moral obligations 
 which the late lord had imposed on Evelyn ; obligations that 
 he greatly magnified. Maltravers listened attentively, and said 
 little. 
 
 "And these obligations being fairly considered," added Var- 
 grave, with a smile, " I think, even had I rivals, that they could 
 scarcely in honor attempt to break an existing engagement." 
 
 " Not while the engagement lasted," answered Maltravers : 
 " not till one or the other had declined to fulfil it, and therefore 
 left both free ; but I trust it will be an alliance in which all but 
 affection will be forgotten that of honor alone would be but a 
 harsh tie." 
 
 "Assuredly," said Vargrave; and, as if satisfied with what 
 had passed, he turned the conversation praised Burleigh 
 spoke of county matters resumed his habitual gayety, though 
 it was somewhat subdued and, promising to call again soon, 
 he at last took his leave. 
 
 Maltravers pursued his solitary rambles ; and his commune 
 with himself was stern and searching. 
 
 "And so," thought he, "this prize is reserved for Vargrave ! 
 Why should I deem him unworthy of the treasure ? May he 
 not be worthier, at all events, than this soured temper and err- 
 ing heart ? And he is assured too of her affection ! Why this 
 jealous pang ! Why can the fountain within never be exhausted ? 
 Why, through so many scenes and sufferings, have I still re- 
 tained the vain madness of my youth the haunting suscepti- 
 bility to love ? This is my latest folly."
 
 n8 ALICE; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 BOOK IV. 
 
 TwaiK.bg oi>6e 
 
 EaflAiyf afieivov. SlMONIDES. 
 
 A virtuous woman is man's greatest pride. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 " Abroad uneasy, nor content at home. 
 * * * * * 
 
 And Wisdom shows the ill without the cure." 
 
 HAMMOND : Elegies. 
 
 Two or three days after the interview between Lord Vargrave 
 and Maltravers, the solitude of Burleigh was relieved by the 
 arrival of Mr. Cleveland. The good old gentleman, when free 
 from attacks of the gout, which were now somewhat more fre- 
 quent than formerly, was the same cheerful and intelligent 
 person as ever. Amiable, urbane, accomplished, and benev- 
 olent there was just enough worldliness in Cleveland's nature 
 to make his views sensible as far as they went, but to bound 
 their scope. Everything he said was so rational and yet, to 
 an imaginative person, his conversation was unsatisfactory, and 
 his philosophy somewhat chilling. 
 
 "I cannot say how pleased and surprised I am at your care 
 of the fine old place," said he to Maltravers, as, leaning on his 
 cane and his ci-devant pupil's arm, he loitered observantly 
 through the grounds " I see everywhere the presence of the 
 Master." 
 
 And certainly the praise was deserved ! the gardens were 
 now in order the dilapidated fences were repaired the weeds 
 no longer encumbered the walks Nature was just assisted and 
 relieved by Art, without being oppressed by too officious a ser- 
 vice from her handmaid. In the house itself, some suitable and 
 appropriate repairs and decorations with such articles of 
 furniture as combined modern comfort with the ancient and 
 picturesque shapes of a former fashion had redeemed the 
 mansion from all appearance of dreariness and neglect, while 
 still was left to its quaint halls and chambers the character 
 which belonged to their architecture and associations. It was 
 surprising how much a little exercise of simple taste had 
 effected.
 
 ALICE; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 119 
 
 " I am glad you approve what I have done," said Maltravers. 
 " I know not how it was, but the desolation of the place, when 
 I returned to it, reproached me. We contract friendship with 
 places as with human beings, and fancy they have claims upon 
 us ; at least that is my weakness." 
 
 " And an amiable one it is, too I share it. As for me, I look 
 upon Temple Grove as a fond husband upon a fair wife. I am 
 always anxious to adorn it, and as proud of its beauty as if it 
 could understand and thank me for my partial admiration. 
 When I leave you, I intend going to Paris, for the purpose of 
 
 attending a sale of the pictures and effects of Monsieur De . 
 
 These auctions are to me what a jeweller's shop is to a lover ; 
 but then, Ernest, I am an old bachelor." 
 
 "And I, too, am an Arcadian," said Maltravers, with a smile. 
 
 " Ah, but you are not too old for repentance. Burleigh now 
 requires nothing but a mistress." 
 
 " Perhaps it may soon receive that addition. I am yet un- 
 decided whether I shall sell it." 
 
 " Sell it ! sell Burleigh ! the last memorial of your mother's 
 ancestry ! the classic retreat of the graceful Digbys ! Sell 
 Burleigh ! " 
 
 " I had almost resolved to do so when I came hither : then 
 I foreswore the intention ; now again I sometimes sorrowfully 
 return to the idea." 
 
 " And in Heaven's name why ?" 
 
 " My old restlessness returns. Busy myself as I will here, I 
 find the range of action monotonous and confined. I began too 
 soon to draw around me the large circumference of literature 
 and action ; and the small provincial sphere seems to me a sad 
 going back in life. Perhaps I should not feel this, were my 
 home less lonely ; but as it is no, the wanderer's .ban is on 
 me, and I again turn towards the lands of excitement and 
 adventure." 
 
 " I understand this, Ernest ; but why is your home so solitary ? 
 You are still at the age in which wise and congenial unions are 
 the most frequently formed ; your temper is domestic your 
 easy fortune and sobered ambition allow you to choose without 
 reference to worldly considerations. Look round the world, and 
 mix with the world again ; and give Burleigh the mistress it 
 requires." 
 
 Maltravers shook his head, and sighed. 
 
 "I do not say," continued Cleveland, wrapt up in the glow- 
 ing interest of the theme, "that you should marry a mere girl 
 but an amiable woman, who^ like yourself, has seen something
 
 120 ALICE; OR, THE iMYSTERtES. 
 
 of life, and knows how to reckon on its cares, and to be con- 
 tented with its enjoyments." 
 
 "You have said enough," said Maltravers impatiently ; "an 
 experienced woman of the world, whose freshness of hope and 
 heart is gone ! What a picture ! No ; to me there is some- 
 thing inexpressibly beautiful in innocence and youth. But you 
 say justly my years are not those that would make a union 
 with youth desirable, or well suited." 
 
 "I do not say that," said Cleveland, taking a pinch of snuff; 
 "but you should avoid great disparity of age not for the sake 
 of that disparity itself, but because with it is involved discord 
 of temper pursuits. A very young woman, new to the world, 
 will not be contented with home alone ; you are at once too 
 gentle to curb her wishes, and a little too stern and reserved 
 (pardon me for saying so) to be quite congenial to very early 
 and sanguine youth." 
 
 " It is true," said Maltravers, with a tone of voice that showed 
 he was struck with the remark ; "but how have we fallen on 
 this subject ? let us change it I have no idea of marriage 
 the gloomy reminiscence of Florence Lascelles chains me to 
 the past."? 
 
 " Poor Florence ! she might once have suited you, but now 
 you are older, and would require a calmer and more malleable 
 temper." 
 
 " Peace, I implore you ! " 
 
 The conversation was changed ; and at noon Mr. Merton, who 
 had heard of Cleveland's arrival, called at Burleigh to renew an 
 old acquaintance. He invited them to pass the evening at the 
 rectory ; and Cleveland, hearing that whist was a regular 
 amusement, accepted the invitation for his host and himself. 
 But when the evening came, Maltravers pleaded indisposition, 
 and Cleveland was obliged to go alone. 
 
 When the old gentleman returned, about midnight, he found 
 Maltravers awaiting him in the library ; and Cleveland, having 
 won feurteen points, was in a very gay, conversible humor. 
 
 " You perverse hermit ! " said he, " talk of solitude, indeed, 
 with so pleasant a family a hundred yards distant ! You de- 
 serve to be solitary I have no patience with you. They com- 
 plain bitterly of your desertion, and say you were, at first, the 
 enfant de la mat son." 
 
 "So you like the Mertons? The clergyman is sensible, but 
 commonplace." 
 
 "A very agreeable man, despite your cynical definition, and 
 plays a very fair rubber. But Vargrave is a first-rate player."
 
 ALICE; Oft, THE MYSTERIES. 121 
 
 " Vargrave is there still ! " 
 
 "Yes, he breakfasts with us to-morrow he invited himself." 
 
 " Humph ! " 
 
 " He played one rubber ; the rest of the evening he devoted 
 himself to the prettiest girl I ever saw Miss Cameron. What 
 a sweet face ! so modest, yet so intelligent ! I talked with 
 her a good deal during the deals in which I cut out. I almost 
 lost my heart to her." 
 
 " So Lord Vargrave devoted himself to Miss Cameron ?" 
 
 " To be sure, you know they are to be married soon. Mer- 
 ton told me so. She is very rich. He is the luckiest fellow 
 imaginable, that Vargrave ! But he is much too old for her : 
 she seems to think so too. I can't explain why I think it ; but 
 by her pretty reserved manner I saw that she tried to keep the 
 gay minister at a distance : but it would not do. Now, if you 
 were ten years younger, or Miss Cameron ten years older, you 
 might have had some chance of cutting out your old friend." 
 
 "So you think I also am too old for a lover?" 
 
 " For a lover of a girl of seventeen, certainly. You seem 
 touchy on the score of age, Ernest." 
 
 "Not I, " and Maltravers laughed. 
 
 "No ! There was a young gentleman present, who, I think, 
 Vargrave might really find a dangerous rival a Colonel 
 Legard one of the handsomest men I ever saw in my life ; 
 just the style to turn a romantic young lady's head ; a mixture 
 of the wild and the thoroughbred ; black curls superb eyes 
 and the softest manners in the world. But, to be sure, he has 
 lived all his life in the best society. Not so his friend, Lord 
 Doltimore, who has a little too much of the green-room lounge 
 and French cafd manner for my taste." 
 
 " Doltimore Legard names new to me ; I never met them 
 at the rectory." 
 
 " Possibly ; they are staying at Admiral Legard's, in the 
 neighborhood. Miss Merton made their acquaintance at 
 Knaresdean. A good old lady the most perfect Mrs. Grundy 
 one would wish to meet with who owns the monosyllabic ap- 
 pellation of. Hare (and who, being my partner, trumped my 
 king !), assured me that Lord Doltimore was desperately in love 
 with Caroline Merton. By the way, now, there is a young lady 
 of a proper age for you handsome and clever, too." 
 
 "You talk of antidotes to matrimony: and so Miss 
 Cameron " 
 
 " Oh, no more of Miss Cameron now, or I shall sit up all 
 night ; she has half turned my head. I can't help pitying her
 
 122 ALICE; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 married to one so careless and worldly as Lord Vargrave 
 thrown so young into the whirl of London. Poor thing ! she 
 had better have fallen in love with Legard ; which I dare say 
 she will do, after all. Well, good-night ! " 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 " Passion, as frequently is seen. 
 Subsiding, settles into spleen : 
 Hence, as the plague of happy life, 
 I ran away from party strife." MATHEW GREEN. 
 
 " Here nymphs from hollow oaks relate 
 The dark decrees and will of fate." Ibid. 
 
 ACCORDING to his engagement, Vargrave breakfasted the 
 next morning at Burleigh. Maltravers, at first, struggled to 
 return his familiar cordiality with equal graciousness. Con- 
 demning himself for former and unfounded suspicions, he 
 wrestled against feelings which he could not, or would not, 
 analyze, but which made Lumley an unwelcome visitor, and 
 connected him with painful associations, whether of the present 
 or the past. But there were points on which the penetration 
 of Maltravers served to justify his prepossessions. 
 
 The conversation, chiefly sustained by Cleveland and Var- 
 grave, fell on public questions ; and, as one was opposed to the 
 other, Vargrave's exposition of views and motives had in them 
 so much of the self-seeking of the professional placeman, that 
 they might well have offended any man tinged by the lofty 
 mania of political Quixotism. It was with a strange mixture 
 of feelings that Maltravers listened : at one moment, he proudly 
 congratulated himself on having quitted a career where such 
 opinions seemed so well to prosper ; at another, his better and 
 juster sentiments awoke the long-dormant combative faculty, 
 and he almost longed for the turbulent but sublime arena, in 
 which truths are vindicated and mankind advanced. 
 
 The interview did not serve for that renewal of intimacy 
 which Vargrave appeared to seek ; and Maltravers rejoiced 
 when the placeman took his departure. 
 
 Lumley, who was about to pay a morning visit to Lord Dol- 
 timore, had borrowed Mr. Merton's stanhope, as being better 
 adapted than any statelier vehicle to get rapidly through the 
 crossroads which led to Admiral Legard's house ; and as he 
 settled himself in the seat, with his servant by his side, he said
 
 ALICE; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 123 
 
 laughingly, "I almost fancy myself naughty Master Lumley 
 again in this young-man-kind-of two-wheeled cockle-boat : not 
 dignified, but rapid, eh ?" 
 
 And Lumley's face, as he spoke, had in it so much of frank 
 gayety, and his manner was so simple, that Maltravers could 
 with difficulty fancy him the same man who, five minutes 
 before, had been uttering sentiments that might have become 
 the oldest-hearted intriguer whom the hot-bed of ambition ever 
 reared. 
 
 As soon as Lumley was gone, Maltravers left Cleveland alone 
 to write letters (Cleveland was an exemplary and voluminous 
 correspondent), and strolled with his dogs into the village. 
 The effect which the presence of Maltravers produced among 
 his peasantry was one that seldom failed to refresh and soothe 
 his most bitter and disturbed thoughts. They had gradually 
 (for the poor are quick-sigh ted) become sensible of his justice a 
 finer quality than many that seem more amiable. They felt that 
 his real object was to make them better and happier; and they had 
 learned to see that the means he adopted generally advanced the 
 end. Besides, if sometimes stern, he was never capricious or un- 
 reasonable ; and then, too, he would listen patiently and advise 
 kindly. They were a little in awe of him, but the awe only served 
 to make them more industrious and orderly ; to stimulate the idle 
 man to reclaim the drunkard. He was one of the favorers of 
 the small-allotment system ; not, indeed, as a panacea, but as one 
 excellent stimulant to exertion and independence: and his chosen 
 rewards for good conduct were in such comforts as served to 
 awaken, amongst those hitherto passive, dogged, and hopeless, a 
 desire to better and improve thsir condition. Somehow or other, 
 without direct alms, the good-wife found that the little savings 
 in the cracked tea-pot, or the old stocking, had greatly increased 
 since the squire's return ; while her husband came home from 
 his moderate cups at the alehouse more sober and in better tem- 
 per. Having already saved something was a great reason why 
 he should save more. The new school, too, was so much bet- 
 ter conducted than the old one ; the children actually liked going 
 there ; #nd now and then there were little village feasts connected 
 with the school-room ; play and work were joint associations. 
 
 And Maltravers looked into his cottages, and looked at the 
 allotment-ground ; and it was pleasant to him to say to himself, 
 " I am not altogether without use in life." But as he pursued his 
 lonely walk, and the glow of self-approval died away with the 
 scenes that called it forth, the cloud again settled on his brow ; 
 and again he felt that, in solitude, the passions feed upon
 
 124 ALICE; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 the heart. As he thus walked along the green lane, and the in- 
 sect life of summer rustled audibly among the shadowy hedges, 
 and along the thick grass that sprang up on either side, he came 
 suddenly upon a little group, that arrested all his attention. 
 
 It was a woman clad in rags, bleeding, and seemingly insen- 
 sible, supported by the overseer of the parish and a laborer. 
 
 "What is the matter?" asked Maltravers. 
 
 "A poor woman has been knocked down and run over by a 
 gentleman in a gig, your honor," replied the overseer. " He 
 stopped, half an hour ago, at my house, to tell me that she was 
 lying on the road ; and he has given me two sovereigns for her, 
 your honor. But, poor cretur ! she was too heavy for me to carry 
 her, and I was forced to leave her and call Tom to help me." 
 
 "The gentleman might have stayed to see what were the con- 
 sequences of his own act," muttered Maltravers, as he examined 
 the wound in the temple, whence the blood flowed copiously. 
 
 "He said he was in a great hurry, your honor," said the vil- 
 lage official, overhearing Maltravers. "I think it was one of 
 the grand folks up at the Parsonage ; for I know it was Mr, 
 Merlon's bay horse he is a hot 'un ! " 
 
 " Does the poor woman live in the neighborhood ? Do you 
 know her ? " asked Maltravers, turning from the contemplation 
 of this new instance of Vargrave's selfishness of character. 
 
 "No ; the old body seems quite a stranger here a tramper, 
 or beggar, I think, sir. But it won't be a settlement if we take 
 her in ; and we can carry her to the Chequers-, up the village, 
 your honor." 
 
 "What is the nearest house your own?" 
 
 "Yes ; but we be so busy now ! " 
 
 "She shall not go to your house, and be neglected. And as 
 for the public-house, it is too noisy : we must move her to the 
 Hall." 
 
 "Your honor ! " ejaculated the overseer, opening his eyes. 
 
 " It is not very far ; she is severely hurt. Get a hurdle lay 
 a mattress on it. Make haste, both of you ; I will wait here till 
 you return." 
 
 The poor woman was carefully placed on the grass by the road- 
 side, and Maltravers supported her head, while the men hastened 
 to \>bey his orders.
 
 ALICE: OR, THE MYSTERIES. 125 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 " Also from that forked hill, the boasted seat 
 Of studious Peace and mild Philosophy, 
 Indignant murmurs mote be heard to threat. " WEST. 
 
 MR. CLEVELAND wanted to enrich one of his letters with a 
 quotation from Ariosto, which he but imperfectly remembered. 
 He had seen the book he wished to refer to in the little 
 study, the day before ; and he quitted the library to search 
 for it. 
 
 As he was tumbling over some volumes that lay piled on the 
 writing-table, he felt a student's curiosity to discover what now 
 constituted his host's favorite reading. He was surprised to ob- 
 serve, that the greater portion of the works that, by the doubled 
 leaf and the pencilled reference, seemed most frequently con- 
 sulted, were not of a literary nature they were chiefly scientific; 
 and astronomy seemed the chosen science. He then remem- 
 bered that he had heard Maltravers speaking to a builder, em- 
 ployed on the recent repairs, on the subject of an observatory. 
 "This is very strange," thought Cleveland ; "he gives up litera- 
 ture, the rewards of which are in his reach, and turns to science, 
 at an age too late to discipline his mind to its austere training." 
 
 Alas ! Cleveland did not understand that there are times in 
 life when imaginative minds seek to numb and to blunt imagi- 
 nation. Still less did he feel that, when we perversely refuse to 
 apply our active faculties to the catholic interests of the world, 
 they turn morbidly into channels of research, the least akin to 
 their real genius. By the collision of minds alone does each 
 mind discover what is its proper product : left to ourselves, our 
 talents become but intellectual eccentricities. 
 
 Some scattered papers, in the handwriting of Maltravers, fell 
 from one of the volumes. Of these, a few were but algebraical 
 calculations, or short scientific suggestions, the value of which 
 Mr. Cleveland's studies did not enable him to ascertain : but in 
 others they were wild snatches of mournful and impassioned 
 verse, which showed that the old vein of poetry still flowed, 
 though no longer to the daylight. These verses Cleveland 
 thought himself justified in glancing over; they seemed to por- 
 tray a state of mind which deeply interested, and greatly sad- 
 dened him. They expressed, indeed, a firm determination to 
 bear up against both the memory and the fear of ill ; but mys- 
 terious and hinted allusions here and there served to denote some 
 rec?nt and yet existent struggle, revealed by the heart only to
 
 126 ALICE; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 the genius. In these partial and imperfect self-communings and 
 confessions, there was the evidence of the pining affections, the 
 wasted life, the desolate hearth of the lonely man. Yet, so calm 
 was Maltravers himself, even to his early friend, that Cleveland 
 knew not what to think of the reality of the feelings painted. 
 Had that fervid and romantic spirit been again awakened by a 
 living object? if so, where was the object found? The dates 
 affixed to the verses were most recent. But whom had Maltravers 
 seen? Cleveland's thoughts turned to Caroline Merton to 
 Evelyn ; but when he had spoken of both, nothing in the 
 countenance, the manner, of Maltravers had betrayed emotion. 
 And once the heart of Maltravers had so readily betrayed itself! 
 Cleveland knew not how pride, years, and suffering school the 
 features, and repress the outward signs of what pass within. 
 While thus engaged, the door of the study opened abruptly, and 
 the servant announced Mr. Merton. 
 
 " A thousand pardons," said the courteous rector. " I fear 
 we disturb you ; but Admiral Legard and Lord Doltimore, who 
 called on us this morning, were so anxious to see Burleigh, I 
 thought I might take the liberty. We have come over quite in 
 a large party taken the place by storm. Mr. Maltravers is 
 out, I hear ; but you will let us see the house. My allies 
 are already in the hall, examining the armor." 
 
 Cleveland, ever sociable and urbane, answered suitably, and 
 went with Mr. Merton into the hall, where Caroline, her little 
 sisters, Evelyn, Lord Doltimore, Admiral Legard, and his 
 nephew, were assembled. 
 
 " Very proud to be my host's representative and your guide," 
 said Cleveland. "Your visit, Lord Doltimore, is indeed an 
 agreeable surprise! Lord Vargrave left us an hour or so since, 
 to call on you at Admiral Legard's ; we buy our pleasure with 
 his disappointment." 
 
 " It is very unfortunate," said the admiral, a bluff, harsh- 
 looking old gentleman ; " but we were not aware, till we saw 
 Mr. Merton, of the honor Lord Vargrave has done us. I 
 can't think how we missed him on the road." 
 
 "My dear uncle," said Colonel Legard, in a peculiarly sweet 
 and agreeable tone of voice, "you forget ; we came three miles 
 round by the high road ; and Mr. Merton says that Lord Var- 
 grave took the short cut by Langley End. My uncle, Mr. 
 Cleveland, never feels in safety upon land, unless the road is as 
 wide as the British Channel, and the horses go before the wind 
 at the rapid pace of two knots and a half an hour ! " 
 
 " I just wish I had you 3t sea, Mr, Jackanapes," said the
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 1$) 
 
 admiral, looking grimly at his handsome nephew, while he shook 
 his cane at him. 
 
 The nephew smiled ; and, falling back, conversed with Evelyn. 
 
 The party were now shown over the house ; and Lord Dolti- 
 more was loud in its praises. It was like a chateau he had 
 once hired in Normandy it had a French character ; those 
 old chairs were in excellent taste quite the style of Francis 
 the First. 
 
 "I know no man I respect more than Mr. Maltravers," quoth 
 the admiral. "Since he has been amongst us this time, he 
 has been a pattern to us country gentlemen. He would make 
 an excellent colleague for Sir John. We really must get him to 
 stand against that young puppy, who is member of the House of 
 Commons only because his father is a peer, and never votes 
 more than twice a session." 
 
 Mr. Me'rton looked grave. 
 
 "I wish to Heaven you could persuade him to stay amongst 
 you," said Cleveland. " He has half taken it into his head to 
 part with Burleigh ! " 
 
 " Part with Burleigh ! " exclaimed Evelyn, turning abruptly 
 from the handsome colonel, in whose conversation she had 
 hitherto seemed absorbed. 
 
 " My very ejaculation when I heard him say so, my dear 
 young lady." 
 
 " I wish he would," said Lord Doltimore hastily, and glanc- 
 ing towards Caroline. " I should much like to buy it. What 
 do you think would be the purchase-money?" 
 
 "Don't talk so cold-bloodedly," said the admiral, letting the 
 point of his cane fall with great emphasis on the floor. " I 
 can't bear to see old families deserting their old place quite 
 wicked. You buy Burleigh ! have not you got a country-seat 
 of your own, my lord ? Go and live there, and take Mr. Mal- 
 travers for your model you could not have a better." 
 
 Lord Doltimore sneered colored settled his neckcloth 
 and, turning round to Colonel Legard, whispered, " Legard, 
 your good uncle is a bore." 
 
 Legard looked a little offended, and made no reply. 
 
 " But," said Caroline, coming to the relief of her admirer, 
 " if Mr. Maltravers will sell the place, surely he could not have 
 a better successor." 
 
 " He shan't sell the place, ma'am, and that's poz !" cried the 
 admiral. "The whole county shall sign a round robin to tell 
 him it's a shame ; and if any one dares to buy it, we'll send 
 him to Coventry."
 
 i2& ALICE; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 Miss Merton laughed ; but looked round the old wainscot 
 walls with unusual interest : she thought it would be a fine 
 thing to be Lady of Burleigh ! 
 
 " And what is that picture so carefully covered up ? " said 
 the admiral, as they now stood in the library. 
 
 " The late Mrs. Maltravers, Ernest's mother," replied Cleve- 
 land, slowly. "He dislikes it to be shown to strangers: the 
 other is a Digby." 
 
 Evelyn looked towards the veiled portrait, and thought of her 
 first interview with Maltravers ; but the soft voice of Colonel 
 Legard murmured in her ear, and her revery was broken. 
 
 Cleveland eyed the colonel, and muttered to himself, " Var- 
 grave should keep a sharp lookout." 
 
 They had now finished theirround of the show-apartments 
 which, indeed, had little but their antiquity and old portraits to 
 recommend them and were in a lobby at the back of the house, 
 communicating with a courtyard, two sides of which were occu- 
 pied with the stables. The sight of the stables reminded Caroline 
 of the Arab horses ; and at the word "horses," Lord Doltimore 
 seized Legard's arm, and carried him off to inspect the animals; 
 Caroline, her father, and the admiral, followed. Mr. Cleveland 
 happened not to have on his walking-shoes ; and the flagstones 
 in the courtyard looked damp ; and Mr. Cleveland, like most 
 old bachelors, was prudently afraid of cold ; so he excused him- 
 self, and stayed behind. He was talking to Evelyn about the 
 Digbys, and full of anecdotes about Sir Kenelm, at the moment 
 the rest departed so abruptly ; and Evelyn was interested, so 
 she insisted on keeping him company. The old gentleman 
 was flattered; he thought it excellent breeding in Miss Cameron. 
 The children ran out to renew acquaintance with the peacock, 
 who, perched on an old stirrup-stone, was sunning his gay 
 plumage in the noonday. 
 
 " It is astonishing," said Cleveland, " how certain family 
 features are transmitted from generation to generation ! Mal- 
 travers has still the forehead and eyebrows of the Digbys that 
 peculiar, brooding, thoughtful forehead, which you observed 
 in the picture of Sir Kenelm. Once, too, he had much the 
 same dreaming character of mind, but he has lost that, in some 
 measure at least. He has fine qualities, Miss Cameron I 
 have known him since he was born. I trust his career is not 
 yet closed ; could he but form ties that would bind him to 
 England, I should indulge in higher expectations than I did 
 even when the wild boy turned half the heads in Gottingen ! 
 
 "But we were talking of family portraits there is one in the
 
 ALICE; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 129 
 
 entrance hall, which perhaps you have not observed ; it is half 
 boliterated by damp and time yet it is of a remarkable per- 
 sonage, connected with Maltravers by ancestral intermarriages 
 Lord Falkland, the Falkland of Clarendon. A man weak in 
 character, but made most interesting by history. Utterly un- 
 fitted for the severe ordeal of those stormy times ; sighing for 
 peace when his whole soul should have been in war ; and re- 
 pentant alike whether with the Parliament or the King, but still 
 a personage of elegant and endearing associations ; a student- 
 soldier with a high heart and a gallant spirit. Come and look 
 at his features -homely and worn, but with a characteristic air 
 of refinement and melancholy thought." 
 
 Thus going on the agreeable old gentleman drew Evelyn into 
 the outer hall. Upon arriving there, through a small passage 
 which opened upon the hall, they were surprised to find the old 
 housekeeper and another female servant standing by a rude 
 kind of couch, on which lay the form of the poor woman de- 
 scribed in the last chapter. Maltravers and two other men, 
 were also there. And Maltravers himself was giving orders to 
 his servants, while he leant over the sufferer, who was now con- 
 scious both of pain and the service rendered to her. As Eve- 
 lyn stopped abruptly and in surprise, opposite and almost at the 
 foot of the homely litter, the woman raised herself up on one 
 arm, and gazed at her with a wild stare ; then, muttering some 
 incoherent words, which appeared to betoken delirium, she 
 sunk back, and was again insensible. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 " Hence oft to win some stubborn maid, 
 
 Still does the wanton god assume 
 The martial air, the gay cockade, 
 
 The sword, the shoulder-knot, and plume." MARRIOTT. 
 
 THE hall was cleared, the sufferer had been removed, and 
 Maltravers was left alone with Cleveland and Evelyn. 
 
 He simply and shortly narrated the adventure of the morn- 
 ing ; but he did not mention that Vargrave had been the cause 
 of the injury his new guest had sustained. Now this event had 
 served to make a mutual and kindred impression on Evelyn and 
 Maltravers. The humanity of the latter, natural and common- 
 place as it was, was an endearing recollection to Evelyn, pre- 
 cisely as it showed that his cold theory of disdain towards the
 
 I^O ALICE; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 mass did not affect his actual conduct towards individuals. 
 On the other hand, Maltravers had perhaps been yet more im- 
 pressed with the prompt and ingenuous sympathy which Evelyn 
 had testified towards the sufferer ; it had so evidently been her 
 first gracious and womanly impulse to hasten to the side of this 
 humble stranger. In that impulse Maltravers himself had been 
 almost forgotten ; and as the poor woman lay pale and lifeless, 
 and young Evelyn bent over her in beautiful compassion, Mal- 
 travers thought she had never seemed so lovely, so irresistible 
 in fact, pity in woman is a great beautifier. 
 
 As Maltravers finished his short tale, Evelyn's eyes were fixed 
 upon him with such frank and yet such soft approval, that the 
 look went straight to his heart. He quickly turned away, and 
 abruptly changed the conversation. 
 
 " But how long have you been here, Miss Cameron, and 
 your companions ? " 
 
 " We are again intruders ; but this time it is not my fault." 
 
 " No," said Cleveland, " for a wonder ; it was male, and not 
 ladylike curiosity that trespassed on Bluebeard's chamber. 
 But, however, to soften your resentment, know that Miss Cam- 
 eron has brought you a purchaser for Burleigh. Now, then, we 
 can test the sincerity of your wish to part with it. I assure you, 
 meanwhile, that Miss Cameron was as much shocked at the 
 idea as I was. Were you not ? " 
 
 " But you surely have no intention of selling Burleigh? "said 
 Evelyn anxiously. 
 
 " I fear I do not know my own mind." 
 
 " Well," said Cleveland, " here comes your tempter. Lord 
 Doltimore, let me introduce Mr. Maltravers." 
 
 Lord Doltimore bowed. 
 
 " Been admiring your horses, Mr. Maltravers. I never saw 
 anything so perfect as the black one ; may I ask where you 
 bought him?" 
 
 " It was a present to me," answered Maltravers. 
 
 " A present ! " 
 
 " Yes, from one who would not have sold that horse for a 
 king's ransom : an old Arab chief, with whom I formed a kind 
 of friendship in the desert. A wound disabled him from riding, 
 and he bestowed the horse on me, with as much solemn tender- 
 ness for the gift as if he had given me his daughter in mar- 
 riage." 
 
 "I think of travelling into the East," said Lord Doltimore, 
 with much gravity ; " I suppose nothing will induce you to sell 
 the black horse ? "
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. i$t 
 
 " Lord Doltimore ! " said Maltravers, in a tone of lofty surprise. 
 
 "I do not care for the price," continued the young noble- 
 man, a little disconcerted. 
 
 " No. I never sell any horse that has once learned to know 
 me. I would as soon think of selling a friend. In the desert 
 one's horse is one's friend. I am almost an Arab myself in 
 these matters." 
 
 "But talking of sale and barter, reminds me of Burleigh," 
 said Cleveland, maliciously. " Lord Doltimore is an universal 
 buyer. He covets all your goods : he will take the house, if he 
 can't have the stables." 
 
 " I only mean, said Lord Doltimore, rather peevishly, " that, 
 if you wish to part with Burleigh, I should like to have the 
 option of purchase." 
 
 "I will remember it if I determine to sell the place," 
 answered Maltravers, smiling gravely; "at present I am 
 undecided." 
 
 He turned away towards Evelyn as he spoke, and almost 
 started to observe that she was joined by a stranger, whose 
 approach he had not before noticed ; and that stranger a man 
 of such remarkable personal advantages, that, had Maltravers 
 been in Vargrave's position, he might reasonably have experi- 
 enced a pang of jealous apprehension. Slightly above the 
 common height slender, yet, strongly formed set off by 
 every advantage of dress, of air, of the nameless tone and 
 pervading refinement that sometimes, though not always, springs 
 from early and habitual intercourse with the most polished 
 female society Colonel Legard, at the age of eight-and- 
 twenty, had acquired a reputation for beauty almost as popular 
 and as well known as that which men usually acquire by mental 
 qualifications. Yet there was nothing effeminate in his coun- 
 tenance, the symmetrical features of which were made masculine 
 and expressive by the rich olive of the complexion, and the 
 close jetty curls of the Antinous-like hair. 
 
 They seemed, as they there stood Evelyn and Legard so 
 well suited to each other in personal advantages their different 
 styles so happily contrasted ; and Legard, at the moment, was 
 regarding her with such respectful admiration, and whispering 
 compliment to her in so subdued a tone, that the dullest 
 observer might have ventured a prophecy by no means agree- 
 able to the hopes of Lumley, Lord Vargrave. 
 
 But a feeling or fear of this nature was not that which 
 occurred to Maltravers, or dictated his startled exclamation of 
 surprise.
 
 13 2 ALICE J OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 Legard looked up as he heard the exclamation, and saw 
 Maltravers, whose back had hitherto been turned towards him. 
 He too was evidently surprised, and seemingly confused ; the 
 color mounted to his cheek, and then left it pale. 
 
 "Colonel Legard," said Cleveland, "a thousand apologies for 
 my neglect ; I really did not observe you enter you came 
 round by the front door, I suppose. Let me make you 
 acquainted with Mr. Maltravers." 
 
 Legard bowed low. 
 
 " We have met before," said he, in embarrassed accents : "at 
 Venice, I think ! " 
 
 Maltravers inclined his head rather stiffly at first, but then, as 
 if moved by a second impulse, held out his hand cordially. 
 
 "Oh, Mr. Ernest, here you are !" cried Sophy, bounding 
 into the hall, followed by Mr. Merton, the old admiral, Caroline, 
 and Cecilia. 
 
 The interruption seemed welcome and opportune. The 
 admiral, with blunt cordiality, expressed his pleasure at being 
 made known to Mr. Maltravers. 
 
 The conversation grew general refreshments were proffered 
 and declined the visit drew to its close. 
 
 It so happened that, as the guests departed, Evelyn, from 
 whose side the constant colonel had insensibly melted away, 
 lingered last, save, indeed, the admiral, who was discussing 
 with Cleveland a new specific for the gout. And as Maltravers 
 stood on the steps, Evelyn turned to him with all her beautiful 
 nai'vett oi mingled timidity and kindness, and said: 
 
 " And are we really never to see you again, never to hear 
 again your tales of Egypt and Arabia never to talk over Tasso 
 and Dante. No books no talk no disputes no quarrels ? 
 What have we done ? I thought we had made it up and yet 
 you are still unforgiving. Give me a good scold, and be 
 friends ! " 
 
 " Friends ! you have no friend more anxious, more devoted 
 than I am. Young, rich, fascinating as you are, you will carve 
 no impression on human hearts deeper than that you have 
 graven here ! " 
 
 Carried away by the charm of her childlike familiarity and 
 enchanting sweetness, Maltravers had said more than he in- 
 tended ; yet his eyes, his emotion, said more than his words. 
 
 Evelyn colored deeply, and her whole manner changed. 
 However, she turned away, and saying, with a forced gaiety, 
 " Well, then, you will not desert us we shall see you once 
 more ? " hurried down the steps to join her companions.
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 1 33 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 " See how the skilful lover spreads his toils." STILLINGFLEET. 
 
 THE party had not long returned to the rectory, and the ad- 
 miral's carriage was ordered, when Lord Vargrave made his 
 appearance. He descanted with gay good-humor on his long 
 drive the bad roads and his disappointment at the contre- 
 temps that awaited him ; then, drawing aside Colonel Legard, 
 who seemed unusually silent and abstracted, he said to him : 
 
 " My dear Colonel, my visit this morning was rather to you 
 than to Doltimore. I confess that I should like to see your 
 abilities enlisted on the side of the Government ; and knowing 
 that the post of Storekeeper to the Ordnance will be vacant in 
 
 a day or two by the promotion of Mr. , I wrote to secure 
 
 the refusal to-day's post brings me the answer. I offer the 
 place to you ; and I trust, before long, to procure you also a 
 seat in Parliament. But you must start for London imme- 
 diately." 
 
 A week ago, and Legard's utmost ambition would have been 
 amply gratified by this post ; he now hesitated. 
 
 "My dear lord," said he, "I cannot say how grateful I feel 
 for your kindness ; but but " 
 
 " Enough : no thanks, my dear Legard. Can you go to town 
 to-morrow ? " 
 
 " Indeed," said Legard, " I fear not ; I must consult my 
 uncle." 
 
 " I can answer for him ; I sounded him before I wrote re- 
 flect ! You are not rich, my dear Legard ; it is an excellent 
 opening : a seat in Parliament, too ! Why, what can be your 
 reason for hesitation ?" 
 
 There was something meaning and inquisitive in the tone of 
 voice in which this question was put, that brought the color to 
 the colonel's cheek. He knew not well what to reply ; and he 
 began, too, to think that he ought not to refuse the appoint- 
 ment. Nay, would his uncle, on whom he was dependent, con- 
 sent to such a refusal ? Lord Vargrave saw the irresolution, 
 and proceeded. He spent ten minutes in combating every 
 scruple, every objection ; he placed all the advantages of the 
 post, real or imaginary, in every conceivable point of view before 
 the colonel's eyes ; he sought to flatter, to wheedle, to coax, to 
 weary him into accepting it ; and he at length partially 
 succeeded. The colonel petitioned for three days' considera- 
 tion, which Vargrave reluctantly acceded to; and Legard thea
 
 1 34 ALICE J OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 stepped into his uncle's carriage, with the air rather of a martyr 
 than a maiden placeman. 
 
 "Aha !" said Vargrave, chuckling to himself as he took a 
 turn in the grounds, " I have got rid of that handsome knave ; 
 and now I shall have Evelyn all to myself ! " 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 " I am forfeited to eternal disgrace if you do not commiserate. 
 
 * * * * * 
 
 Go to, then, raise recover." BEN JONSON : Poetaster. 
 
 THE next morning Admiral Legard and his nephew were con- 
 versing in the little cabin consecrated by the name of the 
 admiral's " own room." 
 
 " Yes," said the veteran, " it would be moonshine and mad- 
 ness not to accept Vargrave's offer ; though one can see through 
 such a millstone as that with half an eye. His lordship is jeal- 
 ous of such a fine, handsome young fellow as you are and very 
 justly. But as long as he is under the same roof with Miss 
 Cameron, you will have no opportunity to pay your court ; 
 when he goes, you can always manage to be in her neighbor- 
 hood ; and then, you know puppy that you are her business 
 will be very soon settled." And the admiral eyed the handsome 
 colonel with grim fondness. 
 
 Legard sighed, 
 
 "Have you any commands at ?" said he; "lam just 
 
 going to canter over there before Doltimore is up." 
 
 " Sad lazy dog, your friend." 
 
 " I shall be back by twelve." 
 
 "What are you going to for?" 
 
 "Brookes, the farrier, has a little spaniel King Charles's 
 breed. Miss Cameron is fond of dogs. I can send it to her, 
 with my compliments it will be a sort of leave-taking." 
 
 " Sly rogue ; ha, ha, ha ! d d sly ; ha, ha! " and the ad- 
 miral punched the slender waist of his nephew, and laughed till 
 the tears ran down his cheeks. 
 
 " Good-bye, sir." 
 
 " Stop, George ; I forgot to ask you a question ; you never 
 told me you knew Mr. Maltravers. Why don't you cultivate 
 his acquaintance ?" 
 
 " We met at Venice accidentally. I did not know his name 
 then, he left just as I arrived. As you say, I ought to cultivate 
 his acquaintance."
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 135 
 
 " Fine character ! " 
 
 " Very ! " said Legard, with energy, as he abruptly quitted 
 the room. 
 
 George Legard was an orphan. His father the admiral's 
 elder brother had been a spendthrift man of fashion, with 
 a tolerably large unentailed estate. Remarried a duke's daugh- 
 ter without a sixpence. Estates are troublesome Mr. Legard's 
 was sold. On the purchase-money the happy pair lived for 
 some years in great comfort, when Mr. Legard died of a brain 
 fever ; and his disconsolate widow found herself alone in the 
 world, with a beautiful little curly-headed boy, and an annuity 
 of one thousand a year, for which her settlement had been ex- 
 changed all the rest of the fortune was gone ; a discovery not 
 made till Mr. Legard's death. Lady Louisa did not long sur- 
 vive the loss of her husband and her station in society ; her 
 income, of course, died with herself. Her only child was 
 brought up in the house of his grandfather, the duke, till he 
 was of age to hold the office of king's page ; thence, as is cus- 
 tomary, he was promoted to a commission in the Guards. To 
 the munificent emoluments of his pay, the ducal family liberally 
 added an allowance of two hundred a-year; upon which income 
 Cornet Legard contrived to get very handsomely in debt. The 
 extraordinary beauty of his person, his connections, and his 
 manners, obtained him all the celebrity that fashion can bestow; 
 but poverty is a bad thing. Luckily, at this time his uncle, the 
 admiral, returned from sea, to settle for the rest of his life in 
 England. 
 
 Hitherto the admiral had taken no notice of George. He 
 himself had married a merchant's daughter with a fair portion; 
 and had been blessed with two children, who monopolized all 
 his affection. But there seemed some mortality in the Legard 
 family; in one year after returning to England and settling in 
 
 B shire, the admiral found himself wifeless and childless. 
 
 He then turned to his orphan nephew, and soon became fonder 
 of him than he had ever been of his own children. The ad- 
 miral, though in easy circumstances, was not wealthy ; never- 
 theless, he advanced the money requisite for George's rise in 
 the army, and doubled the allowance bestowed by the duke. 
 His grace heard of this generosity, and discovered that he 
 himself had a very large family grown up ; that the marquis 
 was going to be married, and required an increase of income ; 
 that he had already behaved most handsomely to his nephew ; 
 and the result of this discovery was, that the duke withdrew 
 the two hundred a year. Legard, however, who looked on his
 
 136 ALICE J OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 uncle as an exhaustless mine, went on breaking hearts and 
 making debts till one morning he woke in the Bench. The 
 admiral was hastily summoned to London. He arrived ; paid 
 off the duns a kindness which seriously embarrassed him 
 swore, scolded, and cried ; and finally insisted that Legard 
 should give up that d d coxcomb regiment, in which he was 
 now captain, retire on half-pay, and learn economy and a change 
 of habits on the Continent. 
 
 The admiral, a rough but good-natured man on the whole, 
 had two or three little peculiarities. In the first place, he piqued 
 himself on a sort of John Bull independence ; was a bit of a 
 Radical (a strange anomaly in an admiral) which was owing, 
 perhaps, to two or three young lords having been put over his 
 head in the earlier part of his career; and he made it a point 
 with his nephew (of whose affection he was jealous) to break 
 with those fine grand connections, who plunged him into a sea 
 of extravagance, and then never threw him a rope to save him 
 from drowning. 
 
 In the second place, without being stingy, the admiral had a 
 good deal of economy in his disposition. He was not a man to 
 allow his nephew to ruin him. He had an extraordinary old- 
 fashioned horror of gambling a polite habit of George's; 
 and he declared, positively, that his nephew must, while a 
 bachelor, learn to live upon seven hundred a year. Thirdly, 
 the admiral could be a very stern, stubborn, passionate old 
 brute ; and when he coolly told George, "Harkye, you young 
 puppy, if you get into debt again if you exceed the very hand- 
 some allowance I make you I shall just cut you off with a 
 shilling," George was fully aware that his uncle was one who 
 would rigidly keep his word. 
 
 However, it was something to be out of debt, and one of the 
 handsomest men of his age ; and George Legard, whose rank 
 in the Guards made him a colonel in the line, left England tol- 
 erably contented with the state of affairs. 
 
 Despite the foibles of his youth, George Legard had many 
 high and generous qualities. Society had done its best to spoil 
 a fine and candid disposition, with abilities far above mediocrity; 
 but society had only partially succeeded. Still, unhappily, dissi- 
 pation had grown a habit with him ; and all his talents were of 
 a nature that brought a ready return. At his age, it was but 
 natural that the praise of salons should retain all its sweetness. 
 
 In addition to those qualities which please the softer sex, 
 Legard was a good whist-player superb at billiards famous 
 $s a shot unrivalled as a horseman | in fact, an accomplished
 
 ALICE; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 137 
 
 man, " who did everything so devilish well ! " These accom- 
 plishments did not stand him in much stead in Italy ; and, 
 though with reluctance and remorse, he took again to gambling 
 he really had nothing else to do. 
 
 In Venice there was, one year, established a society, some- 
 what on the principle of the Salon at Paris. Some rich Vene- 
 tians belonged to it ; but it was chiefly for the convenience of 
 foreigners French, English, and Austrians. Here there was 
 select gaming in one room, while another apartment served 
 the purposes of a club. Many who never played belonged to 
 this society ; but still they were not the habitues. 
 
 Legard played : he won at first then he lost then he won 
 again ; it was a pleasant excitement. One night, after winning 
 largely at roulette, he sat down to play dearie with a Frenchman 
 of high rank. Legard played well at this, as at all scientific 
 games : he thought he should make a fortune out of the French- 
 man. The game excited much interest ; the crowd gathered 
 round the table ; bets ran high ; the vanity of Legard, as well 
 as his interest, was implicated in the conflict. It was soon evi- 
 dent that the Frenchman played as well as the Englishman. 
 The stakes, at first tolerably high, were doubled. Legard betted 
 freely cards went against him : he lost much lost all that he 
 had lost more than he had lost several hundreds, which he 
 promised to pay the next morning. The table was broken 
 up the spectators separated. Amongst the latter had been one 
 Englishman, introduced into the club for the first time that 
 night. He had neither played nor betted ; but had observed 
 the game with a quiet and watchful interest. The Englishman 
 lodged at the same hotel as Legard. He was at Venice only 
 for a day ; the promised sight of a file of English newspapers 
 had drawn him to the club ; the general excitement around had 
 attracted him to the table : and, once there, the spectacle of 
 human emotions exercised its customary charm. 
 
 On ascending the stairs that conducted to his apartment, the 
 Englishman heard a deep groan in a room the door of which was 
 ajar. He paused the sound was repeated ; he gently pushed 
 open the door, and saw Legard standing by a table, while a 
 glass on the opposite wall reflected his working and convulsed 
 countenance, with his hands trembling visibly, as they took a 
 brace of pistols from the case. 
 
 The Englishman recognized the loser at the club ; and at 
 once divined the act that his madness or his despair dictated. 
 Legard twice took up one of the pistols, and twice laid it down 
 irresolute ; the third time he rose with a start, raised the weapon
 
 138 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 to his head, and the next moment it was wrenched from his 
 grasp. 
 
 " Sit down, sir ! " said the stranger, in a loud and command- 
 ing voice. 
 
 Legard, astonished and abashed, sunk once more into his 
 seat, and stared sullenly and half-unconsciously at his country- 
 man. 
 
 " You have lost your money," said the Englishman, after 
 calmly replacing the pistols in their case, which he locked, put- 
 ting the key into his pocket ; " and that is misfortune enough 
 for ene night. If you had won, and ruined your opponent, you 
 would be excessively happy, and go to bed, thinking Good 
 Luck (which is the representative of Providence) watched over 
 you. For my part, I think you ought to be very thankful that 
 you are not the winner." 
 
 " Sir," said Legard, recovering from his surprise, and begin- 
 ning to feel resentment ; " I do not understand this intrusion in 
 my apartments. You have saved me, it is true, from death 
 but life is a worse curse." 
 
 " Young man no ! moments in life are agony, but life itself 
 is a blessing. Life is a mystery that defies all calculation. You 
 can never say, ' To-day is wretched, therefore to-morrow must 
 be the same ! ' And for the loss of a little gold you, in the full 
 vigor of youth, with all the future before you, will dare to rush 
 into the chances of eternity ! You, who have never, perhaps, 
 thought what eternity is ! Yet," added the stranger, in a soft 
 and melancholy voice, "you are young and beautiful perhaps 
 the pride and hope of others ! Have you no tie no affection 
 no kindred? are you lord of yourself?" 
 
 Legard was moved by the tone of the stranger, as well as by 
 the words. 
 
 " It is not the loss of money," said he, gloomily, "it is the 
 loss of honor. To-morrow I must go forth a shunned and de- 
 spised man I, a gentleman and a soldier ! They may insult 
 me and I have no reply ! " 
 
 The Englishman seemed to muse, for his brow lowered, and 
 he made no answer. Legard threw himself back, overcome with 
 his own excitement, and wept like a child. The stranger, who 
 imagined himself above the indulgence of emotion (vain man !), 
 woke from his revery at this burst of passion. He gazed at first 
 (I grieve to write) with a curl of the haughty lip that had in it 
 contempt ; but it passed quickly away ; and the hard man re- 
 membered that he too had been young and weak, and his own 
 errors greater perhaps than those of the one he had ventured to
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 139 
 
 despise. He walked to and fro the room still without speaking. 
 At last he approached the gamester, and took his hand. 
 
 " What is your debt ? " he asked gently. 
 
 " What matters it ? more than I can pay." 
 
 "If life is a trust, so is wealth : you have the first in charge 
 for others / may have the last. What is the debt ? " 
 
 Legard started it was a strong struggle between shame and 
 hope. " If I could borrow it, I could repay it hereafter I 
 know I could I would not think of it otherwise." 
 
 " Very well, so be it I will lend you the money, on one con- 
 dition. Solemnly promise me, on your faith as a soldier and a 
 gentleman, that you will not, for ten years to come even if 
 you grow rich, and can ruin others touch card or dice-box. 
 Promise me that you will shun all gaming for gain, under what- 
 ever disguise whatever appellation. I will take your word as 
 my bond." 
 
 Legard, overjoyed, and scarcely trusting his senses, gave the 
 promise. 
 
 " Sleep, then, to-night, in hope and assurance of the morrow," 
 said the Englishman : " let this event be an omen to you, that 
 while there is a future there is no despair. One word more I 
 do not want your thanks ; it is easy to be generous at the ex- 
 pense of justice. Perhaps I have been so now. This sum, 
 which is to save your life a life you so little value might have 
 blessed fifty human beings better men than either the giver or 
 receiver. What is given to error, may perhaps be a wrong to 
 virtue. When you would ask others to support a career of blind 
 and selfish extravagance, pause and think over the breadless 
 lips this wasted gold would have fed ! the joyless hearts it 
 would have comforted ! You talk of repaying me : if the occa- 
 sion offer do so ; if not if we never meet again, and you have 
 it in your power, pay it for me to the poor ! And now, farewell." 
 
 " Stay give me the name of my preserver ! Mine is " 
 
 "Hush! what matter names ? This is a sacrifice we have both 
 made to honor. You will sooner recover your self-esteem (and 
 without self-esteem there is neither faith nor honor), when you 
 think that your family, your connections, are spared all associ- 
 ation with your own error ; that I may hear them spoken of 
 that I may mix with them without fancying that they owe me 
 gratitude." 
 
 "Your own name, then?" said Legard, deeply penetrated 
 with the delicate generosity of his benefactor. 
 
 " Tush ! " muttered the stranger impatiently, as he closed 
 the door.
 
 140 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSf ER1E5. 
 
 The next morning, when he woke, Legard saw upon the table 
 a small packet it contained a sum that exceeded the debt 
 named. On the envelope was written, "Remember the bond." 
 
 The stranger had already quitted Venice. He had not trav- 
 elled through the Italian cities under his own name, for he had 
 just returned from the solitudes of the East, and not yet hard- 
 ened to the publicity of the gossip which in towns haunted by 
 his countrymen attended a well-known name : that given to 
 Legard by the innkeeper, mutilated by Italian pronunciation, 
 the young man had never heard before, and soon forgot. He 
 paid his debts, and he scrupulously kept his word. The ad- 
 venture of that night went far, indeed, to reform and ennoble 
 the mind and habits of George Legard. Time passed, and he 
 never met his benefactor, till in the halls of Burleigh he recog- 
 nized the stranger in Maltravers. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 " Why value, then, that strength of mind they boast, 
 As often varying, and as often lost ?" 
 
 HAWKINS BROWNE (translated by SOAME JENYNS). 
 
 MALTRAVERS was lying at length, with his dogs around him, 
 under a beech-tree that threw its arms over one of the calm, 
 still pieces of water that relieved the groves of Burleigh, when 
 Colonel Legard spied him from the bridle-road which led through 
 the park to the house. The colonel dismounted, threw therein 
 over his arm ; and at the sound of the hoofs Maltravers turned, 
 saw the visitor, and rose ; he held out his hand to Legard, and 
 immediately began talking of indifferent matters. 
 
 Legard was embarrassed, but his nature was not one to profit 
 by the silence of a benefactor. "Mr. Maltravers," said he, with 
 graceful emotion, "though you have not yet allowed me an 
 opportunity to allude to it, do not think I am ungrateful for 
 the service you rendered me." 
 
 Maltravers looked grave, but made no reply. Legard resumed, 
 with a heightened color: 
 
 "I cannot say how I regret that it is not yet in my power to 
 discharge my debt ; but " 
 
 " When it is, you will do so. Pray think no more of it. Are 
 you going to the rectory?" 
 
 "No, not this morning; in fact, I leave B shire to-morrow. 
 
 Pleasant family, the Mertons." 
 
 "And Miss Cameron ?'"
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 14! 
 
 "Is certainly beautiful and very rich. How could she ever 
 think of marrying Lord Vargrave so much older ! she who 
 could have so many admirers ! " 
 
 "Not, surely, while betrothed to another?" 
 
 This was a refinement which Legard, though an honorable 
 man as men go, did not quite understand. "Oh," said he, 
 "that was by some eccentric old relation her father-in-law, I 
 think. Do you think she is bound by such an engagement?" 
 
 Maltravers made ne> reply, but amused himself by throwing a 
 stick into the water, and sending one of his dogs after it. 
 
 Legard looked on, and his affectionate disposition yearned to 
 make advances which something distant in the manner of Mal- 
 travers chilled and repelled. 
 
 When Legard was gone, Maltravers followed him with his 
 eyes. "And this is the man whom Cleveland thinks Evelyn 
 could love ! I could forgive her marrying Vargrave. Inde- 
 pendently of the conscientious feeling that may belong to the 
 engagement, Vargrave has wit, talent, intellect ; and this man 
 has nothing but the skin of the panther. Was I wrong to save 
 him ? No. Every human life, I suppose, has its uses. But 
 Evelyn I could despise her, if her heart was the fool of the 
 eye !" 
 
 These comments were most unjust to Legard ; but they were 
 just of that kind of injustice which the man of talent often 
 commits against the man of external advantages, and which 
 the latter still more often retaliates on the man of talent. As 
 Maltravers thus soliloquized, he was accosted by Mr. Cleveland. 
 
 "Come, Ernest, you must not cut these unfortunate Mertons 
 any longer. If you continue to do so, do you know what Mrs. 
 Hare and the world will say?" 
 
 "No. What?" 
 
 "That you have been refused by Miss Merton." 
 
 "That would 'be a calumny!" said Ernest, smiling. 
 
 "Or that you are hopelessly in love with Miss Cameron." 
 
 Maltravers started his proud heart swelled he pulled his 
 hat over his brows, and said, after a short pause : 
 
 "Well, Mrs. Hare and the world must not have it all their 
 own way ; and so, whenever you go to the rectory, take me 
 with you. '
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 * * * " The more he strove 
 
 To advance his suit, the farther from her love." 
 
 DRYDEN : Theodore and Honoria. 
 
 THE line of conduct which Vargrave now adopted with regard 
 to Evelyn was craftily conceived and carefully pursued. He 
 did not hazard a single syllable which might draw on him a re- 
 jection of his claims ; but, at the same time, no lover could be 
 more constant, more devoted, in attentions. In the presence 
 of others there was an air of familiar intimacy, that seemed to 
 arrogate a right, which to her he scrupulously shunned to assert. 
 Nothing could be more respectful, nay more timid, than his lan- 
 guage, or more calmly confident than his manner. Not having 
 much vanity, nor any very acute self-conceit, he did not delude 
 himself into the idea of winning Evelyn's affections ; he rather 
 sought to entangle her judgment to weave around her web 
 xipon web not the less dangerous for being invisible. He took 
 the compact as a matter of course as something not to be 
 broken by any possible chance ; her hand was to be his as a 
 right; it was her heart that he so anxiously sought to gain ! But 
 this distinction was so delicately drawn, and insisted upon so 
 little in any tangible form, that, whatever Evelyn's wishes for an 
 understanding, a much more experienced woman would have 
 been at a loss to ripen one. 
 
 Evelyn longed to confide in Caroline to consult her. But 
 Caroline, though still kind, had grown distant. "I wish," said 
 Evelyn, one night as she sate in Caroline's dressing-room " I 
 wish that I knew what tone to take with Lord Vargrave. I feel 
 more and more convinced that an union between us is impossi- 
 ble ; and yet, precisely because he does not press it, am I un- 
 able to tell him so. I wish you could undertake that task ; you 
 seem such friends with him." 
 
 "I ! " said Caroline, changing countenance. 
 
 "Yes, you ! Nay, do not blush or I shall think you envy me. 
 Could you not save us both from the pain that otherwise must 
 come, sooner or later ?" 
 
 " Lord Vargrave would not thank me for such an act of friend- 
 ship. Besides, Evelyn, consider it is scarcely possible to break 
 off this engagement now." 
 
 " Now! and why now ! " said Evelyn, astonished. 
 
 "The world believes it so implicitly observe whoever sits 
 next you rises if Lord Vargrave approaches ; the neighborhood
 
 ALICE; OR, THE MYSTERIES. ,43 
 
 talk of nothing else but your marriage ; and your fate, Evelyn, 
 is not to be pitied." 
 
 " I will leave this place I will go back to the cottage I can- 
 not bear this ! " said Evelyn, passionately wringing her hands. 
 
 " You do not love another, I am sure ; not young Mr. Hare, 
 with his green coat and straw-colored whiskers ; nor Sir Henry 
 Foxglove, with his how-d'ye-do like a view-hallo ; perhaps, in- 
 deed, Colonel Legard he is handsome. What ! do you blush 
 at his name ? No ; you say 'not Legard '; who else is there ?" 
 
 "You are cruel you trifle with me ! " said Evelyn, in tear- 
 ful reproach ; and she rose to go to her own room. 
 
 " My dear girl ! " said Caroline, touched by her evident pain; 
 "learn from me if I may say so that marriages are not made 
 in heaven ; yours will be as fortunate as earth can bestow. A 
 love-match is usually the least happy of all. Our foolish sex 
 demands so much in love ; and love, after all, is but one bless- 
 ing among many. Wealth and rank remain when love is but a 
 heap of ashes. For my part, I have chosen my destiny and my 
 husband." 
 
 " Your husband ! " 
 
 " Yes ! you see him in Lord Doltimore. I dare say we shall 
 be as happy as any amorous Corydon and Phillis." But there 
 was irony in Caroline's voice as she spoke ; and she sighed 
 heavily. Evelyn did not believe her serious ; and the friends 
 parted for the night. 
 
 " Mine is a strange fate ! " said Caroline to herself ; " I am 
 asked by the man whom I love, and who professes to love me, 
 to bestow myself on another, and to plead for him to a younger 
 and fairer bride. Well, I will obey him in the first ; the last is 
 a bitterer task, and I cannot perform it earnestly. Yet Vargrave 
 has a strange power over me ; and when I look round the world, 
 I see that he is right. In these most commonplace artifices, 
 there is yet a wild majesty that charms and fascinates me. It 
 is something to rule the world : and his and mine are natures 
 formed to do so." 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 " A smoke raised with the fume of sighs." 
 
 Romeo and Juliet. 
 
 IT is certain that Evelyn experienced for Maltravers senti- 
 ments which, if not love, might easily be mistaken for it. But 
 whether it were that master-passion, or merely its fanciful re-
 
 144 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 semblance, love, in early youth and innocent natures, if o! 
 sudden growth, is long before it makes itself apparent. Evelyn 
 had been prepared to feel an interest in her solitary neighbor. 
 His mind, as developed in his works, had half formed her own. 
 Her childish adventure with the stranger had never been for- 
 gotten. Her present knowledge of Maltravers was an union of 
 dangerous and often opposite associations the Ideal and the 
 Real. 
 
 Love, in its first dim and imperfect shape, is but imagination 
 concentrated on one object. It is a genius of the heart, re- 
 sembling that of the intellect ; it appeals to, it stirs up, it evokes 
 the sentiments and sympathies that lie most latent in our nature. 
 Its sigh is the spirit that moves over the ocean, and arouses the 
 Anadyomene into life. Therefore is it that MIND produces 
 affections deeper than those of external form ; therefore it is 
 that women are worshippers of glory, which is the palpable and 
 visible representative of a genius whose operations they cannot 
 always comprehend. Genius has so much in common with 
 love the imagination that animates one is so much the property 
 of the other that there is not a surer sign of the existence of 
 genius than the love that it creates and bequeaths. It penetrates 
 deeper than the reason it binds a nobler captive than the 
 fancy. As the sun upon the dial, it gives to the human heart 
 both its shadow and its light. Nations are worshippers and 
 wooers ; and Posterity learns from its oracles to dream, to aspire, 
 to adore ! 
 
 Had Maltravers declared the passion that consumed him, it 
 is probable that it would soon have kindled a return. But his 
 frequent absence, his sustained distance of manner, had served 
 to repress the feelings that in a young and virgin heart rarely 
 flow with much force, until they are invited and aroused. Le 
 besflin d'aimer in girls is, perhaps, in itself powerful ; but it is 
 fed by another want, le besoin d'etre aim fa ! If, therefore, 
 Evelyn at present felt love for Maltravers, the love had cer- 
 tainly not passed into the core of life : the tree had not so far 
 struck its roots but what it might have borne transplanting. 
 There was in her enough of the pride of sex to have recoiled 
 from the thouglvt of giving love to one who had not asked the 
 treasure. Capable of attachment, more trustful, and therefore, 
 if less vehement, more beautiful and durable than that which 
 had animated the brief tragedy of Florence Lascelles, she could 
 not have been the unknown correspondent, or revealed the 
 soul, because the features wore a mask. 
 
 It might also be allowed that, in some respects, Evelyn was
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 145 
 
 too young and inexperienced thoroughly to appreciate all that 
 was most truly lovable and attractive in Maltravers. At four- 
 and-twenty she would, perhaps, have felt no fear mingled with 
 her respect for him ; but seventeen and six-and-thirty is a wide 
 interval ! She never felt that there was that difference in years 
 until she had met Legard, and then at once she comprehended 
 it. With Legard she- had moved on equal terms : he was not 
 too wise too high for her every-day thoughts. He less ex- 
 cited her imagination less attracted her reverence. But, some- 
 how or other, that voice which proclaimed her power, those 
 eyes which never turned from hers, went nearer to her heart. 
 As Evelyn had once said to Caroline, " It was a great enigma!"- 
 her own feelings were a mystery to her ; and she reclined by 
 the "Golden Waterfalls " without tracing her likeness in the 
 glass of the pool below. 
 
 Maltravers appeared again at the rectory. He joined their 
 parties by day, and his evenings were spent with them as of old. 
 In this I know not precisely what were his motives perhaps he 
 did not know them himself. It might be that his pride was 
 roused ; it might be that he could not endure the notion that 
 Lord Vargrave should guess his secret, by an absence almost 
 otherwise unaccountable ; he could not patiently bear to give 
 Vargrave that triumph ; it might be that, in the sternness of 
 his self-esteem, he imagined he had already conquered all save 
 affectionate interest in Evelyn's fate, and trusted too vainly to 
 his own strength ; and it might be, also, that he could not re- 
 sist the temptation of seeing if Evelyn were contented with her 
 lot, and if Vargrave were worthy of the blessing that awaited 
 him. Whether one of these, or all united, made him resolve to 
 brave his danger or whether, after all, he yielded to a weakness, 
 or consented to what invited by Evelyn herself was almost 
 a social necessity, the reader, and not the narrator, shall decide. 
 
 Legard was gone ; but Doltimore remained in the neighbor- 
 hood, having hired a hunting-box not far from Sir John Mer- 
 ton's manors, over which he easily obtained permission to sport. 
 When he did not dine elsewhere, there was always a place for 
 him at the parson's hospitable board and that place was gen- 
 erally next to Caroline. Mr. and Mrs. Merton had given up 
 all hope of Mr. Maltravers for their eldest daughter ; and, 
 very strangely, this conviction came upon their minds on the 
 first day they made the acquaintance of the young lord. 
 
 " My dear," said the rector, as he was winding up his watch, 
 preparatory to entering the connubial couch "my dear, I don't 
 think Mr. Maltravers is a marrying man."
 
 146 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 "I was just going to make the same remark, "said Mrs. Mer- 
 ton, drawing the clothes over her. " Lord Doltimore is a very 
 fine young man his estates unencumbered. I like him vastly, 
 my love. He is evidently smitten with Caroline : so Lord Var- 
 grave and Mrs. Hare said." 
 
 " Sensible, shrewd woman, Mrs. Hare. By the by, we'll send 
 her a pineapple. Caroline was made to be a woman of rank ! " 
 
 ' Quite ; so much self-possession ! " 
 
 ' And if Mr. Maltravers would sell or let Burleigh ! " 
 
 ' It would be so pleasant ! " 
 
 ' Had you not better give Caroline a hint?" 
 
 ' My love, she is so sensible, let her go her own way." 
 
 ' You are right, my dear Befcsy ; I shall always say that no 
 one has more commonsense than you ; you have brought up 
 your children admirably ! " 
 
 " Dear Charles ! " 
 
 " It is coldish to-night, love," said the rector ; and he put out 
 the candle. 
 
 From that time, it was not the fault of Mr. and Mrs. Merton 
 if Lord Doltimore did not find their house the pleasantest in 
 the county. 
 
 One evening the rectory party were assembled together in 
 the cheerful drawing-room. Cleveland, Mr. Mertori, Sir John 
 and Lord Vargrave reluctantly compelled to make up the 
 fourth were at the whist-table ; Evelyn, Caroline, and Lord 
 Doltimore were seated round the fire, and Mrs. Merton was 
 working a footstool. The fire burned clear the curtains were 
 down the children in bed : it was a family picture of elegant 
 comfort. 
 
 Mr. Maltravers was announced. 
 
 "I am glad you are come at last," said Caroline, holding out 
 her fair hand. "Mr. Cleveland could not answer for you. We 
 are all disputing as to which mode of life is the happiest." 
 
 "And your opinion?" asked Maltravers, seating himself in 
 the vacant chair it chanced to be next to Evelyn's. 
 
 "My opinion is decidedly in favor f London. A metropoli- 
 tan life, with its perpetual and graceful excitements, the best 
 music the best companions the best things, in short. Pro- 
 vincial life is so dull, its pleasures so tiresome; to talk over the 
 last year's news, and wear out one's last year's dresses: culti- 
 vate a conservatory, and play Pope Joan with a young party. 
 Dreadful ! " 
 
 "I agree with Miss Merton, "said Lord Doltimore solemnly; 
 "not but what I like the country for three or four months in
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 147 
 
 the year, with good shooting and hunting, and a large house 
 properly filled independent of one's own neighborhood : but 
 if I am condemned to choose one place to live in, give me 
 Paris." 
 
 "Ah! Paris; I never was in Paris. I should so like to 
 travel !" said Caroline. 
 
 "But the inns abroad are so very bad," said Lord Doltimore ; 
 "how people can rave about Italy, I can't think. I never 
 suffered so much in my life as I did in Calabria; and at Venice 
 I was bit to death by mosquitoes. Nothing like Paris, I assure 
 you: don't you think so, Mr. Maltravers?" 
 
 " Perhaps I shall be able to answer you better in a short 
 time. I think of accompanying Mr. Cleveland to Paris." 
 
 "Indeed!" said Caroline. "Well, I envy you; but it is a 
 sudden resolution?" 
 
 ' Not very." 
 
 ' Do you stay long ?" asked Lord Doltimore. 
 
 ' My stay is uncertain." 
 
 'And you won't let Burleigh in the meanwhile?" 
 
 'Let Burleigh? No; if it once pass from my hands it will 
 be for ever ! " 
 
 Maltravers spoke gravely, and the subject was changed. 
 Lord Doltimore challenged Caroline to chess. 
 
 They sate down, and Lord Doltimore arranged the pieces. 
 
 "Sensible man, Mr. Maltravers," said the young lord; "but 
 I don't hit it off with him : Vargrave is more agreeable. Don't 
 you think so?" 
 
 "Y-e-s." 
 
 " Lord Vargrave is very kind to me ; I never remember any 
 one being more so, got Legard that appointment solely 
 because it would please me very friendly fellow ! I mean to 
 put myself under his wing next session ! " 
 
 "You could not do better, I'm sure," said Caroline; "he is 
 so much looked up to I dare say he will be prime minister 
 one of these days." 
 
 "I take the bishop : do you think so really ? you are rather 
 a politician ?" 
 
 " Oh no ; not much of that. But my father and my uncle 
 are staunch politicians ; gentlemen know so much more than 
 ladies. We should always go by their opinions. I think I will 
 take the queen's pawn your politics are the same as Lord 
 Vargrave's?" 
 
 "Yes, I fancy so : at least I shall leave my proxy with him. 
 Glad you don't like politics great bore."
 
 148 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 "Why, so young, so connected as you are " Caroline stopped 
 short, and made a wrong move. 
 
 "I wish we were going to Paris together, we should enjoy it 
 so," and Lord Doltimore's knight checked the tower and 
 queen. 
 
 Caroline coughed, and stretched her hand quickly to move. 
 
 " Pardon me, you will lose the game if you do so!" and 
 Doltimore placed his hand on hers their eyes met Caroline 
 turned away, and Lord Doltimore settled his right collar. 
 
 "And is it true? are you really going to leave us?" said 
 Evelyn, and she felt very sad. But still the sadness might 
 not be that of love ; she had felt sad after Legard had gone. 
 
 "I do not think I shall long stay away," said Maltravers, 
 trying to speak indifferently. "Burleigh has become more dear 
 to me than it was in earlier youth ; perhaps, because I have 
 made myself duties there: and in other places I am but an 
 isolated and useless unit in the great mass." 
 
 "You! everywhere you must have occupations and re- 
 sources everywhere you must find yourself not alone. But 
 you will not go yet?" 
 
 "Not yet : no. (Evelyn's spirits rose.) Have you read the 
 book I sent you?" (It was one of De StaeTs.) 
 
 "Yes ; but it disappoints me." 
 
 "And why? it is eloquent?" 
 
 "But is it true? is there so much melancholy in life? are the 
 affections so full of bitterness? For me, I am so happy when 
 with those I love ! When I am with my mother, the air seems 
 more fragrant the skies more blue : it is surely not affection, 
 but the absence of it, that makes us melancholy?" 
 
 "Perhaps so ; but if we had never known affection, we might 
 not miss it : and the brilliant Frenchwoman speaks from mem- 
 ory, while you speak from hope Memory, which is the ghost 
 of joy : yet surely, even in the indulgence of affection, there is 
 at times a certain melancholy a certain fear. Have you never 
 felt it, even with with your mother?" 
 
 "Ah, yes! when she suffered, or when I have thought she 
 loved me less than I desired." 
 
 "That must have been an idle and vain thought. Your 
 mother ! does she resemble you ? " 
 
 "I wish I could think so. Oh, if you knew her! I have 
 longed so often that you were acquainted with each other ! It 
 was she who taught me to sing your songs." 
 
 " My dear Mrs, Hare, we may as well throw up our cards,"
 
 ALICE; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 149 
 
 said the keen, clear voice of Lord Vargrave : "you have played 
 most admirably, and I know that your last card will be the ace 
 of trumps ; still the luck is against us." 
 
 " No, no ; pray play it out, my lord." 
 
 "Quite useless, ma'am," said Sir John, showing two honors. 
 " We have only the trick to make." 
 
 "Quite useless," echoed Lumley, tossing down his sovereigns, 
 and rising with a careless yawn. 
 
 "How d'ye do, Maltravers ? " 
 
 Maltravers rose and Vargrave turned to Evelyn, and addressed 
 her in a whisper. The proud Maltravers walked away, and 
 suppressed a sigh ; a moment more, and he saw Lord Vargrave 
 occupying the chair he had left vacant. He laid his hand on 
 Cleveland's shoulder. 
 
 "The carriage is waiting are you ready?" 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 " Obscuris vera involvens. " * VIRGIL. 
 
 A DAY or two after the date of the last chapter, Evelyn and 
 Caroline were riding out with Lord Vargrave and Mr. Merton, 
 and on returning home they passed theugh the village of Bur- 
 leigh. 
 
 "Maltravers, I suppose, has an eye to the county, one of 
 these days," said Lord Vargrave, who honestly fancied that a 
 man's eyes were always directed towards something for his own 
 interest or advancement ; " otherwise he could not surely take 
 all this trouble about workhouses and paupers. Who could 
 ever have imagined my romantic friend would sink into a 
 country squire ?" 
 
 " It is astonishing what talent and energy he throws into every 
 thing he attempts," said the parson. "One could not, indeed, 
 have supposed that a man of genius could make a man of 
 business." 
 
 " Flattering to your humble servant whom all the world 
 allow to be the last, and deny to be the first. But your remark 
 shows what a sad possession genius is : like the rest of the world, 
 you fancy that it cannot be of the least possible use. If a man 
 is called a genius, it means that he is to be thrust out of all the 
 good things in this life. He is not fit for anything but a garret ! 
 Put a genius into office ! make a genius a. bishop ! or a lord 
 
 * Wrapping truth in obscurity.
 
 150 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 chancellor ? the world would be turned topsyturvy ! You see 
 that you are quite astonished that a genius can be even a county 
 magistrate, and know the difference between a spade and a 
 poker ! In fact, a genius is supposed to be the most ignorant, 
 impracticable, good-for-nothing, do-nothing sort of thing that 
 ever walked upon two legs. Well, when I began life, I took 
 excellent care that nobody should take me for a genius ; and it 
 is only within the last year or two that I have ventured to emerge 
 a little out of my shell. I have not been the better for it ; I 
 was getting on faster while I was merely a plodder. The world 
 is so fond of that droll fable, the hare and the tortoise it really 
 believes because ( I suppose the fable to be true ! ) a tortoise 
 once beat a hare, that all tortoises are much better runners than 
 hares possibly can be. Mediocre men have the monopoly of 
 the loaves and fishes ; and even when talent does rise in life, it 
 is a talent which only differs from mediocrity by being more 
 energetic and bustling." 
 
 " You are bitter, Lord Vargrave," said Caroline, laughing ; 
 " yet surely you have had no reason to complain of the non- 
 appreciation of talent ? " 
 
 " Humph ! if I had had a grain more talent I should have 
 been crushed by it. There is a subtle allegory in the story of 
 the lean poet, who put lead in his pocket to prevent being blown 
 away ! Mais a nos moutons to return to Maltravers. Let us 
 suppose that he was merely clever had not had a particle of 
 what is called genius been merely a hard-working, able gentle- 
 man, of good character and fortune he might be half-way up 
 the hill by this time whereas now, what is he? Less before the 
 public than he was at twenty-eight a discontented anchorite, 
 a meditative idler." 
 
 " No, not that," said Evelyn warmly, and then checked herself. 
 
 Lord Vargrave looked at her sharply ; but his knowledge of 
 life told him that Legard was a much more dangerous rival 
 than Maltravers. Now and then, it is true, a suspicion to the 
 contrary crossed him ; but it did not take root and become a 
 serious apprehension. Still he did not quite like the tone of 
 voice in which Evelyn had put her abrupt negative, and said 
 with a slight sneer : 
 
 " If not that, what is he?" 
 
 " One who purchased, by the noblest exertions, the right to 
 be idle," said Evelyn, with spirit ; " and whom genius itself 
 will not suffer to be idle long." 
 
 "Besides," said Mr. Merton, "he has won a high reputation, 
 which he cannot lose merely by not seeking to increase it."
 
 ALICE; OR, THE MVaTERIES. I$I 
 
 " Reputation ! oil yes ! \ve give men like that men of 
 genius a large property in the clouds, in order to justify our- 
 selves in pushing them out of our way below. But if they are 
 contented with fame, why, they deserve their fate. Hang fame ! 
 give me power." 
 
 "And is there no power in genius?" said Evelyn, with deepen- 
 ing fervor ; " no power over the mind, and the heart, and the 
 thought ; no power over its own time over posterity over 
 nations yet uncivilized races yet unborn?" 
 
 This burst from one so simple and young as Evelyn seemed 
 to Vargrave so surprising, that he stared on her without saying 
 a word. 
 
 " You will laugh at my championship," she added, with a 
 blush and a smile ; " but you provoked the encounter." 
 
 " And you have won the battle," said Vargrave, with prompt 
 gallantry. " My charming ward, every day develops in you 
 some new gift of nature ! " 
 
 Caroline, with a movement of impatience, put her horse into 
 a canter. 
 
 Just at this time, from a cross-road, emerged a horseman it 
 was Maltravers. The party halted salutations were exchanged. 
 
 " I suppose you have been enjoying the sweet business of 
 squiredom," said Vargrave gayly : " Atticus and his farm 
 classical associations ! Charming weather for the agriculturists, 
 eh ! what news about corn and barley? I suppose our English 
 habit of talking on the weather arose when we were all a squire- 
 archal, farming, George the Third kind of people ? Weather is 
 really a serious matter to gentlemen who are interested in beans 
 and vetches, wheat and hay. You hang your happiness upon 
 the changes of the moon !" 
 
 " As you upon the smiles of a minister. The weather of a court 
 is more capricious than that of the skies ; at least we are better 
 husbandmen than you who sow the wind and reap the whirlwind." 
 
 i Well retorted: and really, when I look round, I am half 
 inclined to envy you. Were I not Vargrave, I would be 
 Maltravers." 
 
 It was, indeed, a scene that seemed quiet and serene with the 
 English union of the Feudal and the Pastoral life; the village- 
 green, with its trim scattered cottages the fields and pastures 
 that spread beyond the turf of the park behind, broken by the 
 shadows of the unequal grounds, with its mounds, and hollows, 
 and venerable groves, from which rose the turrets of the old 
 hall, its mullion windows gleaming in the western sun, a 
 scene that preached tranquillity and content, and might have
 
 152 ALICE; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 been equally grateful to humble philosophy and hereditary 
 pride. 
 
 " I never saw any place so peculiar in its character as Bur- 
 leigli," said the rector ; " the old seats left to us in England 
 are chiefly those of our great nobles. It is so rare to see one 
 that does not aspire beyond the residence of a private gentle- 
 man preserve all the relics of the Tudor age." 
 
 " I think," said Vargrave, turning to Evelyn, " that as, by my 
 uncle's will, your fortune is to be laid out in the purchase of 
 land, we could not find a better investment than Burleigh. So, 
 whenever you are inclined to sell, Maltravers, I think we must 
 outbid Doltimore. What say you, my fair ward?" 
 
 "Leave Burleigh in peace, I beseech you !" said Maltravers 
 angrily. 
 
 "That is said like a Digby," returned Vargrave. Aliens! 
 will you not come home with us ?" 
 
 "I thank you not to-day." 
 
 " We meet at Lord Raby's next Thursday. It is a ball given 
 almost wholly in honor of your return to Burleigh ; we are all 
 going it is my young consin's dtb&t at Knaresdean. We have 
 all an interest in her conquests." 
 
 Now as Maltravers looked up to answer, he caught Evelyn's 
 glance, and his voice faltered. 
 
 "Yes," he said, "we shall meet once again. Adieu!" He 
 wheeled round his horse, and they separated. 
 
 "I can bear this no more," said Maltravers to himself ; "I 
 overrated my strength. To see her thus day after day, and to 
 know her another's to writhe beneath his calm, unconscious 
 assertion of his rights. Happy Vargrave! and yet, ah! will 
 she be happy? Oh, could I think so !" 
 
 Thus soliloquizing, he suffered the rein to fall on the neck 
 of his horse, which paced slowly home through the village^ till 
 it stopped as if in the mechanism of custom at the door of a 
 cottage, a stone's throw from the lodge. At this door, indeed, 
 for several successive days, had Maltravers stopped regularly ; 
 it was now tenanted by the poor woman, his introduction to 
 whom has been before narrated. She had recovered from the 
 immediate effects of the injury she had sustained ; but her con- 
 stitution, greatly broken by previous suffering and exhaustion, 
 had received a mortal shock. She was hurt inwardly ; and the 
 surgeon informed Maltravers that she had not many months to 
 live. He had placed her under the roof of one of his favorite 
 cottagers, where she received all the assistance and alleviation 
 that careful nursing and medical advice could give her.
 
 ALICE J OR, THE MYSTERIES. 153 
 
 This poor woman, whose name was Sarah Elton, interested 
 Maltraversmuch ; she had known better days: there was a cer- 
 tain propriety in her expressions which denoted an education 
 superior to her circumstances ; and what touched Maltravers 
 most, she seemed far more to feel her husband's death than her 
 own sufferings ; which, somehow or other, is not common with 
 widows the other side of forty ! We say that youth easily con- 
 soles itself for the robberies of the grave middle age is a still 
 better self-comforter. When Mrs. Elton found herself installed 
 in the cottage, she looked round and burst into tears. 
 
 "And William is not here !" she said. "Friends friends ! 
 if we had had but one such friend before he died ! " 
 
 Maltravers was pleased that her first thought was rather that 
 of sorrow for the dead, than of gratitude for the living. Yet 
 Mrs. Elton was grateful simply, honestly, deeply grateful ; her 
 manner, her voice, betokened it. And she seemed so glad when 
 her benefactor called to speak kindly, and inquire cordially, that 
 Maltravers did so constantly; at first, from a compassionate, and 
 at last, from a selfish motive for who is not pleased to give 
 pleasure ? And Maltravers had so few in the world to care for 
 him, that perhaps he was flattered by the grateful respect of 
 this humble stranger. 
 
 When his horse stopped, the cottager's daughter opened the 
 door and curtsied it was an invitation to enter ; and he threw 
 his rein over the paling and walked into the cottage. 
 
 Mrs. Elton, who had been seated by the open casement, rose 
 to receive him. But Maltravers made her sit down, and soon 
 put her at her ease. The woman and her daughter who occupied 
 the cottage retired into the garden ; and Mrs. Elton, watching 
 them withdraw, then exclaimed abruptly: 
 
 "Oh, sir! I have so longed to see you this morning. I so 
 long to make bold to ask you whether, indeed, I dreamed it or 
 did I, when you first took me to your house did I see " She 
 stopped abruptly : and, though she strove to suppress her emo- 
 tion, it was too strong for her efforts she sunk back on her 
 chair, pale as death, and almost gasped for breath. 
 
 Maltravers waited in surprise for her recovery. 
 
 "I beg pardon, sir I was thinking of days long past ; and 
 but I wished to ask whether, when I lay in your hall, almost in- 
 sensible, any one besides yourself and your servants were pres- 
 ent? or was it" added the woman with a shudder "was it 
 the dead ? " 
 
 " I remember," said Maltravers, much struck and interested 
 in her question and manner, "that a lady was present."
 
 154 ALICE ; OR, THE MVSTER1ES. 
 
 " It is so it is so ! " cried the woman, half-rising and clasping 
 her hands. "And she passed by the cottage a little time ago ; 
 her veil was thrown aside as she turned that fair young face to- 
 wards the cottage. Her name, sir oh ! what is her name? It 
 was the same the same face that shone across me in that hour 
 of pain. I did not dream ! I was not mad ! " 
 
 " Compose yourself ; you could never I think have seen that 
 lady before : her name is Cameron." 
 
 "Cameron Cameron ! " the woman shook her head mourn- 
 fully. " No ; that name is strange to me : and her mother, sir 
 she is dead?" 
 
 " No ; her mother lives." 
 
 A shade came over the face of the sufferer ; and she said, 
 after a pause. 
 
 " My eyes deceive me then, sir; and, indeed, I feel that my 
 head is touched, and I wander sometimes. But the likeness was 
 so great ; yet that young lady is even lovelier ! " 
 
 " Likenesses are very deceitful, and very capricious ; and de- 
 pend more on fancy than reality. One person discovers a like- 
 ness between faces most dissimilar, a likeness invisible to others. 
 But who does Miss Cameron resemble?" 
 
 " One now dead, sir ; dead many years ago. But it is a long 
 story, and one that lies heavy on my conscience. Some day or 
 other, if you will give me leave, sir, I will unburden myself to 
 you." 
 
 " If I can assist you in any way, command me. Meanwhile, 
 have you no friends, no relations, no children, whom you would 
 wish to see ? " 
 
 " Children ! no, sir ; I never had but one child of my own" 
 (she laid an emphasis on the last words), and that died in a 
 foreign land ! " 
 
 " And no other relatives ? " 
 
 " None, sir. My history is very short and simple. I was well 
 brought up an only child. My father was a small farmer; he 
 died when I was sixteen, and I went into service with a kind old 
 lady and her daughter, who treated me more as a companion 
 than a servant. I was a vain, giddy girl then, sir. A young 
 man, the son of a neighboring farmer, courted me, and I was 
 much attached to him ; but neither of us had money, and his 
 parents would not give their consent to our marrying. I was 
 silly enough to think that, if William loved me, he should have 
 braved all; and his prudence mortified me; so I married another 
 whom I did not love. I was rightly punished, for he ill-used me, 
 and took to drinking ; I returned to my old service to escape
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 155 
 
 from him for I was with child and my life was in danger from 
 his violence. He died suddenly and in debt. And then, after- 
 wards, a gentleman a rich gentleman to whom I rendered a 
 service (do not misunderstand me, sir, if I say the service was 
 one of which I repent), gave me money and made me rich enough 
 to marry my first lover; and William and I went to America. 
 We lived many years in New York upon our little fortune com- 
 fortably ; and I was a long while happy, for I had always loved 
 William dearly. My first affliction was the death of my child 
 by my first husband ; but I was soon roused from my grief. 
 William schemed and speculated, as everybody does in America, 
 and so we lost all: and William was weakly and could not work. 
 At length he got the place of steward on board a vessel from 
 New York to Liverpool, and I was taken to assist in the cabin. 
 We wanted to come to London: I thought my old benefactor 
 might do something for us, though he had never answered the 
 letters I sent him. But poor William fell ill on board, and died 
 in sight of land." 
 
 Mrs. Elton wept bitterly, but with the subdued grief of one 
 to whom tears have been familiar ; and when she recovered, 
 she soon brought her humble tale to an end. She herself, in- 
 capacitated from all work by sorrow and a breaking constitution, 
 was left in the streets of Liverpool without other means of sub- 
 sistence than the charitable contributions of the passengers and 
 sailors on board the vessel. With this sum she had gone to 
 London, where she found her old patron had been long since 
 dead, and she had no claims on his family. She had, on quit- 
 ting England, left one relation settled in a town in the North ; 
 thither she now repaired, to find her last hope wrecked ; the 
 relation also was dead and gone. Her money was now spent, 
 and she had begged her way along the road, or through the 
 lanes, she scarce knew whither, till the accident, which, in 
 shortening her life, had raised up a friend for its close. 
 
 "And such, sir," said she in conclusion, "such has been the 
 story of my life, except one part of it, which, if I get stronger, 
 I can tell better ; but you will excuse that now." 
 
 " And are you comfortable and contented, my poor friend ? 
 These people are kind to you ? " 
 
 " Oh, so kind ! and every night we all pray for you, sir ; 
 you ought to be happy,, if the blessings of the poor can avail 
 the rich." 
 
 Maltravers remounted his horse and sought his home ; and 
 his heart was lighter than before he entered that cottage. But 
 at evening Cleveland talked of Vargrave and Evelyn, and the
 
 156 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 good fortune of one, and the charms of the other ; and the 
 wound, so well concealed, bled afresh. 
 
 "I heard from De Montaigne the other day," said Ernest, 
 just as they were retiring for the night, "and his letter decides 
 my movements. If you will accept me, then, as a travelling 
 companion, I will go with you to Paris. Have you made up 
 your mind to leave Burleigh on Saturday ?" 
 
 " Yes ; that gives us a day to recover from Lord Raby's ball. 
 I am so delighted at your offer ; we need only stay a day or so 
 in town. The excursion will do you good your spirits, my 
 dear Ernest, seem more dejected than when you first returned 
 to England : you live too much alone here, you will enjoy 
 Burleigh more on your return. And perhaps then you will 
 open the old house a little more to the neighborhood, and to 
 your friends. They expect it ; you are looked to for the county." 
 
 " I am done with politics, and sicken but for peace." 
 
 " Pick up a wife in Paris, and you will then know that peace 
 is an impossible possession," said the old bachelor, laughing. 
 
 BOOK V. 
 
 ' otieJ 1 loaaiv bay irteov rifi'iov navrbc. HES. Op. et Dies, 40. 
 
 Fools blind to truth ; nor know their erring soul 
 How much the half is better than the whole. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 " Do, as the Heavens have done ; forget your evil : 
 With them, forgive yourself." The Winter's Tale. 
 
 " * * * The sweel'st companion, that e'er man 
 Bred his hopes out of." Ibid. 
 
 THE curate of Brook-Green was sitting outside his door. 
 The vicarage which he inhabited was a straggling, irregular, 
 but picturesque building ; humble enough to suit the means of 
 the curate, yet large enough to accommodate the vicar. It had 
 been built in an age when the indigentes et pauperes for whom 
 universities were founded supplied, mere than they do now, the 
 fountains of the Christian ministry when pastor and flock were 
 more on an equality.
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 157 
 
 From under a rude and arched porch, with an oaken settle 
 on either side for the poor visitor, the door opened at once 
 upon the old-fashioned parlor a homely but pleasant room, 
 with one wide but low cottage casement, beneath which stood 
 the dark shining table, that supported the large Bible in its 
 green baize cover ; the Concordance, and the last Sunday's 
 sermon, in its jetty case. There by the fireplace stood the 
 bachelor's round elbow-chair, with a needlework cushion at 
 the back ; a walnut-tree bureau ; another table or two ; half a 
 dozen plain chairs constituted the rest of the furniture, saving 
 some two or three hundred volumes, ranged in neat shelves on 
 the clean wainscoted walls. There was another room, to which 
 you ascended by two steps, communicating with this parlor, 
 smaller, but finer, and inhabited only on festive days, when 
 Lady Vargrave, or some other quiet neighbor, came to drink 
 tea with the good curate. 
 
 An old housekeeper and her grandson a young fellow of 
 about two-and-twenty, who tended the garden, milked the cow, 
 and did in fact what he was wanted to do composed the estab- 
 lishment of the humble minister. 
 
 We have digressed from Mr. Aubrey himself. 
 
 The curate was seated, then, one fine summer morning, on a 
 bench at the left of his porch, screened from the sun by the 
 cool boughs of a chestnut-tree, the shadow of which half covered 
 the little lawn that separated the precincts of the house from those 
 of silent Death and everlasting Hope ; above the irregular and 
 moss-grown paling rose the village church ; and, through open- 
 ings in the trees, beyond the burial-ground, partially gleamed 
 the white walls of Lady Vargrave's cottage, and were seen at 
 a distance the sails on the 
 
 " Mighty waters rolling evermore." 
 
 The old man was calmly enjoying the beauty of the morning, 
 the freshness of the air, the warmth of the dancing beam, and 
 not least, perhaps, his own peaceful thoughts ; the spontaneous 
 children of a contemplative spirit and a quiet conscience. His 
 was the age when we most sensitively enjoy the mere sense of 
 existence ; when the face of Nature, and a passive conviction 
 of the benevolence of our Great Father, suffice to create a serene 
 and ineffable happiness, which rarely visits us till we have done 
 with the passions ; till memories, if more alive than heretofore, 
 are yet mellowed in the hues of time, and Faith softens into 
 harmony all their asperities and harshness ; till nothing within 
 us remains to cast a shadow over the things without ; and on
 
 158 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 the verge of life, the Angels are nearer to us than of yore. 
 There is an old age which has more youth of heart than youth 
 itself ! 
 
 As the old man thus sate, the little gate through which, on 
 Sabbath days, he was wont to pass from the humble mansion 
 to the house of God noiselessly opened, and Lady Vargrave 
 appeared. 
 
 The curate rose when he perceived her ; and the lady's fair 
 features were lighted up with a gentle pleasure, as she pressed 
 his hand and returned his salutation. 
 
 There was a peculiarity in Lady Vargrave's countenance which 
 I have rarely seen in others. Her smile, which was singularly 
 expressive, came less from the lip than from the eyes ; it was 
 almost as if the brow smiled it was as the sudden and momen- 
 tary vanishing of a light but melancholy cloud that usually 
 rested upon the features, placid as they were. 
 
 They sate down on the rustic bench, and the sea-breeze 
 wantoned amongst the quivering leaves of the chestnut-tree that 
 overhung their seat. 
 
 "I have come, as usual, to consult my kind friend," said Lady 
 Vargrave; "and, as usual also, it is about our absent Evelyn." 
 
 " Have you heard again from her, this morning ? " 
 
 " Yes ; and her letter increases the anxiety which your obser- 
 vation, so much deeper than mine, first awakened." 
 
 "Does she then write much of Lord Vargrave ?" 
 
 " Not a great deal ; but the little she does say, betrays how 
 much she shrinks from the union my poor husband desired : 
 more, indeed, than ever ! But this is not all, nor the worst : 
 for you know, that the late lord had provided against that prob- 
 ability (he loved her so tenderly, his ambition for her only 
 came from his affection) and the letter he left behind him 
 pardons and releases her, if she revolts from the choice he him- 
 self preferred." 
 
 " Lord Vargrave is perhaps a generous, he certainly seems a 
 candid, man, and he must be sensible that his uncle has already 
 d-ene all that justice required." 
 
 " I think so. But this, as I said, is not all ; I have brought 
 the letter to show you. It seems to me as you apprehended. 
 This Mr. Maltravers has wound himself about her thoughts 
 more than she herself imagines ; you see how she dwells on all 
 that concerns him, and how, after checking herself, she returns 
 again and again to the same subject." 
 
 The curate put on his spectacles, and took the letter. It was 
 a strange thing, that old gray-haired minister evincing such grave
 
 ALICE ; OR, 1'HE MYSTERIES. 159 
 
 interest in the secrets of that young heart ! But they who 
 would take charge of the soul, must never be too wise to regard 
 the heart ! 
 
 Lady Vargrave looked over his shoulder as he bent down to 
 read, and at times placed her finger on such passages as she 
 wished him to note. The old curate nodded as she did so; 
 but neither spoke till the letter was concluded. 
 
 The curate then folded up the epistle, took off his spectacles, 
 hemmed, and looked grave. 
 
 " Well," said Lady Vargrave, anxiously, " well ? " 
 
 " My dear friend, the letter requires consideration. In the 
 first place, it is clear to me that, in spite of Lord Vargrave's 
 presence at the rectory, his lordship so manages matters that 
 the poor child is unable of herself to bring that matter to a 
 conclusion. And, indeed, to a mind so sensitively delicate and 
 honorable, it is no easy task." 
 
 " Shall I write to Lord Vargrave ? " 
 
 " Let us think of it. In the mean while, this Mr. Maltravers " 
 
 " Ah, this Mr. Maltravers ! " 
 
 " The child shows us more of her heart than she thinks of; 
 and yet I myself am puzzled. If you observe, she has only 
 once or twice spoken of the Colonel Legard, whom she has 
 made acquaintance with ; while she treats at length of Mr. 
 Maltravers, and confesses the effect he has produced on her 
 mind. Yet, do you know, I more dread the caution respecting 
 the first, than all the candor that betrays the influence of the 
 last ? There is a great difference between first fancy and first 
 love." 
 
 " Is there ? " said the lady, abstractedly. 
 
 " Again, neither of us is acquainted with this singular man 
 I mean Maltravers ; his character, temper, and principles of 
 all of which Evelyn is too young, too guileless, to judge for 
 herself. One thing, however, in her letter speaks in his favor." 
 
 " What is that ? " 
 
 " He absents himself from her. This, if he has discovered 
 her secret or if he himself is sensible of too great a charm in 
 her presence would be the natural course that an honorable 
 and a strong mind would pursue." 
 
 " What ! If he love her ? " 
 
 " Yes while he believes her hand is engaged to another." 
 
 "True! What shall be done if Evelyn should love, and 
 love in vain ? Ah, it is the misery of a whole existence ! " 
 
 "Perhaps she had better return to us," said Mr. Aubrey; 
 " and yet, if already it be too late, and her affections are en-
 
 160 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 gaged we should still remain in ignorance respecting the 
 motives and mind of the object of her attachment. And he, 
 too, might not know the true nature of the obstacle connected 
 with Lord Vargrave's claims." 
 
 " Shall I, then, go to her ? You know how I shrink from 
 strangers how I fear curiosity, doubts, and questions how 
 (and Lady Vargrave's voice faltered) how unfitted I am for 
 for "she stopped short, and a faint blush overspread her cheeks. 
 
 The curate understood her, and was moved. 
 
 " Dear friend," said he, " will you intrust this charge to my- 
 self? You know how Evelyn is endeared to me by certain 
 recollections ! Perhaps, better than you, I may be enabled 
 silently to examine if this man be worthy of her, and one who 
 could secure her happiness ; perhaps, better than you, I may 
 ascertain the exact nature of her own feelings toward him; 
 perhaps too, better than you, I may effect an understanding 
 with Lord Vargrave." 
 
 " You are always my kindest friend," said the lady, with 
 emotion; "how much I already owe you! what hopes beyond 
 the grave ! what " 
 
 "Hush!" interrupted the curate gently; "your own good 
 heart and pure intentions have worked out your own atone- 
 ment may I hope also your own content. Let us return to 
 our Evelyn : poor child ! how unlike this despondent letter to 
 her gay, light spirits when with us! We acted for the best; yet, 
 perhaps, we did wrong to yield her up to strangers. And this 
 Maltravers ! with her enthusiasm and quick susceptibilities to 
 genius, she was half prepared to imagine him all she depicts 
 him to be. - He must have a spell in his works that I have not 
 discovered for at times it seems to operate even on you." 
 
 " Because," said Lady Vargrave, " they remind me of his 
 conversation his habits of thought. If like him in other 
 things, Evelyn may indeed be happy ! " 
 
 "And if," said the curate, curiously " If now that you are 
 free, you were ever to meet with him again, and his memory 
 had been as faithful as yours and if he offered the sole atone- 
 ment in his power, for all that his early error cost you if such 
 a chance should happen in the vicissitudes of life, you would " 
 
 The curate stopped short ; for he was struck by the exceed- 
 ing paleness of his friend's cheek, and the tremor of her deli- 
 cate frame. 
 
 " If that were to happen," said she, in a very low voice; " if 
 we were to meet again, and if he were as you and Mrs. Leslie 
 seem to think poor, and, like myself, humbly born if my for-
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. tfilt 
 
 tune could assist him if my love could still changed, altered 
 as I am ah ! do not talk of it I cannot bear the thought of 
 happiness ! And yet, if before I die I couldbui see him again!" 
 She clasped her hands fervently as she spoke, and the blush that 
 overspread her face threw over it so much of bloom and fresh- 
 ness, that even Evelyn, at that moment, would scarcely have 
 seemed more young. " Enough," she added, after a little 
 while, as the glow died away. " It is but a foolish hope ; all 
 earthly love is buried; and my heart is there ! " she pointed to 
 the heavens, and both were silent 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 " Quibus otio vel magnified, vel molliter vivere copia erat, incerta pro 
 certis malebant." * SALLUST. 
 
 LORD RABY one of the wealthiest and most splendid noble- 
 men in England was prouder, perhaps, of his provincial dis- 
 tinctions than the eminence of his rank or the fashion of his 
 wife. The magnificent chateaux the immense estates of our 
 English peers tend to preserve to us, in spite of the freedom, 
 bustle, and commercial grandeur of our people, more of the 
 Norman attributes of aristocracy than can be found in other 
 countries. In his county, the great noble is a petty prince 
 his house is a court his possessions and munificence are a 
 boast to every proprietor in his district. They are as fond of 
 talking of the Earl's or the Duke's movements and entertain- 
 ments, as Dangeau was of the gossip of the Tuileries and Ver- 
 sailles. 
 
 Lord Raby, while affecting, as lieutenant of the county, to 
 make no political distinctions between squire and squire 
 hospitable and affable to all still, by that very absence of 
 exclusiveness, gave a tone to the politics of the whole county ; 
 and converted many who had once thought differently on the 
 respective virtues of Whigs and Tories. A great man never 
 loses so much as when he exhibits intolerance, or parades the 
 right of persecution. 
 
 "My tenants shall vote exactly as they please," said Lord 
 Raby ; and he was never known to have a tenant vote against 
 his wishes ! Keeping a vigilant eye on all the interests, and 
 conciliating all the proprietors, in the county, he not only never 
 
 * They who had the means to live at ease, either in splendor or in luxury, preferred 
 the uncertainty of change, to their natural security.
 
 162 ALICE; OR, THE MYSTI.RIES. 
 
 lost a friend, but he kept together a body of partisans that con- 
 stantly added to its numbers. 
 
 Sir John Merton's colleague, a young Lord Nelthorpe, who 
 could not speak three sentences if you took away his hat ; and 
 who, constant at Almack's, was not only inaudible, but invisible 
 in Parliament, had no chance of being re-elected. LordNel- 
 thorpe's father, the Earl of Mainwaring, was a new peer ; and, 
 next to Lord Raby, the richest nobleman in the county. Now, 
 though they were much of the same politics, Lord Raby hatecl 
 Lord Mainwaring. They were too near each other they 
 clashed they had the jealousy of rival princes I 
 
 Lord Raby was delighted at the notion of getting rid of Lord 
 Nelthorpe it would be so sensible a blow to the Mainwaring 
 interest. The party had been looking out for a new candidate, 
 and Maltravers had been much talked of. It is true that, when 
 in Parliament some years before, the politics of Maltravers had 
 differed from those of Lord Raby and his set. But Maltravers 
 had of late taken no share in politics had uttered no political 
 opinions was intimate with the electioneering Mertons was 
 supposed to be a discontented man and politicians believe in 
 no discontent that is not political. Whispers were afloat that 
 Maltravers had grown wise, and changed his views : some 
 remarks of his, more theoretical than practical, were quoted in 
 favor of this notion. Parties, too, had much changed since 
 Maltravers had appeared on the busy scene new questions had 
 arisen, and the old ones had died off. 
 
 Lord Raby and his party thought that, if Maltravers could 
 be secured to them, no one would better suit their purpose. 
 Political faction loves converts better even than consistent 
 adherents. A man's rise in life generally dates from a well- 
 timed rat. His high reputation his provincial rank as the 
 representative of the oldest commoner's family in the county 
 his age, which combined the energy of one period with the ex- 
 perience of another all united to accord Maltravers a prefer- 
 ence over richer men. Lord Raby had been pointedly cour- 
 teous and flattering to the master of Burleigh ; and he now 
 contrived it so that the brilliant entertainment he was about to 
 give might appear in compliment to a distinguished neighbor, 
 returned to fix his residence on his patrimonial property, while 
 in reality it might serve an electioneering purpose serve to 
 introduce Maltravers to the county, as if under his lordship's 
 own wing and minister to political uses that went beyond the 
 mere representation of the county. 
 
 Lord Vargrave had, during his stay at Merton Rectory, paid
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 163 
 
 several visits to Knaresdean, and held many private conversa- 
 tions with the marquess : the result of these conversations was 
 a close union of schemes and interests between the two noble- 
 men. Dissatisfied with the political conduct of government, 
 LordRaby was also dissatisfied that, from various party reasons, 
 a nobleman beneath himself in rank, and as he thought in influ- 
 ence, had obtained a preference in a recent vacancy among the 
 Knights of the Garter. And if Vargrave had a talent in the 
 world, it was in discovering the weak points of men whom he 
 sought to gain, and making the vanities of others conduce to 
 his own ambition. 
 
 The festivities of Knaresdean gave occasion to Lord Raby 
 to unite at his house the more prominent of those who thought 
 and acted in concert with Lord Vargrave ; and in this secret 
 senate, the operations for the following session were to be 
 seriously discussed and gravely determined. 
 
 On the day which was to be concluded with the ball at 
 Knaresdean, Lord Vargrave went before the rest of the Merton 
 party, for he was engaged to dine with the marquess. 
 
 On arriving at Knaresdean, Lumley found Lord Saxingham 
 and some other politicians, who had arrived the preceding day, 
 closeted with Lord Raby ; and Vargrave, who shone to yet 
 greater advantage in the diplomacy of party management than 
 in the arena of Parliament, brought penetration, energy, and 
 decision to timid and fluctuating councils. Lord Vargrave 
 lingered in the room after the first bell had summoned the 
 other guests to depart. 
 
 "My dear lord," said he then, "though no one would be 
 more glad than myself to secure Maltravers to our side, I very 
 much doubt whether you will succeed in doing so. On the one 
 hand, he appears altogether disgusted with politics and Parlia- 
 ment ; and, on the other hand, I fancy that reports of his change 
 of opinions are, if not wholly unfounded, very unduly colored. 
 Moreover, to do him justice, I think that he is not one to be 
 blinded and flattered into the pale of a party ; and your bird 
 will fly away, after you have wasted a bucketful of salt on his 
 tail." 
 
 "Very possibly," said Lord Raby, laughing; "you know him 
 better than I do. But there are many purposes to serve in 
 this matter purposes too provincial to interest you. In the 
 first place, we shall humble the Nelthorpe interest, merely by 
 showing that we do think of a new member: secondly, we shall 
 get up a manifestation of feeling that would be impossible, 
 unless we were provided with a centre of attraction : thirdly,
 
 1<$4 ALICE.; Ofe, THE MVSTERtElS, 
 
 we shall rouse a certain emulation among other county gentle- 
 men ; and if Maltravers decline, we shall have many applicants : 
 and fourthly, suppose Maltravers has not changed his opinions, 
 we shall make him suspected by the party he really does belong 
 to, and which would be somewhat formidable if he were to head 
 them. In fact, these are mere county tactics, that you can't 
 be expected to understand." 
 
 "I see you are quite right ; meanwhile you will at least have 
 an opportunity (though I say it, who should not say it) to pre- 
 sent to the county one of the prettiest young ladies that ever 
 graced the halls of Knaresdean." 
 
 " Ah, Miss Cameron ! I have heard much of her beauty : 
 you are a lucky fellow, Vargrave ! by the by, are we to say 
 anything of the engagement?" 
 
 " Why, indeed, my dear lord, it is now so publicly known, 
 that it would be false delicacy to affect concealment." 
 
 "Very well ; I understand." 
 
 " How long I have detained you a thousand pardons ! I 
 have but just time to dress. In four or five months I must re- 
 member to leave you a longer time for your toilet." 
 
 " Me how." 
 
 " Oh, the Duke of can't live long ; and I always observe, 
 
 that when a handsome man has the Garter, he takes a long time 
 pulling up his stockings." 
 
 " Ha, ha ! you are so droll, Vargrave." 
 
 "Ha, ha! I must be off." 
 
 " The more publicity is given to this arrangement, the more 
 difficult for Evelyn to shy at the leap," muttered Vargrave to 
 himself as he closed the door. "Thus do I make all things 
 useful to myself." 
 
 The dinner-party were assembled in the great drawing-room, 
 when Maltravers and Cleveland, also invited guests to the ban- 
 quet, were announced. Lord Raby received the former with 
 marked empressement; and the stately marchioness honored him 
 with her most gracious smile. Formal presentations to the rest 
 of the guests were interchanged ; and it was not till the circle 
 was fully gone through that Maltravers perceived, seated by 
 himself in a corner, to which he had shrunk on the entrance of 
 Maltravers, a gray-haired, solitary man it was Lord Saxing- 
 ham ! The last time they had met was in the death-chamber 
 of Florence ; and the old man forgot, for the moment, the an- 
 ticipated dukedom and the dreamed-of premiership ! and his 
 heart flew back to the grave of his only child ! They saluted 
 each other and shook hands in silence. And Vargrave whose
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MVStERlES. lG$ 
 
 eye was on tlicm Vargrave, whose arts had made that old man 
 childless, felt not a pang of remorse ! Living ever in the future, 
 Vargrave almost seemed to have lost his memory. He knew 
 rot what regret was. It is a condition of life with men thoroughly 
 worldly that they never look behind ! 
 
 The signal was given : in due order the party were marshalled 
 into the great hall a spacious and lofty chamber, which had 
 received its last alteration from the hand of Inigo Jones ; though 
 the massive ceiling, with its antique and grotesque masks, be- 
 trayed a much earlier date, and contrasted with the Corinthian 
 pilasters that adorned the walls, and supported the music gal- 
 lery from which waved the flags of modern warfare and its 
 mimicries. The Eagle of Napoleon, a token of the services of 
 Lord Raby's brother (a distinguished cavalry officer in command 
 at Waterloo), in juxtaposition with a much gayer and more 
 glittering banner, emblematic of the martial fame of Lord Raby 
 himself, as Colonel of the B shire volunteers ! 
 
 The music pealed from the gallery the plate glittered on the 
 board the ladies wore diamonds, and the gentlemen, who had 
 them, wore stars. It was a very fine sight, that banquet ! 
 such as became the festive day of a lord-lieutenant, whose an- 
 cestors had now defied, and now intermarried, with royalty. But 
 there was very little talk, and no merriment. People at the top 
 of the table drunk wine with those at the bottom ; and gentle- 
 men and ladies seated next to each other whispered languidly 
 in monosyllabic commune. On one side, Maltravers was 
 flanked by a Lady Somebody Something, who was rather deaf, 
 and very much frightened for fear he should talk Greek ; on 
 the other side he was relieved by Sir John Merton very civil, 
 very pompous, and talking, at strictured intervals, about county 
 matters, in a measured intonation, savoring of the House of 
 Commons jerk at the end of the sentence. 
 
 As the dinner advanced to its close, Sir John became a 
 little more diffuse, though his voice sunk into a whisper. 
 
 " I fear there will be a split in the Cabinet before Parliament 
 meets." 
 
 "Indeed!" 
 
 "Yes ; Vargrave and the Premier cannot pull together very 
 long. Clever man, Vargrave ! but he has not enough stake in 
 the country for a leader ! " 
 
 " All men have public character to stake ; and if that be 
 good, I suppose no stake can be better ? " 
 
 " Humph ! yes very true ; but still, when a man has land 
 and money, his opinions, in a country like this, very properly
 
 l66 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERtfcg. 
 
 carry more weight with them. If Vargrave, for instance, had 
 Lord Raby's property, no man could be more fit for a leader 
 a prime minister. We might then be sure that he would have 
 no selfish interest to further ; he would not play tricks with 
 his party you understand ? " 
 
 "Perfectly." 
 
 " I am not a party man, as you may remember ; indeed, you 
 and I have voted alike on the same questions. Measures, not 
 men that is my maxim ; but still I don't like to see men 
 placed above their proper stations." 
 
 " Maltravers a glass of wine," said Lord Vargrave across 
 the table. " Will you join us, Sir John ? " 
 
 Sir John bowed. 
 
 " Certainly," he resumed, " Vargrave is a pleasant man and 
 a good speaker ; but still they say he is so far from rich em- 
 barrassed, indeed. However, when he marries Miss Cameron 
 it may make a great difference give him more respectability ; 
 do -you know what her fortune is something immense?" 
 
 " Yes ; I believe so I don't know." 
 
 " My brother says that Vargrave is most amiable. The young 
 lady is very handsome, almost too handsome for a wife don't 
 you think so ? Beauties are very well in a ball-room ; but they 
 are not calculated for domestic life. I am sure you agree with 
 me. I have heard, indeed, that Miss Cameron is rather learned ; 
 but there is so much scandal in a country neighborhood, 
 people are so ill-natured. I dare say she is not more 
 learned than other young ladies, poor girl ! What do you 
 think ? " 
 
 "Miss Cameron is is very accomplished, I believe. And 
 so you think the Government cannot stand?" 
 
 " I don't say that very far from it : but I fear there must 
 be a change. However, if the country gentlemen hold together, 
 I do not doubt but what we shall weather the storm. The 
 landed interest, Mr. Maltravers, is the great stay of this country 
 the sheet-anchor, I may say. I suppose Lord Vargrave, who 
 seems, I must say, to have right notions on this head, will in- 
 vest Miss Cameron's fortune in land. But though one may buy 
 an estate, one can't buy an old family, Mr. Maltravers ! you 
 and I may be thankful for that. By the way, who was Miss 
 Cameron's mother, Lady Vargrave ! something low, I fear 
 nobody knows." 
 
 " I am not acquainted with Lady Vargrave ; your sister-in- 
 law speaks of her most highly. And the daughter in herself is 
 a sufficient guarantee for the virtues of the mother."
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 167 
 
 " Yes; and Vargrave on one side, at least, has himself nothing 
 in the way of family to boast of." 
 
 The ladies left the hall the gentlemen re-seated themselves. 
 Lord Raby made some remark on politics to Sir John Merton, 
 and the whole round of talkers immediately followed their leader. 
 
 " It is a thousand pities, Sir John," said Lord Raby, " that 
 you have not a colleague more worthy of you; Nelthorpe never 
 attends a committee, does he?" 
 
 " I cannot say that he is a very active member; but he is 
 young, and we must make allowances for him," said Sir John 
 discreetly: for he had no desire to oust his colleague it was 
 agreeable enough to be the efficient member. 
 
 " In these times," said Lord Raby loftily, " allowances are 
 not to be made for systematic neglect of duty; we shall have a 
 stormy session the opposition is no longer to be despised 
 perhaps a dissolution may be nearer at hand than we think 
 for: as for Nelthorpe, he cannot come in again." 
 
 " That I am quite sure of," said a fat country gentleman of 
 great weight in the county; " he not only was absent on the 
 great Malt question, but he never answered my letter respect- 
 ing the Canal Company." 
 
 " Not answered your letter! " said Lord Raby, lifting up his 
 hands and eyes in amaze and horror. " What conduct ! Ah, 
 Mr. Maltravers, you are the man for us ! " 
 
 " Hear! hear!" cried the fat squire. 
 
 " Hear ! " echoed Vargrave ; and the approving sound went 
 round the table. 
 
 Lord Raby rose. " Gentlemen, fill your glasses ; a health 
 to our distinguished neighbor ! " 
 
 The company applauded ; each in his turn smiled, nodded, 
 and drank to Maltravers, who, though taken by surprise, saw at 
 once the course to pursue. He returned thanks simply and 
 shortly ; and, without pointedly noticing the allusion in which 
 Lord Raby had indulged, remarked incidentally, that he had 
 retired, certainly for some years perhaps forever from politi- 
 cal life. 
 
 Vargrave smiled significantly at Lord Raby, and hastened to 
 lead the conversation into party discussion. Wrapped in his 
 proud disdain of what he considered the contests of factions 
 for toys and shadows, Maltravers remained silent; and the party 
 soon broke up, and adjourned to the ball-room.
 
 l68 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 " Le plus grand de'faut de la penetration n'est pasde n'aller point jusqu'au 
 but, c'est de le passer."* LA ROCHEFOUCAULD. 
 
 EVELYN had looked forward to the Ball at Knaresdean with 
 feelings deeper than those which usually inflame the fancy of a 
 girl, proud of her dress, and confident of her beauty. Whether 
 or not she loved Maltravers, in the true acceptation of the word 
 love, it is certain that he had acquired a most powerful command 
 over her mind and imagination. She felt the warmest interest 
 in his welfare the most anxious desire for his esteem the 
 deepest regret at the thought of their estrangement. At Knares- 
 dean she should meet Maltravers in crowds, it is true but 
 still she should meet him ; she should see him towering superior 
 above the herd ; she should hear him praised ; she should mark 
 him, the observed of all. But there was another, and a deeper 
 source of joy within her. A letter had been that morning re- 
 ceived from Aubrey, in which he had announced his arrival for 
 the next day. The letter, though affectionate, was short. Evelyn 
 had been some months absent Lady Vargrave was anxious to 
 make arrangements for her return; but it was to be at her option 
 whether she would accompany the curate home. Now, besides 
 her delight at seeing once more the dear old man, and hearing 
 from his lips that her mother was well and happy, Evelyn 
 hailed in his arrival the means of extricating herself from her 
 position with Lord Vargrave. She would confide in him her 
 increased repugnance to that union he would confer with Lord 
 Vargrave ; and then and then did there come once more the 
 thought of Maltravers ? No! I fear it was not Maltravers who 
 called forth that smile and that sigh! Strange girl, you know 
 not your own mind ; but few of us, at your age, do! 
 
 In all the gayety of hope, in the pride of dress and half-con- 
 scious loveliness, Evelyn went with a light step into Caroline's 
 room. Miss Merton had already dismissed her woman, and 
 was seated by her writing-table, leaning her cheek thoughtfully 
 on her hand. 
 
 " Is it time to go ? " said she, looking up. " Well we shall 
 put papa, and the coachman, and the horses, too, in excellent 
 humor. How well you look ! Really, Evelyn, you are indeed 
 beautiful ! " and Caroline gazed with honest, but not unenvi- 
 ous admiration at the fairy form so rounded, and yet so delicate; 
 and the face that seemed to blush at its own charms. 
 
 * The greatest defect of penetration is not that of not going just up to the point it is 
 the passing it.
 
 ALICE J OR, THE MYSTERIES. 169 
 
 " I am sure I can return the flattery," said Evelyn, laughing 
 bashfully. 
 
 " Oh! as for me, I am well enough in my way: and hereafter 
 I dare say we may be rival beauties. I hope we shall remain 
 good friends, and rule the world with divided empire. Do you 
 not long for the stir, and excitement, and ambition of Lon- 
 don ? for ambition is open to us as to men ! " 
 
 "No, indeed," replied Evelyn, smiling: "I could be 
 ambitious, indeed ; but it would not be for myself, but for " 
 
 "A husband, perhaps ; well, you will have ample scope for 
 such sympathy. Lord Vargrave " 
 
 " Lord Vargrave again ! " and Evelyn's smile vanished, and 
 she turned away. 
 
 " Ah," said Caroline, " I should have made Vargrave an ex- 
 cellent wife pity he does not think so ! As it is, I must set 
 up for myself, and become a maitresse femme. So you think I 
 look well to-night ? I am glad of it. Lord Doltimore is one 
 who will be guided by what other people say." 
 
 " You are not serious about Lord Doltimore ?" 
 
 "Most sadly serious." 
 
 "Impossible ! you could not speak so if you loved him." 
 
 " Loved him ! no ! but I intend to marry him." 
 
 Evelyn was revolted, but still incredulous. 
 
 " And you, too, will marry one whom you do not love ? 'tis 
 our fate " 
 
 " Never ! " 
 
 "We shall see." 
 
 Evelyn's heart was damped, and her spirits fell. 
 
 " Tell me now," said Caroline, pressing on the wrung withers 
 "do you not think this excitement, partial and provincial 
 though it be the sense of beauty, the hope of conquest, the 
 consciousness of power better than the dull monotony of the 
 Devonshire cottage ? be honest " 
 
 "No, no, indeed ! " answered Evelyn, tearfully and passion- 
 ately ; "one hour with my mother, one smile from her lips, were 
 worth it all ! " 
 
 "And in your visions of marriage, you think then of nothing 
 but roses and doves, love in a cottage ! " 
 
 "Love in a home, no matter whether a palace or a cottage," 
 returned Evelyn. 
 
 " Home ! "repeated Caroline, bitterly ; "home home is the 
 English synonym for the French ennui. But I hear papa on 
 *he stairs,"
 
 1 70 ALICE; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 A ball-room what a scene of commonplace ! how hack- 
 neyed in novels ; how trite in ordinary life ; and yet ball-rooms 
 have a character and a sentiment of their o\vn, for all tempers 
 and all ages. Something in the lights the crowd the music 
 conduces to stir up many of the thoughts that belong to fancy 
 and romance. It is a melancholy scene to men after a certain 
 age. It revives many of those lighter and more graceful images 
 connected with the wandering desires of youth ; shadows that 
 crossed us, and seemed love, but were not, having much of the 
 grace and charm, but none of the passion and the tragedy, of 
 love. So many of our earliest and gentlest recollections are 
 connected with those chalked floors and that music painfully 
 gay and those quiet nooks and corners, where the talk that 
 hovers about the heart and does not touch it has been held. 
 Apart and unsympaihizing in that austerer wisdom which comes 
 to us after deep passions have been excited, we see form after 
 form chasing the butterflies that dazzle us no longer among the 
 flowers that have evermore lost their fragrance. 
 
 Somehow or other, it is one of the scenes that remind us 
 most forcibly of the loss of youth ! We are brought so closely 
 in contact with the young and with the short-lived pleasures 
 that once pleased us, and have forfeited all bloom. Happy the 
 man who turns from " the tinkling cymbal," and " the gallery 
 of pictures," and can think of some watchful eye and some kind 
 heart at home. But those who have no home and they are a 
 numerous tribe never feel lonelier hermits or sadder moralists, 
 than in such a crowd. 
 
 Maltravers leaned abstractedly against the wall, and some 
 such reflections perhaps passed within, as the plumes waved 
 and the diamonds glittered round him. Ever too proud to be 
 vain, the monstrari digito had not flattered even in the com- 
 mencement of his career. And now he heeded not the eyes that 
 sought his look, nor the admiring murmur of lips anxious to be 
 overheard. Affluent, well-born, unmarried, and still in the 
 prime of life, in the small circles of a province, Ernest Mal- 
 travers would in himself have been an object of interest to the 
 diplomacy of mothers and daughters; and the false glare of rep- 
 utation necessarily deepened curiosity, and widened the range 
 of speculators and observers. 
 
 Suddenly, however, a new object of attention excited new in- 
 terest new whispers ran through the crowd, and these awakened 
 Maltravers from his revery. He looked up, and beheld all eyes 
 fixed upon one form ! His own eyes encountered those of 
 Evelyn Cameron I
 
 ALICE; OR, THE MYSTERIES. i;i 
 
 It was the first time he had seen this beautiful young person 
 in all the Alat, pomp, and circumstance of her station, as the 
 heiress of the opulent Templeton the first time he had seen 
 her the cynosure of crowds who, had her features been homely, 
 would have admired the charms of her fortune in her face. 
 And now, as radiant with youth, and the flush of excitement 
 on her soft cheek, she met his eye,he said to himself : " And could 
 I have wished one so new to the world to have united her lot 
 with a man for whom all that to her is delight is grown weari- 
 some and stale ? Could I have been justified in stealing her 
 from the admiration that, at her age, and to her sex, has so 
 sweet a flattery ! Or, on the other hand, could I have gone back to 
 her years, and sympathized with feelings that time has taught 
 me to despise? Better as it is." 
 
 Influenced by these thoughts, the greeting of Maltravers dis- 
 appointed and saddened Evelyn, she knew not why ; it was con- 
 strained and grave. 
 
 " Does not Miss Cameron look well ? " whispered Mrs. Mer- 
 ton, on whose arm the heiress leant. " You observe what a 
 sensation she creates?" 
 
 Evelyn overheard, and blushed as she stole a glance at Mal- 
 travers. There was something mournful in the admiration which 
 spoke in his deep, earnest eyes. 
 
 " Everywhere," said he calmly, and in the same tone, " every- 
 where Miss Cameron appears, she must outshine all others." 
 He turned to Evelyn, and said with a smile, "You must learn 
 to enure yourself to admiration a year or two hence, and you 
 will not blush at your own gifts ! " 
 
 " And you, too, contribute to spoil me ! fie ! " 
 
 "Are you so easily spoiled ? If I meet you hereafter, you will 
 think my compliments cold to the common language of others." 
 
 "You do not know me perhaps you never will." 
 
 " I am contented with the fair pages I have already read." 
 
 "Where is Lady Raby?" asked Mrs. Merton. "Oh, I see ; 
 Evelyn, my love, we must present ourselves to our hostess." 
 
 The ladies moved on and when Maltravers next caught a 
 glance of Evelyn, she was with Lady Raby, and Lord Vargrave 
 also was by her side. 
 
 The whispers round him had grown louder. 
 
 " Very lovely indeed ! so young, too ! and she is really 
 going to be married to Lord Vargrave : so much older than she 
 is quite a sacrifice ! " 
 
 " Scarcely so. He is so agreeable, and still handsome. But 
 are you sure that the thing is settled?"
 
 If* ALICE; Ok, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 " Oh, yes. Lord Raby himself told me so. It will take place 
 very soon." 
 
 " But do you know who her mother was? I cannot make out." 
 
 " Nothing particular. You know the late Lord Vargrave 
 was a man of low birth. I believe she was a widow of his own 
 rank she lives quite in seclusion." 
 
 " How d'ye do, Mr. Maltravers I So glad to see you," said 
 the quick, shrill voice of Mrs. Hare. " Beautiful ball nobody 
 does things like Lord Raby don't you dance ? " 
 
 "No, madam." 
 
 "Oh, you young gentlemen are so fine nowadays." (Mrs. Hare, 
 laying stress on the word young, thought she had paid a very 
 elegant compliment, and ran on with increased complacency.) 
 
 " You are going to let Burleigh, I hear, to Lord Doltimore 
 is it true ? No ! really now, what stories people do tell. 
 Elegant man, Lord Doltimore ! Is it true, that Miss Caroline 
 is going to marry his lordship? Great match ! No scandal, I 
 hope ; you'll excuse me! Two weddings on the tapis quite 
 stirring for our stupid county. Lady Vargrave and Lady Dolti- 
 more, two new peeresses. Which do you think is the hand- 
 somer? Miss Merlonis the taller, but there is something fierce 
 in her eyes. Don't you think so ? By the by, I wish you joy 
 you'll excuse me." 
 
 " Wish me joy, madam ! " 
 
 " Oh, you are so close. Mr. Hare says he shall support you. 
 You will have all the ladies with you. Well, I declare, Lord 
 Vargrave is going to dance. How old is he, do you think ? " 
 
 Maltravers uttered an audible pshaw, and moved away ; 
 but his penance was not over. Lord Vargrave, much as he dis- 
 liked dancing, still thought it wise to ask the fair hand of Evelyn ; 
 and Evleyn, also, could not refuse. 
 
 And now, as the crowd gathered round the red ropes, Mal- 
 travers had to undergo new exclamations at Evelyn's beauty 
 and Vargrave's luck. Impatiently he turned from the spot, 
 with that gnawing sickness of the heart which none but the 
 jealous know. He longed to depart, yet dreaded to do so. It 
 was the last time he should see Evelyn, perhaps for years the 
 last time he should see her as Miss Cameron ! 
 
 He passed into another room, deserted by all save four old 
 gentlemen Cleveland one of them immersed in whist ; and 
 threw himself upon an ottoman, placed in a recess by the oriel 
 window. There, half-concealed by the draperies, he communed 
 and reasoned with himself. His heart was sad within him ; he 
 never felt before how deeply and how passionately he loved
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 173 
 
 Evelyn how firmly that love had fastened upon the very core 
 of his heart ! Strange, indeed, it was in a girl so young of 
 whom he had seen but little and that little in positions of 
 such quiet and ordinary interest to excite a passion so intense 
 in a man who had gone through strong emotions and stern trials ! 
 But all love is unaccountable. The solitude in which Maltravers 
 had lived the absence of all other excitement perhaps had 
 contributed largely to fan the flame. And his affections had 
 so long slept ; and after long sleep the passions wake with such 
 giant strength ! He felt now too well that the last rose of life 
 had bloomed for him it was blighted in its birth, but it could 
 never be replaced. Henceforth, indeed, he should be alone the 
 hopes of home were gone for ever ; and the other occupations 
 of mind and soul literature, pleasure, ambition were already 
 forsworn at the very age in which by most men they are most 
 indulged ! O Youth ! begin not thy career too soon, and let 
 one passion succeed in its due order to another ; so that every 
 season of life may have its appropriate pursuit and charm ! 
 
 The hours waned still Maltravers stirred not ; nor were his 
 meditations disturbed, except by occasional ejaculations from 
 the four old gentlemen, as between each deal they moralized 
 over the caprices of the cards. 
 
 At length, close beside him he heard that voice, the lightest 
 sound of which could send the blood rushing through his veins ; 
 and from his retreat he saw Caroline and Evelyn, seated close by. 
 
 " I beg pardon," said the former, in a low voice "I beg 
 pardon, Evelyn, for calling you away but I longed to tell you. 
 The die is cast. Lord Doltimore has proposed, and I have 
 accepted him ! Alas, alas ! I half wish I could retract ! " 
 
 " Dearest Caroline ! " said the silver voice of Evelyn ; " for 
 Heaven's sake, do not thus wantonly resolve on your own un- 
 happiness ! You wrong yourself, Caroline ! you do, indeed ! 
 You are not the vain, ambitious character you affect to be ! 
 All ! what is it you require wealth ? are you not my friend ? 
 am I not rich enough for both ? rank ? what can it give 
 you to compensate for the misery of an union without love ? 
 Pray forgive me for speaking thus ; do not think me presump- 
 tuous, or romantic but indeed, I know from my own heart 
 what yours must undergo !" 
 
 Caroline pressed her friend's hand uith emotion. 
 
 " You are a bad comforter, Evelyn ; my mother my father, 
 will preach a very different doctrine. I am foolish, indeed, to 
 be so sad in obtaining the very object I have sought ! Poor 
 Doltimore ! he little knows the nature, the feelings of her
 
 174 ALICE; ; OR, Tti MYSTERIES. 
 
 whom he thinks he has made the happiest of her sex he little 
 knows " Caroline paused, turned pale as death, and then went 
 rapidly on " But you, Evelyn, you will meet the same fate; we 
 shall bear it together. ' 
 
 " No ! no ! do not think so ! Where I give my hand, there 
 shall I give my heart." 
 
 At this time Maltravers half rose, and sighed audibly. 
 
 " Hush !" said Caroline, in alarm. At the same moment, 
 the whist-table broke up, and Cleveland approached Maltravers. 
 
 " I am at your service," said he ; " I know you will not stay 
 the supper. You will find me in the next room ; I am just 
 going to speak to Lord Saxingham." The gallant old gentle- 
 man then paid a compliment to the young ladies, and walked 
 away. 
 
 " So you too are a deserter from the ball-room ! " said Miss 
 Merton to Maltravers as she rose. 
 
 " I am not very well ; but do not let me frighten you away." 
 
 "Oh, no ! I hear the music it is the last quadrille before 
 supper and here is my fortunate partner looking for me." 
 
 " I have been everywhere in search of you," said Lord Dolti- 
 more, in an accent of tender reproach ; " come, we are almost 
 too late now." 
 
 Caroline put her arm into Lord Doltimore's, who hurried her 
 into the ball-room. 
 
 Miss Cameron looked irresolute whether or not to follow, 
 when Maltravers seated himself beside her ; and the paleness 
 of his brow, and something that bespoke pain in the compressed 
 lip went at once to her heart. In her childlike tenderness, 
 she would have given worlds for the sister's privilege of sympathy 
 and soothing. The room was now deserted they were alone. 
 
 The words that he had overheard from Evelyn's lips "Where 
 I shall give my hand there shall I give my heart " Maltravers 
 interpreted but in one sense "she loved her betrothed ! " 
 and, strange as it may seem, at that thought which put the 
 last seal upon his fate, selfish anguish was less felt than deep 
 compassion. So young so courted so tempted as she must 
 be and with such a protector ! the cold, the unsympathizing, 
 the heartless Vargrave ! She, too, whose feelings, so warm, ever 
 trembled on her lip and eye Oh ! when she awoke from her 
 dream, and knew whom she had loved, what might be her 
 destiny what her danger ! 
 
 " Miss Cameron," said Maltravers, " let me for one moment de- 
 tain you; I will not trespass long. May I once, and for the last 
 time, assume the austere rights of friendship ? I have seen much
 
 ALICE; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 175 
 
 of life, Miss Cameron, and my experience has been purchased 
 dearly : and, harsh and hermit-like as I may have grown, I have 
 not outlived such feelings as you are well formed to excite. 
 Nay, (and Maltravers smiled sadly) " I am not about to com- 
 pliment or flatter I speak not to you as the young to the young; 
 the difference of our years, that takes away sweetness from flat- 
 tery, leaves still sincerity to friendship. You have inspired me 
 with a deep interest, deeper than I thought that living beauty 
 could ever rouse in me again ! It may be, that something in 
 the tone of your voice, your manner, a nameless grace that I 
 cannot define reminds me of one whom I knew in youth, one 
 Avho had not your advantages of education, wealth, birth ; but 
 to whom Nature was more kind than Fortune." 
 
 He paused a moment ; and, without looking towards Evelyn, 
 thus renewed: 
 
 "You are entering life under brilliant auspices. Ah ! let me 
 hope that the noonday will keep the promise of the dawn! You 
 are susceptible imaginative ; do not demand too much, or 
 dream too fondly. When you are wedded, do not imagine that 
 wedded life is exempt from its trials and its cares: if you know 
 yourself beloved and beloved you must be do not ask from 
 the busy and anxious spirit of man all which Romance promises 
 and Life but rarely yields. And oh!" continued Maltravers, 
 with an absorbing and earnest passion, that poured forth its lan- 
 guage with almost breathless rapidity, "if ever your heart re- 
 bels if ever it be dissatisfied fly the false sentiment as a sin ! 
 Thrown, as from your rank you must be, on a world of a thou- 
 sand perils, with no guide so constant, and so safe, as your own 
 innocence make not that world too dear a friend! Were it pos- 
 sible that your own home ever could be lonely or unhappy, re- 
 flect that to woman the unhappiest home is happier than all ex- 
 citement abroad. You will have a thousand suitors, hereafter: 
 believe that the asp lurks under the flatterer's tongue, and re- 
 solve, come what may, to be contented with your lot. How 
 many have I known, lovely and pure as you, who have suffered 
 the very affections the very beauty of their nature to destroy 
 them ! Listen to me as a warner as a brother as a pilot who 
 has passed the seas on which your vessel is about to launch. 
 And ever ever let me know, in whatever lands your name may 
 reach me, that one who has brought back to me all my faith in 
 human excellence, while the idol of our sex is the glory of her 
 own. Forgive me this strange impertinence ; my heart is full, 
 and has overflowed. And now, Miss Cameron Evelyn Cam- 
 eron this is my last offence, and my last farewell | "
 
 i;5 ALICE; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 He held out his hand, and involuntarily, unknowingly, she 
 clasped it, as if to detain him till she could summon words to 
 reply. Suddenly he heard Lord Vargrave's voice behind the 
 spell was broken the next moment Evelyn was alone, and the 
 throng swept into the room towards the banquet, and laughter and 
 gay voices were heard and Lord Vargrave was again by Eve- 
 lyn's side ! 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 . . . . "To you 
 This journey is devoted." 
 
 Lover's Progress, Act iv. Scene I. 
 
 As Cleveland and Maltravers returned homeward, the latter 
 abruptly checked the cheerful garrulity of his friend. " I have 
 a favor a great favor to ask of you." 
 
 " And what is that ?" 
 
 "Let us leave Burleigh to-morrow ; I care not at what hour; 
 we need go but two or three stages if you are fatigued." 
 
 "Most hospitable host ! and why?" 
 
 "It is torture, it is agony to me, to breathe the air of Bur- 
 leigh," cried Maltravers wildly. "Can you not guess my se- 
 cret ? Have I then concealed it so well ? I love, I adore Eve- 
 lyn Cameron, and she is betrothed to she loves another ! " 
 
 Mr. Cleveland was breathless with amaze ; Maltravers had 
 indeed so well concealed his secret ; and now his emotion was 
 so impetuous, that it startled and alarmed the old man, who had 
 never himself experienced a passion, though he had indulged a 
 sentiment. He sought to console and soothe ; but after the 
 first burst of agony, Maltravers recovered himself and said 
 gently : 
 
 " Let us never return to this subject again: it is right that I 
 should conquer this madness, and conquer it I will ! Now you 
 know my weakness, you will indulge it. My cure cannot com- 
 mence, until I can no longer see from my casements the very 
 roof that shelters the affianced bride of another." 
 
 ''Certainly, then, we will set off to-morrow: my poor friend! 
 is it indeed " 
 
 "Ah, cease," interrupted the proud man; "no compassion 
 I implore ! give me but time and silence they are the only 
 remedies." 
 
 Before noon the next day, Burleigh was once more deserted 
 by its lord. As the carriage drove through the village, Mrs,
 
 ALICE"; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 177 
 
 Elton saw it from her open window. But her patron, too ab- 
 sorbed at that hour, even for benevolence, forgot her existence: 
 and yet so complicated are the webs of fate, that in the breast 
 of that lowly stranger was locked a secret of the most vital mo- 
 ment to Maltravers. 
 
 "Where is he going? where is the squire going?" asked Mrs. 
 Elton anxiously. 
 
 "Dear heart!" said the cottager, "they do say he be going 
 for a short time to foren parts. But he will be back at Christ- 
 mas." 
 
 " And at Christmas I may be gone hence for ever," muttered 
 the invalid. "But what will that matter to him to any one! " 
 
 At the first stage Maltravers and his friend were detained a 
 short time for the want of horses. Lord Raby's house had been 
 filled with guests on the preceding night, and the stables of 
 this little inn, dignified with the sign of the Raby Arms, and 
 about two miles distant from the great man's place, had been 
 exhausted by numerous claimants returning homeward from 
 Knaresdean. It was a quiet, solitary post-house, and patience, 
 till some jaded horses should return, was the only remedy ; ihs 
 host, assuring the travellers that he expected four horses every 
 moment, invited them within. The morning was cold, and the 
 fire not unacceptable to Mr. Cleveland ; so they went into the 
 little parlor. Here they found an elderly gentleman of very 
 prepossessing appearance, who was waiting for the same object. 
 He moved courteously from the fireplace as the travellers en- 
 tered and pushed the J3 shire Chronicle towards Cleveland ; 
 
 Cleveland bowed urbanely. "A cold day, sir ; the autumn be- 
 gins to show itself." 
 
 " Jt is true, sir," answered the old gentleman ; "and I feel 
 the cold the more, having just quitted the genial atmosphere of 
 the south." 
 
 " Of Italy ? " 
 
 " No, of England only. I see by this paper (I am not much 
 of a politician) that there is a chance of a dissolution of Parlia- 
 ment, and that Mr. Maltravers is likely to come forward for 
 this county; are you acquainted with him, sir ?" 
 
 "A little," said Cleveland, smiling. 
 
 " He is a man I am much interested in," said the old gentle- 
 man; " and I hope soon to be honored with his acquaintance." 
 
 " Indeed! and you are going into his neighborhood ? " asked 
 Cleveland, looking more attentively at the stranger, and much 
 pleased with 3 certain simple candor in his countenance and 
 manner,
 
 178 ALICE; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 " Yes, to Merton Rectory." 
 
 Maltravers, who had been hitherto stationed by the window, 
 turned round. 
 
 " To Merton Rectory ? " repeated Cleveland. " You are ac- 
 quainted with Mr. Merton, then ? " 
 
 " Not yet; but I know some of his family. However, my 
 visit is rather to a young lady who is staying at the rectory 
 Miss Cameron." 
 
 Maltravers sighed heavily; and the old gentleman looked at 
 him curiously. " Perhaps, sir, if you know that neighborhood, 
 you may have seen " 
 
 " Miss Cameron ! Certainly, it is an honor not easily for- 
 gotten." 
 
 The old gentleman looked pleased. 
 
 " The dear child," said he, with a burst of honest affection 
 and he passed his hand over his eyes. Maltravers drew near 
 to him. 
 
 " You know Miss Cameron; you are to be envied sir," said he. 
 
 " I have known her since she was a child Lady Vargrave is 
 my dearest friend." 
 
 " Lady Vargrave must be worthy of such a daughter. Only 
 under the light of a sweet disposition and pure heart could that 
 beautiful nature have been trained and reared." 
 
 Maltravers spoke with enthusiasm; and, as if fearful to trust 
 himself more, left the room. 
 
 " That gentleman speaks not more warmly than justly," said 
 the old man with some surprise. " He has a countenance which, 
 if physiognomy be a true science, declares his praise to be no 
 common compliment may I inquire his name?" 
 
 " Maltravers," replied Cleveland, a little vain of the effect 
 his ex-pupil's name was to produce. 
 
 The curate for it was he started and changed counte- 
 nance. 
 
 " Maltravers: but he is not about to leave the county ? " 
 
 "Yes, for a few months." 
 
 Here the host entered. Four horses, that had been only 
 fourteen miles, had just re-entered the yard. If Mr. Mal- 
 travers could spare two to that gentleman, who had, indeed, 
 pre-engaged them ? 
 
 "Certainly," said Cleveland; "but be quick." 
 
 " And is Lord Vargrave still at Mr. Merton's ? " asked the 
 curate, musingly. 
 
 " Oh, yes I believe so. Miss Cameron is to be married to 
 him very shortly is it not so ? "
 
 ALICE J OR, THE MYSTERIES. 179 
 
 " I cannot say," returned Aubrey, rather bewildered. "You 
 know Lord Vargrave, sir ? " 
 
 " Extremely well ! " 
 
 " And you think him worthy of Miss Cameron ? " 
 
 " That is a question for her to answer. But I see the horses 
 are put to. Good-day, sir! Will you tell your fair young friend 
 that you have met an old gentleman who wishes her all happi- 
 ness; and if she asks you his name, say Cleveland ! " 
 
 So saying, Mr. Cleveland bowed, and re-entered the carriage. 
 But Maltravers was yet missing. In fact, he returned to the 
 house by the back way, and went once more into the little par- 
 lor. It was something to see again one who would so soon see 
 Evelyn! 
 
 " If I mistake not," said Maltravers, " you are that Mr. 
 Aubrey on whose virtues I have often heard Miss Cameron de- 
 light to linger ? Will you believe my regret that our acquaint' 
 ance is now so brief ? " 
 
 As Maltravers spoke thus simply, there was in his counte- 
 nance his voice a melancholy sweetness, which greatly con- 
 ciliated the good curate. And as Aubrey gazed upon his noble 
 features and lofty mien, he no longer wondered at the fascina- 
 tion he had appeared to exercise over the young Evelyn. 
 
 " And may I not hope, Mr. Maltravers," said he, " that be- 
 fore long our acquaintance may be renewed ? Could not Miss 
 Cameron," he added, with a smile and a penetrating look, 
 " tempt you into Devonshire ? " 
 
 Maltravers shook his head, and, muttering something not 
 very audible, quitted the room. The curate heard the whirl of 
 the wheels, and the host entered to inform him that his own car- 
 riage was now ready. 
 
 " There is something in this," thought Aubrey, "which I do 
 not comprehend. His manner his trembling voice bespoke 
 emotions he struggled to conceal. Can Lord Vargrave have 
 gained his point ? Is Evelyn, indeed, no longer free ? "
 
 180 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 " Certes, c'est un grand cas, leas, 
 Que toujours tracas ou fracas 
 Vous faites d'une ou d'autre sort ; 
 C'est le diable qui vous enporte ! " * VOITURE. 
 
 LORD VARGRAVE had passed the night of the ball and the fol- 
 lowing morning at Knaresdean. It was necessary to bring the 
 councils of the scheming conclave to a full and definite conclu- 
 sion ; and this was at last effected. Their strength numbered 
 friends and foes alike canvassed and considered and due ac- 
 count taken of the waverers to be won over, it really did seem, 
 even to the least sanguine, that the Saxingham, or Vargrave 
 party, was one that might well aspire either to dictate to, or to 
 break up, a government. Nothing now was left to consider but 
 the favorable hour for action. In high spirits, Lord Vargrave 
 returned about the middle of the day to the rectory. 
 
 " So," thought he, as he reclined in his carriage l< so, in poli- 
 tics, the prospect clears as the sun breaks out. The party I have 
 espoused is one that must be the most durable, for it possesses 
 the greatest property and the most stubborn prejudice what 
 elements for Party ! All that I now require is a sufficient for- 
 tune to back my ambition. Nothing can clog my way but these 
 cursed debts this disreputable want of gold. And yet Evelyn 
 alarms me ! Were I younger or had I not made my position 
 too soon I would marry her by fraud or by force ; run off with 
 her to Gretna, and make Vulcan minister to Plutus. But this 
 would never do at my years, and with my reputation. A pretty 
 story for the newspapers ! d n them ! Well, nothing ven- 
 ture, nothing have ; I will brave the hazard. Meanwhile, Dol- 
 timore is mine; Caroline will rule him, and I rule her. His vote 
 and his boroughs are something his money will be more imme- 
 diately useful : I must do him the honor to borrow a few thou- 
 sands Caroline must manage that for me. The fool is miserly, 
 though a spendthrift ; and looked black when I delicately hinted, 
 the other day, that I wanted a friend id est, a loan. Money 
 and friendship same thing distinction without a difference ! " 
 Thus cogitating, Vargrave whiled away the minutes till his car- 
 riage stopped at Mr. Merton's door. 
 
 As he entered the hall he met Caroline, who had just quitted 
 her own room. 
 
 * Certes, it is the fact, leas, that you are always engaged in tricks or scrapes of some 
 sort or another it must be the devil that bewitches you.
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. l8l 
 
 "How lucky I am that you have on your bonnet ! I long for 
 a walk with you round the lawn." 
 
 "And I, too, am glad to see you, Lord Vargrave," said Caro- 
 line, putting her arm in his. 
 
 " Accept my best congratulations, my own sweet friend," 
 said Vargrave, when they were in the grounds. " You have no 
 idea how happy Doltimore is. He came to Knaresdean yesterday 
 to communicate the news, and his neckcloth was primmer than 
 ever. C'est un bon enfant." 
 
 "Ah, how can you talk thus? Do you feel no pain at the 
 thought that that I am another's?" 
 
 "Your heart will be ever mine and that is the true fidelity: 
 what else, too, could be done ? As for Lord Doltimore, we will 
 go shares in him. Come, cheer thee, m'amie I rattle on thus 
 to keep up your spirits. Do not fancy I am happy ! " 
 
 Caroline let fall a few tears ; but, beneath the influence of 
 Vargrave's sophistries and flatteries, she gradually recovered 
 her usual hard and worldly tone of mind. 
 
 "And where is Evelyn ?" asked Vargrave. "Do you know 
 the little witch seemed to me half mad the night of the ball : 
 her head was turned ; and when she sate next me at supper, she 
 not only answered every question I put to her a tort eta trovers, 
 but I fancied every moment she was going to burst out crying. 
 Can you tell what was the matter with her ? " 
 
 " She was grieved to hear that I was to be married to the man 
 I do not love. Ah, Vargrave! she has more heart than you have." 
 
 "But she never fancies that you love me?" asked Lumley, in 
 alarm. "You women are so confoundedly confidential ! " 
 
 " No she does not suspect our secret." 
 
 "Then I scarcely think your approaching marriage was a suf- 
 ficient cause for so much distraction." 
 
 " Perhaps she may have overheard some of the impertinent 
 whispers about her mother, 'Who was Lady Vargrave ?' and, 
 'What Cameron was Lady Vargrave's first husband?' / over- 
 heard a hundred such vulgar questions, and provincial people 
 whisper so loud." 
 
 "Ah, that is a very probable solution of the mystery. And 
 for my part, I am almost as much puzzled as any one else can 
 be to know who Lady Vargrave was ! " 
 
 "Did not your uncle tell you?" 
 
 " He told me that she was of no very elevated birth and sta- 
 tion, nothing more ; and she herself, with her quiet say-nothing 
 manner, slips through all my careless questionings like an eel. 
 She is still a beautiful creature, more regularly handsome than
 
 i8a ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 even Evelyn ; and old Templeton had a very sweet tooth at the 
 back of his head, though he never opened his mouth wide enough 
 to show it." 
 
 " She must ever at least have been blameless, to judge by an 
 air which, even now, is more like that of a child than a matron." 
 
 "Yes ; she has not much of the widow about her, poor soul ! 
 But her education, except in music, has not been very carefully 
 attended to ; and she knows about as much of the world as the 
 Bishop of Autun (better known as Prince Talleyrand) knows of 
 the Bible. If she were not so simple, she would be silly ; but 
 silliness is never simple always cunning; however, there is some 
 cunning in her keeping her past Cameronian Chronicles so close. 
 Perhaps I may know more about her in a short time, for I 
 
 intend going to C , where my uncle once lived, in order to 
 
 see if I can revive, under the rose, since peers are only con- 
 traband electioneers his old parliamentary influence in that 
 city ; and they may tell me more there than I now know." 
 
 "Did the late lord marry at C ?" 
 
 " No in Devonshire. I do not even know if Mrs. Cameron 
 ever was at C ." 
 
 "You must be curious to know who the father of your in- 
 tended wife was?" 
 
 " Her father ! No ; I have no curiosity in that quarter. And, 
 to tell you the truth, I am much too busy about the Present to 
 be raking into that heap of rubbish we call the Past. I fancy 
 that both your good grandmother, and that comely old curate 
 of Brook-Green, know everything about Lady Vargrave ; and, 
 as they esteem her so much, I take it for granted she is sans 
 tache" 
 
 " How could I be so stupid ! Apropos of the curate, I for- 
 got to tell you that he is here. He arrived about two hours 
 ago, and has been closeted with Evelyn ever since ! " 
 
 " The deuce ! What brought the old man hither?" 
 
 " That I know not. Papa received a letter from him yester- 
 day morning, to say that he would be here to-day. Perhaps 
 Lady Vargrave thinks it time for Evelyn to return home." 
 
 "What am I to do ?" said Vargrave anxiously. " Dare I yet 
 venture to propose?" 
 
 " I am sure it will be in vain, Vargrave. You must prepare 
 for disappointment." 
 
 " And ruin," muttered Vargrave, gloomily. " Hark you, 
 Caroline she may refuse me if she pleases. But I am not a 
 man to be baffled. Have her I will, by one means or another ; 
 revenge urges me to it almost as much as ambition. That
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 183 
 
 girl's thread of life has been the dark line in my woof she 
 has robbed me of fortune she now thwarts me in my career 
 she humbles me in my vanity. But, like a hound that has tasted 
 blood, I will run her down, whatever winding she takes ! " 
 
 " Vargrave, you terrify me ! Reflect ; we do not live in an 
 age when violence " 
 
 "Tush!" interrupted Lumley, with one of those dark looks 
 which at times, though very rarely, swept away all its custom- 
 ary character from that smooth, shrewd countenance. "Tush ! 
 we live in an age as favorable to intellect and to energy as 
 ever was painted in romance. I have that faith in fortune and 
 myself that I tell you, with a prophet's voice, that Evelyn shall 
 fulfil the wish of my dying uncle. But the bell summons us 
 back." 
 
 On returning to the house, Lord Vargrave's valet gave him 
 a letter, which had arrived that morning. It was from Mr. 
 Gustavus Douce, and ran thus : 
 
 " FLEET STREET, 2oth, 18 . 
 
 " MY LORD : 
 
 " It is with the greatest regret that I apprise you, for Self & 
 Co., that we shall not be able in the present state of the 
 Money Market to renew your Lordship's bill for ^10,000, due 
 the 28th instant. Respectfully calling your Lordship's atten- 
 tion to same, 
 
 "I have the honor to be, 
 
 " For Self & Co., my Lord, 
 "Your Lordship's most obedient and most obliged humble 
 
 servant, GUSTAVUS DOUCE. 
 
 "To the Right Hon. the Lord Vargrave, etc., etc." 
 
 This letter sharpened Lord Vargrave's anxiety and resolve ; 
 nay, it seemed almost to sharpen his sharp features as he mut- 
 tered sundry denunciations on Messrs. Douce and Co., while 
 arranging his neckcloth at the glass. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Sol. " Why, please your honorable lordship, we were talking here and 
 there this and that." The Stranger, 
 
 AUBREY had been closeted with Evelyn the whole morning ; 
 and, simultaneous with his arrival, came to her the news of the 
 departure of Maltravers ; it was an intelligence that greatly
 
 154 ALICE ; OR, TttE MYSTERIES. 
 
 agitated and unnerved her ; and, coupling that event with his 
 solemn words on the previous night, Evelyn asked herself, in 
 wonder, what sentiments she could have inspired inMaltravers. 
 Could he love her ? her, so young so inferior so uninformed ! 
 Impossible ! Alas ! alas ! for Maltravers ! his genius his gifts 
 his towering qualities all that won the admiration, almost 
 the awe, of Evelyn placed him at a distance from her heart ! 
 When she asked herself if he loved her, she did not ask, even 
 in that hour, if she loved him. But even the question she did 
 ask, her judgment answered erringly in the negative Why 
 should he love, and yet fly her? She understood not his high- 
 wrought scruples his self-deluding belief. Aubrey was more 
 puzzled than enlightened by his conversation with his pupil ; 
 only one thing seemed certain her delight to return to the 
 cottage and her mother. 
 
 Evelyn could not sufficiently recover her composure to mix' 
 with the party below ; and Aubrey, at the sound of the second 
 dinner-bell, left her to solitude, and bore her excuses to Mrs. 
 Merton. 
 
 " Dear me !" said that worthy lady ; " I am so sorry I thought 
 Miss Cameron looked fatigued at breakfast ; and there was 
 something hysterical in her spirits ; and I suppose the surprise 
 of your arrival has upset her. Caroline, my dear, you had 
 better go and see what she would like to have taken up to her 
 room a little soup, and the wing of a chicken." 
 
 "My dear," said Mr. Merton, rather pompously, "I think it 
 would be but a proper respect to Miss Cameron if you your- 
 self accompanied Caroline." 
 
 " I assure you," said the curate, alarmed at the avalanche of 
 politeness that threatened poor Evelyn, "I assure you that Miss 
 Cameron would prefer being left alone at present ; as you say, 
 Mrs. Merton, her spirits are rather agitated." 
 
 But Mrs. Merton, with a sliding bow, had already quitted the 
 room, and Caroline with her. 
 
 "Come back, Sophy ! Cecilia, come back !" said Mr. Mer- 
 ton, settling his jabot. 
 
 "Oh, dear Evy ! poor dear Evy ! Evy is ill !" said Sophy ; 
 " I may go to Evy ! I must go, papa ! " 
 
 " No, my dear, you are too noisy; these children are quite 
 spoiled, Mr. Aubrey." 
 
 The old man looked at them benevolently, and drew them to 
 his knee , and, while Cissy stroked his long white hair, and 
 Sophy ran on about dear Evy's prettiness and goodness, Lord 
 Vargrave sauntered into the room.
 
 AL1CI ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 185 
 
 On seeing the curate, his frank face lighted up with surprise 
 and pleasure ; he hastened to him, seized him by both hands, 
 expressed the most heartfelt delight at seeing him, inquired 
 tenderly after Lady Vargrave, and, not till he was out of breath, 
 and Mrs. Merton and Caroline returning apprised him of Miss 
 Cameron's indisposition, did his rapture vanish ; and, as a mo- 
 ment before he was all joy, so now he was all sorrow. 
 
 The dinner passed off dully enough ; the children, re-admit- 
 ted to dessert, made a little relief to all parties ; and, when they 
 and the two ladies went, Aubrey himself quickly rose to join 
 Evelyn. 
 
 " Are you going to Miss Cameron ? " said Lord Vargrave ; 
 " pray say how unhappy I feel at her illness. I think these 
 grapes they are very fine could not hurt her. May I ask 
 you to present them with my best best and most anxious re- 
 gards ? I shall be so uneasy till you return. Now, Merton (as 
 the door closed on the curate), let's have another bottle of this 
 famous claret ! Droll old fellow, that quite a character ! " 
 . " He is a great favorite with Lady Vargrave and Miss Cam- 
 eron, I believe," said Mr. Merton. "A mere village priest, I 
 suppose ; no talent, no energy or he could not be a curate at 
 that age." 
 
 " Very true ; a shrewd remark. The church is as good a 
 profession as any other for getting on, if a man has anything 
 in him. I shall live to see you a bishop ! " 
 
 Mr. Merton shook his head. 
 
 " Yes, I shall ; though you have hitherto disdained to ex- 
 hibit any one of the three orthodox qualifications for a mitre." 
 
 " And what are they, my lord ? " 
 
 " Editing a Greek play writing a political pamphlet and 
 apostatizing at the proper moment." 
 
 "Ha ! ha ! your lordship is severe on us." 
 
 " Not I I often wish I had been brought up to the church 
 famous profession, properly understood. By Jupiter, I should 
 have been a capital bishop ! " 
 
 In his capacity of parson, Mr. Merton tried to look grave ; in 
 his capacity of a gentlemanlike, liberal fellow, he gave up the 
 attempt, and laughed pleasantly at the joke of the rising man.
 
 l36 ALICE J OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 " Will nothing please you ? 
 What do you think of the Court ? " The Plain Dealer, 
 
 ON one subject, Aubrey found no difficulty in ascertaining 
 Evelyn's wishes and condition of mind. The experiment of 
 her visit, so far as Vargrave's hopes were concerned, had utter- 
 ly failed ; she could not contemplate the prospect of his alliance, 
 and she poured out to the curate, frankly and fully, all her 
 desire to effect a release from her engagement. As it was now 
 settled that she should return with Aubrey to Brook-Green, it 
 was indeed necessary to come to the long-delayed understand- 
 ing with her betrothed. Yet this was difficult, for he had so 
 little pressed so distantly alluded to their engagement, that 
 it was like a forwardness, an indelicacy in Evelyn, to forestall 
 the longed-for, yet dreaded explanation. This, however, Au- 
 brey took upon himself ; and at this promise Evelyn felt as the 
 slave may feel when the chain is stricken off. 
 
 At breakfast, Mr. Aubrey communicated to the Mertons 
 Evelyn's intention to return with him to Brook-Green, on the 
 following day. Lord Vargrave started bit his lip but said 
 nothing. 
 
 Not so silent was Mr. Merton : 
 
 " Return with you ! my dear Mr. Aubrey just consider it 
 is impossible you see Miss Cameron's rank of life, her posi- 
 tion so very strange no servants of her own here but her 
 woman no carriage even ! You would not have her travel in 
 a post-chaise such a long journey ! Lord Vargrave, you can 
 never consent to that, I am sure ? " 
 
 " Were it only as Miss Cameron's guardian" said Lord Var- 
 grave pointedly, " I should certainly object to such a mode of 
 performing such a journey. Perhaps Mr. Aubrey means to 
 perfect the project by taking two outside places on the top of 
 the coach ? " 
 
 " Pardon me, "said the curate mildly, "but I am not so igno- 
 rant of what is due to Miss Cameron as you suppose. Lady 
 Vargrave's carriage, which brought me hither, will be no un- 
 suitable vehicle for Lady Vargrave's daughter ; and Miss Cam- 
 eron is not, I trust, quite so spoilt by all your friendly atten- 
 tions, as to be unable to perform a journey of two days with 
 no other protector than myself." 
 
 " I forgot Lady Vargrave's carriage, or rather I was not aware 
 that you had used it, my dear sir," said Mr. Merton. "But
 
 ALICE; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 187 
 
 you must not blame us, if we are sorry to lose Miss Cameron 
 so suddenly : I was in hopes that jw* too would stay at least a 
 week with us." 
 
 The curate bowed at the rector's condescending politeness ; 
 and just as he was about to answer, Mrs. Merton put in : 
 
 "And you see I had set my heart on her being Caroline's 
 bridesmaid." 
 
 Caroline turned pale, and glanced at Vargrave, who appeared 
 solely absorbed in breaking toast into his tea a delicacy he 
 had never before been known to favor. 
 
 There was an awkward pause : the servant opportunely en- 
 tered with a small parcel of books, a note to Mr. Merton, and 
 that most blessed of all blessed things in the country, the let- 
 ter-bag. 
 
 " What is this ? " said the rector, opening his note ; while Mrs. 
 Merton unlocked the bag and dispensed the contents; "Left 
 Burleigh for some months a day or two sooner than he had 
 expected excuse French leave-taking return Miss Merlon's 
 books much obliged gamekeeper has orders lo place the Bur- 
 leigh preserves at my disposal. So we have lost our neighbor! " 
 
 " Did you not know Mr. Maltravers was gone ? " said Caroline. 
 " I heard so from Jenkins last night ; he accompanies Mr. Cleve- 
 land to Paris." 
 
 " Indeed ! " said Mrs. Merton, opening her eyes. " What could 
 take him to Paris?" 
 
 " Pleasure, I suppose," answered Caroline. " I'm sure I should 
 rather have wondered what could detain him at Burleigh." 
 
 Vargrave was all this while breaking open seals, and running 
 his eyes over sundry scrawls with the practised rapidity of a 
 man of business ; he came to the last letter his countenance 
 brightened 
 
 " Royal invitation, or rather command, to Windsor," he cried. 
 " I am afraid I, too, must leave you, this very day." 
 
 " Bless me ! " exclaimed Mrs. Merton ; " is that from the king ? 
 Do let me see ! " 
 
 " Not exactly from the king; the same thing, though;" and 
 Lord Vargrave, carelessly pushing the gracious communication 
 lowards the impatient hand and loyal gaze of Mrs. Merton, care- 
 fully put the other letters in his pocket, and walked musingly to 
 the window. 
 
 Aubrey seized the opportunity to approach him. " My lord, 
 can I speak with you a few moments?" 
 
 *Me ! certainly : will you come to my dressing-room?"
 
 l88 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 . . . . " There was never 
 
 Poor gentleman had such a sudden fortune." 
 
 BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER: The Captain, Act v. Scene 5. 
 
 "My LORD," said the curate, as Vargrave, leaning back in 
 his chair, appeared to examine the shape of his boots ; while, in 
 reality, his "sidelong looks," not "of love," were fixed upon his 
 companion " I need scarcely refer to the wish of the late lord, 
 your uncle, relative to Miss Cameron and yourself ; nor need I, 
 to one of a generous spirit, add, that an engagement could be 
 only so far binding as both the parties, whose happiness it con- 
 cerned, should be willing in proper time and season to fulfil it." 
 
 "Sir!" said Vargrave, impatiently waving his hand ; and, in 
 his irritable surmise of what was to come, losing his habitual 
 self-control " I know not what all this has to do with you ; 
 surely you trespass upon ground sacred to Miss Cameron and 
 myself. Whatever you have to say, let me beg you to come at 
 once to the point." 
 
 " My lord, I may obey you. Miss Cameron and, I may add, 
 with Lady Vargrave's consent deputes me to say that, although 
 she feels compelled to decline the honor of your lordship's 
 alliance, yet, if in any arrangement of the fortune bequeathed 
 to her she could testify to you, my lord, her respect and friend- 
 ship, it would afford her the most sincere gratification." 
 
 Lord Vargrave started. 
 
 "Sir," said he, "I know not if I am to thank you for this 
 information the announcement of which so strangely coincides 
 with your arrival. But allow me to say, that there needs no 
 ambassador between Miss Cameron and myself. It is due, sir, 
 to my station, to my relationship, to my character of guardian, 
 to my long and faithful affection, to all considerations which 
 men of the world understand, which men of feeling sympathize 
 with, to receive from Miss Cameron alone the rejection of my 
 suit !" 
 
 " Unquestionably Miss Cameron will grant your lordship the 
 interview you have a right to seek ; but pardon me, I thought it 
 might save you both much pain, if the meeting were prepared 
 by a third person ; and on any matter of business, any atone- 
 ment to your lordship " 
 
 " Atonement ! what can atone to me ? " exclaimed Vargrave, 
 as he walked to and fro the room in great disorder and excite- 
 ment. " Can you give me back years of hope and expectancy 
 the manhood wasted in a vain dream ? Had I not been taught
 
 ALICE; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 189 
 
 to look to this reward, should I have rejected all occasion 
 while my youth was not yet all gone, while my heart was not 
 yet all occupied to form a suitable alliance? Nay. should I 
 have indulged in a high and stirring career, for which my own 
 fortune is by no means qualified. Atonement ! atonement ! 
 Talk of atonement to boys ! Sir ! I stand before you a man 
 whose private happiness is blighted, whose public prospects are 
 darkened, life wasted, fortunes ruined, the schemes of an exis- 
 tence, built upon one hope, which was lawfully indulged, over- 
 thrown ! and you talk to me of atonement!" 
 
 Selfish as the nature of this complaint might be, Aubrey was 
 struck with its justice. 
 
 "My lord," said he, a little embarrassed, "I cannot deny 
 that there is truth in much of what you say. Alas ! it proves 
 how vain it is for man to calculate on the future, how unhap- 
 pily your uncle erred in imposing conditions, which the chances 
 of life and the caprices of affection could at any time dissolve ! 
 But this is blame that attaches only to the dead : can you 
 blame the living?" 
 
 " Sir, I considered myself bound by my uncle's prayer to 
 keep my hand and heart disengaged, that this title miserable 
 and barren distinction though it be ! might, as he so ardently 
 desired, descend to Evelyn. I had a right to expect similar 
 honor upon her side ! " 
 
 " Surely, my lord, you, to whom the late lord on his death- 
 bed confided all the motives of his conduct and the secret of 
 his life, cannot but be aware that, while desirous of promoting 
 your worldly welfare, and uniting in one line his rank and his 
 fortune, your uncle still had Evelyn's happiness at heart as his 
 warmest wish ; you must know that, if that happiness were for- 
 feited by a marriage with you, the marriage became but a sec- 
 ondary consideration. Lord Vargrave's will in itself was a 
 proof of this. ' He did not impose, as an absolute condition, 
 upon Evelyn, her union with yourself; he did not make the 
 forfeiture of her whole wealth the penalty of her rejection of 
 that alliance. By the definite limit of the forfeit, he intimated 
 a distinction between a command and a desire. And surely, 
 when you consider all circumstances, your lordship must think 
 that, what with that forfeit and the estate settled upon the title, 
 your uncle did all that, in a worldly point of view, equity, and 
 even affection, could exact from him." 
 
 Vargrave smiled bitterly, but said nothing. 
 
 "And if this be doubted, I have clearer proof of his intentions. 
 $uch was his confidence in Lady Vargrave, that, in the letter
 
 igo ALICE; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 he addressed to her before his death, and which I now submit 
 to your lordship, you will observe that he not only expressly 
 leaves it to Lady Vargrave's discretion to communicate to 
 Evelyn that history of which she is at present ignorant, but 
 that he also clearly defines the line of conduct he wished to be 
 adopted with respect to Evelyn and yourself. Permit me to 
 point out the passage." 
 
 Impatiently Lord Vargrave ran his eye over the letter placed 
 in his hands, till he came to these lines : 
 
 " And if, when she has arrived at the proper age to form a 
 judgment, Evelyn should decide against Lumley's claims, you 
 know that on no account would I sacrifice her happiness ; all 
 that I require is, that fair play be given to his pretensions 
 due indulgence to the scheme I have long had at heart. Let 
 her be brought up to consider him her future husband, let her 
 not be prejudiced against him, let her fairly judge for herself, 
 when the time arrives." 
 
 "You see, my lord," said Mr. Aubrey, as he took back the 
 letter, "that this letter bears the same date as your uncle's will. 
 What he desired has been done. Be just, my lord be just, 
 and exonerate us all from blame : who can dictate to the 
 affections?" 
 
 "And I am to understand that I have no chance, now or 
 hereafter, of obtaining the affections of Evelyn ? Surely, at 
 your age, Mr. Aubrey, you cannot encourage the heated romance 
 common to all girls of Evelyn's age. Persons of our rank do 
 not marry like the Corydon and Phillis of a pastoral. At my 
 years, I never was fool enough to expect that I should inspire 
 a girl of seventeen with what is called a passionate attachment. 
 But happy marriages are based upon suitable circumstances, 
 mutual knowledge and indulgence, respect, esteem. Come, 
 sir, let me hope yet let me hope that, on the same day, I may 
 congratulate you on your preferment and you may congratulate 
 me upon my marriage." 
 
 Vargrave said this with a cheerful and easy smile ; and the 
 tone of his voice was that of a man who wished to convey 
 serious meaning in a jesting accent. 
 
 Mr. Aubrey, meek as he was, felt the insult of the hinted 
 bribe, and colored with a resentment no sooner excited than 
 checked. " Excuse me, my lord, I have now said all the rest 
 had better be left to your ward herself." 
 
 " Be it so, sir. I will ask you, then, to convey my request 
 to Evelyn to honor me with a last and parting interview." 
 
 Vargrave flung himself on his chair, and Aubrey left him,
 
 ALICE; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 " Thus airy Strephon tuned his lyre." SHENSTONE. 
 
 IN his meeting with Evelyn, Vargrave certainly exerted to 
 the utmost all his ability and all his art. He felt that violence, 
 that sarcasm, that selfish complaint would not avail, in a man 
 who was not loved, though they are often admirable cards in 
 the hands of a man who is. As his own heart was perfectly 
 untouched in the matter, except by rage and disappointment 
 feelings which with him never lasted very long he could play 
 coolly his losing game. His keen and ready intellect taught 
 him that all he could now expect was to bequeath sentiments 
 of generous compassion, and friendly interest; to create a favor- 
 able impression, which he might hereafter improve; to reserve, 
 in short, some spot of vantage-ground in the country, from 
 which he was to affect to withdraw all his forces. He had 
 known, in his experience of women, which, whether as an actor 
 or a spectator, was large and various though not among very 
 delicate and refined natures that a lady often takes a fancy to 
 a suitor after she has rejected him; that, precisely because she 
 has once rejected, she ultimately accepts him. And even this 
 chance was, in circumstances so desperate, not to be neglected. 
 He assumed, therefore, the countenance, the postures, and the 
 voice of heart-broken but submissive despair; he affected a 
 nobleness and magnanimity in his grief, which touched Evelyn 
 to the quick, and took her by surprise. 
 
 u It is enough," said he, in sad and faltering accents; "quite 
 enough to me to know that you cannot love me, that I should 
 fail in rendering you happy: say no more, Evelyn, say no more! 
 Let me spare you, at least, the pain your generous nature must 
 feel in my anguish I resign all pretensions to your hand: you 
 are free! may you be happy ! " 
 
 " Oh, Lord Vargrave ! oh, Lumley ! " said Evelyn, weeping, 
 and moved by a thousand recollections of early years. " If I 
 could but prove in any other way my grateful sense of your 
 merits your too-partial appreciation of me my regard for my 
 lost benefactor then, indeed, nor till then, could I be happy. 
 Oh! that this wealth, so little desired by me, had been more at 
 my disposal; but, as it is, the day that sees me in possession of 
 it shall see it placed under your disposition, your control. This 
 is but justice common justice to you; you were the nearest 
 relation of the departed. I had no claim on him none, but 
 affection. Affection ! and yet I disobey him ! "
 
 I()2 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 There was much in all tin's that secretly pleased Vargrave; 
 but it only seemed to redouble his grief. 
 
 " Talk not thus, my ward, my friend ah! still my friend," 
 said he, putting his handkerchief to his eyes. " I repine not, 
 I am more than satisfied. Still let me preserve my privilege of 
 guardian, of adviser a privilege dearer to me than all the 
 wealth of the Indies ! " 
 
 Lord Vargrave had some faint suspicion that Legard had 
 created an undue interest in Evelyn's heart; and on this point 
 he delicately and indirectly sought to sound her. Her replies 
 convinced him that if Evelyn had conceived any prepossession 
 for Legard, there had not been time or opportunity to ripen it 
 into deep attachment. Of Maltravers he had no fear. The 
 habitual self-control of that reserved personage deceived him 
 partly; and his low opinion of mankind deceived him still more. 
 For, if there had been any love between Maltravers and Evelyn, 
 why should the former not have stood his ground, and declared his 
 suit ? Lumley would have " bah'd" and "///V"at the thought 
 of any punctilious regard for engagements so easilybroken, having 
 power either to check passion for beauty, or to restrain self- 
 interest in the chase of an heiress. He had known Maltravers 
 ambitious; and with him, ambition and self-interest meant the 
 same. Thus, by the \ery finesse of his character while Var- 
 grave, ever with the worldly, was a keen and almost infallible 
 observer with natures of a more refined, or a higher order, he 
 always missed the mark by overshooting. Besides, had a sus- 
 picion of Maltravers ever crossed him. Caroline's communica- 
 tions would have dispelled it. It was more strange that Caro- 
 line should have been blind; nor would she have been so, had 
 she been less absorbed in her own schemes and destinies. All 
 her usual penetration had of late settled in self; and an uneasy 
 feeling half arising from conscientious reluctance to aid Var- 
 grave's objects half from jealous irritation at the thought of 
 Vargrave's marrying another had prevented her from seeking 
 any very intimate or confidential communication with Evelyn 
 herself. 
 
 The dreaded conference was over; Evelyn parted from Var- 
 grave with the very feelings he had calculated on exciting, 
 the moment he ceased to be her lover, her old childish regard 
 for him recommenced. She pitied his dejection she respected 
 his generosity she was deeply grateful for his forbearance. 
 But still still she was free ; and her heart bounded within her 
 at the thought. 
 
 Meanwhile, Vargrave, after his solemn farewell to Evelyn,
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. i<)3 
 
 retreated again to his own room, where he remained till his 
 post-horses arrived. Then, descending into the drawing-room, 
 he was pleased to find neither Aubrey nor Evelyn there. He 
 knew that much affectation would be thrown away upon Mr. 
 and Mrs. Merton; he thanked them for their hospitality, with 
 grave and brief cordiality, and then turned to Caroline, who 
 stood apart by the window. 
 
 " All is up with me at present," he whispered. " I leave you, 
 Caroline, in anticipation of fortune, rank, and prosperity; that 
 is some comfort. For myself, I see only difficulties, embar- 
 rassment, and poverty in the future; but I despond of nothing 
 hereafter you may serve me, as I have served you. Adieu ! 
 I have been advising Caroline not to spoil Doltimore, Mrs. 
 Merton; he is conceited enough already. Good-bye! God bless 
 you all ! love to your little girls. Let me know if I can serve 
 you in any way, Merton good-bye again ! " And thus, sen- 
 tence by sentence, Vargrave talked himself into his carriage. 
 As it drove by the drawing-room windows, he saw Caroline 
 standing motionless where he had left her: he kissed his hand 
 her eyes were fixed mournfully on his. Hard, wayward, and 
 worldly as Caroline Merton \vas, Vargrave was yet not worthy 
 of the affection he had inspired ; for she could fed, and he 
 could not, the distinction, perhaps, between the sexes. And 
 there still stood Caroline Merton, recalling the last tones of that 
 indifferent voice, till she felt her hand seized, and turned round 
 to see Lord Doltimore, and smile upon the happy lover, per- 
 suaded that he was adored !
 
 194 ALICE J OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 BOOK IV. 
 
 Hvp aol irpoooiau, KOV rb abv irpoaKeijjofiai. EURIP. Androm. 255. 
 I will bring fire to thee I reck not of the place. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 * * * " This ancient city, 
 
 How wanton sits she amidst Nature's smiles ! 
 
 * * * Various nations meet, 
 As in the sea. yet not confined in space, 
 
 But streaming freely though the spacious streets." YOUNG. 
 
 * * * " His teeth he still did grind, 
 
 And grimly gnash, threatening revenge in vain." SPENSER. 
 
 " PARIS is a delightful place that is allowed by all. It is 
 delightful to the young, to the gay, to the idle ; to the literary 
 lion, who likes to be petted ; to the wiser epicure, who in- 
 dulges a most justifiable appetite. It is delightful to ladies, 
 who wish to live at their ease, and buy beautiful caps ; de- 
 lightful to philanthropists, who wish for listeners to schemes of 
 colonizing the moon ; delightful to the haunters of balls, and 
 ballets, and little theatres, and superb cafes, where men with 
 beards of all sizes and shapes scowl at the English, and involve 
 their intellects in the fascinating game of dominoes. For these, 
 and for many others, Paris is delightful. I say nothing against 
 it. But, for my own part, I would rather live in a garret in 
 London, than in a palace in the ChaussJe tf Antin Chacun a 
 son mauvais godt. 
 
 "I don't like the streets, in which I cannot walk but in the 
 kennel ; I don't like the shops, that contain nothing except 
 what's at the window ; I don't like the houses like prisons, 
 which look upon a courtyard : I don't like the beaux jardins, 
 which grow no plants save a Cupid in plaster : I don't like the 
 wood fires, which demand as many petits soins as the women, 
 and which warm no part of one but one's eyelids : I don't like 
 the language, with its strong phrases about nothing, and vibrat- 
 ing like a pendulum between 'rapture' and 'desolation'; I 
 don't like the accent, which one cannot get without speaking 
 through one's nose ; I don't like the eternal fuss and jabber 
 about books without nature, and revolutions without fruit : I 
 have no sympathy with tales that turn on a dead jackass ; nor
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 19$ 
 
 with constitutions that give the ballot to the representatives, 
 and withhold the suffrage from the people ; neither have I much 
 faith in that enthusiasm for the beaux arts, which shows its prod- 
 uce in execrable music, detestable pictures, abominable sculp- 
 ture, and a droll something that I believe the French call POETRY. 
 Dancing and cookery these are the arts the French excel in, 
 I grant it ; and excellent things they are ; but oh, England ! 
 oh, Germany ! you need not be jealous of your rival ! " 
 
 These are not the author's remarks he disowns them ; they 
 were Mr. Cleveland's. He was a prejudiced man ; Maltravers 
 was more liberal, but then Maltravers did not pretend to be a wit. 
 
 Maltravers had been several weeks in the city of cities, and 
 now he had his apartments in the gloomy but interesting Fau- 
 bourg St. Germain, all to himself. For Cleveland, having 
 attended eight days at a sale, and having moreover ransacked 
 all the curiosity shops, and shipped off bronzes, and cabinets, 
 and Genoese silks, and objets ate vertu enough to have half fur- 
 nished Fonthill, had fulfilled his mission, and returned to his 
 villa. Before the old gentleman went, he flattered himself that 
 change of air and scene had already been serviceable to his 
 friend ; and that time would work a complete cure upon that 
 commonest of all maladies, an unrequited passion, or an ill- 
 placed caprice. 
 
 Maltravers, indeed, in the habit of conquering as well as of 
 concealing emotion, vigorously and earnestly strove to dethrone 
 the image that had usurped his heart. Still vain of his self- 
 command, and still worshipping his favorite virtue of Fortitude, 
 and his delusive philosophy of the calm Golden Mean, he would 
 not weakly indulge the passion, while he had so sternly fled from 
 its object. But yet the image of Evelyn pursued it haunted 
 him ; it came on him unawares in solitude in crowds. That 
 smile so cheering, yet so soft, that ever had power to chase 
 away the shadow from his soul ; that youthful and luxurious 
 bloom of pure and eloquent thoughts, which was as the blossom 
 of genius before its fruit, bitter as well as sweet, is born that 
 rare union of quick feeling and serene temper, which forms the 
 very ideal of what we dream of in the mistress, and exact from 
 the wife ; all, even more, far more, than the exquisite form and 
 the delicate graces of the less durable beauty, returned to him, 
 after every struggle with himself : and time only seemed to 
 grave, in deeper if more latent folds of his heart, the ineradica- 
 ble impression. 
 
 Maltravers renewed his acquaintance with some persons not 
 unfamiliar to the reader.
 
 196 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 Valerie de Ventadour. How many recollections of the fairer 
 days of life were connected with that nalne ! Precisely as she 
 had never reached to his love, but only excited his fancy (the 
 fancy of twenty-two !) had her image always retained a pleasant 
 and grateful hue ; it was blended with no deep sorrow no 
 stern regret no dark remorse no haunting shame. 
 
 They met again. Madame de Ventadour was still beautiful, 
 and still admired perhaps more admired than ever : for, to the 
 great, fashion and celebrity bring a second and yet more popu- 
 lar youth. But Maltravers, if rejoiced to see how gently Time 
 had dealt with the fair Frenchwoman, was yet more pleased to 
 read in her fine features a more serene and contented expres- 
 sion than they had formerly worn. Valerie de Ventadour had 
 preceded her younger admirer through the "MYSTERIES OF 
 LIFE" ; she had learned the real objects of being; she dis- 
 tinguished between the Actual and the Visionary the Shadow 
 and the Substance ; she had acquired content for the present, 
 and looked with quiet hope towards the future. Her character 
 was still spotless ; or, rather, every year of temptation and trial 
 had given it a fairer lustre. Love, that might have ruined, 
 being once subdued, preserved her from all after-danger. The 
 first meeting between Maltravers and Valerie was, it is true, 
 one of some embarrassment and reserve : not so the second. 
 They did but once, and that slightly, recur to the past : and 
 from that moment, as by a tacit understanding, true friendship 
 between them dated. Neither felt mortified to see that an 
 illusion had passed away they were no longer the same in 
 each other's eyes. Both might be improved, and were so ; but 
 the Valerie and the Ernest of Naples were as things dead and 
 gone ! Perhaps Valerie's heart was even more reconciled to 
 the cure of its soft and luxurious malady by the renewal of their 
 acquaintance. The mature and experienced reasoner, in whom 
 enthusiasm had undergone its usual change, with the calm 
 brow and commanding aspect of sober manhood, was a being 
 so different from the romantic boy, new to the actual world of 
 civilized toils and pleasures fresh from the adventures of 
 Eastern wanderings, and full of golden dreams of poetry before 
 it settles into authorship or action ! She missed the brilliant 
 errors the daring aspirations even the animated gestures and 
 eager eloquence that had interested and enamoured her in the 
 loiterer by the shores of Baiae, or amidst the tomblike chambers 
 of Pompeii. For the Maltravers now before her wiser 
 better nobler even handsomer than of yore (for he was one 
 whom manhood became better than youth) the Frenchwoman
 
 AtiCE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 197 
 
 could at any period have felt friendship without danger. It 
 seemed to her, not as itreally was, the natural development, but 
 the very contrast, of the ardent, variable, imaginative boy, by 
 whose side she had gazed at night on the moonlit waters and 
 rosy skies of the soft Parthenope ! How does time, after long 
 absence, bring to us such contrast between the one we remem- 
 ber and the one we see ! And what a melancholy mockery does 
 it seem of our own vain hearts, dreaming of impressions never 
 to be changed, and affections that never can grow cool ! 
 
 And now, as they conversed with all the ease of cordial and 
 guileless friendship, how did Valerie rejoice in secret that upon 
 that friendship there rested no blot of shame ! and that she had 
 not forfeited those consolations for a home without love, which 
 had at last settled into cheerful nor unhallowed resignation 
 consolations only to be found in the conscience and the 
 pride ! 
 
 Monsieur de Ventadour had not altered, except that his nose 
 was longer, and that he now wore a peruque in full curl, instead 
 of his own straight hair. But, somehow or other perhaps by 
 the mere charm of custom he had grown more pleasing in Va- 
 lerie's eyes; habit had reconciled her to his foibles, deficiencies, 
 and faults ; and, by comparison with others, she could better 
 appreciate his good qualities, such as they were generosity, 
 good-temper, good-nature, and unbounded indulgence to herself. 
 Husband and wife have so many interests in common, that, when 
 they have jogged on through the ups-and-downs of life a suffic- 
 ient time, the leash which at first galled often grows easy and 
 familiar ; and unless the temper, or rather the disposition and 
 the heart, of either be insufferable, what was once a grievous 
 yoke becomes but a companionable tie. And for the rest, Va- 
 lerie, now that sentiment and fancy were sobered down, could 
 take pleasure in a thousand things which her pining affections 
 once, as it were, overlooked and overshot. She could feel grate- 
 ful for all the advantages her station and wealth procured her; 
 she could cull the roses in her reach, without sighing for the 
 amaranths of Elysium. 
 
 If the great have more temptations than those of middle life, 
 and if their senses of enjoyment become more easily pampered 
 into a sickly apathy; so at least (if they can once outlive satiety) 
 they have many more resources at their command. There is a 
 great deal of justice in the old line, displeasing though it be to 
 those who think of love in a cottage, " 'tis best repenting in a 
 coach and six ! " If among the Eupatrids, the Well Born, there 
 is less love in wedlock, less quiet happiness at home, still they are
 
 19$ ALICE ; Ok, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 less chained each to each they have more independence, both 
 the woman and the man and occupations and the solace without 
 can be so easily obtained ! Madame de Ventadour, in retiring 
 from the mere frivolities of society from crowded rooms, and 
 the inane talk and hollow smiles of mere acquaintanceship 
 became more sensible of the pleasures that her refined and ele- 
 gant intellect could derive from art and talent, and the commu- 
 nion of friendship. She drew around her the most cultivated 
 minds of her time and country. Her abilities, her wit, and 
 her conversational graces enabled her not only to mix on equal 
 terms with the most eminent, but to amalgamate and blend the 
 varieties of talent into harmony. The same persons, when 
 met elsewhere, seemed to have lost their charm: under Valerie's 
 roof every one breathed a congenial atmosphere. And music 
 and letters, and all that can refine and embellish civilized life, 
 contributed their resources to this gifted and beautiful woman. 
 And thus she found that the mind has excitement and occupa- 
 tion, as well as the heart ; and, unlike the latter, the culture \ve 
 bestow upon the first ever yields us its return. We talk of edu- 
 cation for the poor, but we forget how much it is needed by the 
 rich. Valerie was a living instance of the advantages to woman 
 of knowledge and intellectual resources. By them she had 
 purified her fancy by them she had conquered discontent by 
 them she had grown reconciled to life, and to her lot ! When the 
 heavy heart weighed down the one scale, it was the mind that re- 
 stored the balance. 
 
 The spells of Madame de Ventadour drew Maltravers into 
 this charmed circle of all that was highest, purest, and most gifted 
 in the society of Paris. There he did not meet, as were met in 
 the times of the old regime, sparkling abbes intent upon in- 
 trigues; or amorous old dowagers, eloquent on Rousseau; or pow- 
 dered courtiers, uttering epigrams against kings and religions 
 straws that foretold the whirlwind. Paul Courier was right ! 
 Frenchmen are Frenchmen still, they are full of fine phrases, 
 and their thoughts smell of the theatre ; they mistake foil for 
 diamonds, the Grotesque for the Natural, the Exaggerated for 
 the Sublime: but still, I say, Paul Courier was right: there is 
 more honesty now in a single salon in Paris, than there was in 
 all France in the days of Voltaire ! Vast interests and solemn 
 causes are no longer tossed about like shuttlecocks on the bat- 
 tledores of empty tongues. In the bouleverstment of Revolu- 
 tions, the French have fallen on their feet ! 
 
 Meeting men of all parties and all classes, Maltravers was 
 Struck with the heightened tone of public morals, the earnest
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 199 
 
 sincerity of feeling which generally pervaded all, as compared 
 with his first recollections of the Parisians. He saw that true ele- 
 ments for national wisdom were at work, though he saw also that 
 there was no country in which their operations would be more 
 liable to disorder, more slow and irregular in their results. The 
 French are like the Israelites in the Wilderness, when, accord- 
 ing to a Hebrew tradition, every morning they seemed on the 
 verge of Pisgah, and every evening they were as far from it as 
 ever. But still time rolls on, the pilgrimage draws to its close, 
 and the Canaan must come at last ! 
 
 At Valerie's house, Maltravers once more met the De Mon- 
 taignes. It was a painful meeting, for they thought of Cesa- 
 rini when they met. 
 
 It is now time to return to that unhappy man. Cesarini had 
 been removed from England, when Maltravers quitted it after 
 Lady Florence's death ; and Maltravers had thought it best to 
 acquaint De Montaigne with all the circumstances that had led 
 to his affliction. The pride and the honor of the high-spirited 
 Frenchman were deeply shocked by the tale of fraud and guilt, 
 softened as it was ; but the sight of the criminal, his awful pun- 
 ishment, merged every other feeling in compassion. Placed 
 under the care of the most skilful practitioners in Paris, great 
 hopes of Cesarini's recovery had been at first entertained. Nor 
 was it long, indeed, before he appeared entirely restored ; so 
 far as the external and superficial tokens of sanity could indi- 
 cate a cure. He testified complete consciousness of the kind- 
 ness of his relations, and clear remembrance of the past ; but 
 to the incoherent ravings of delirium, an intense melancholy, 
 still more deplorable, succeeded. In this state, however, he 
 became once more the inmate of his brother-in-law's house ; 
 and, though avoiding all society, except that of Teresa, whose 
 affectionate nature never wearied of its cares, he resumed many 
 of his old occupations. Again he appeared to take delight in 
 desultory and unprofitable studies, and in the cultivation of 
 that luxury of solitary men, "the thankless muse." By shun- 
 ning all topics connected with the gloomy cause of his affliction, 
 and talking rather of the sweet recollections of Italy and child- 
 hood than of more recent events, his sister was enabled to 
 soothe the dark hour, and preserve some kind of influence over 
 the ill-fated man. One day, however, there fell into his hands 
 an English newspaper, which was full of the praises of Lord 
 Vargrave ; and the article, in lauding the peer, referred to his 
 services as the commoner Lumley Ferrers. 
 
 This incident, slight as it appeared, and perfectly untrare-
 
 200 ALICE J OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 able by his relations/produced a visible effect on Cesarini ; and 
 three days afterward he attempted his own life. The failure 
 of the attempt was followed by the fiercest paroxysms. His 
 disease returned in all its dread force ; and it became neces- 
 sary to place him under yet stricter confinement than he had 
 endured before. Again, about a year from the date now en- 
 tered upon, he had appeared to recover ; and again he was re- 
 moved to De Montaigne's house. His relations were not aware 
 of the influence which Lord Vargrave's name exercised over 
 Cesarini ; in the melancholy tale communicated to them by 
 Maltravers, that name had not been mentioned. If Maltravers 
 had at one time entertained some vague suspicions that Lum- 
 ley had acted a treacherous part with regard to Florence, those 
 suspicions had long since died away for want of confirmation ; 
 nor did he (nor did therefore the De Montaignes) connect Lord 
 Vargrave with the affliction of Cesarini. De Montaigne him- 
 self, therefore, one day at dinner, alluding to a question of for- 
 eign politics which had been debated that morning in the 
 Chamber, and in which he himself had taken an active part, 
 happened to refer to a speech of Vargrave's upon the subject, 
 which had made some sensation abroad, as well as at home. 
 Teresa asked innocently who Lord Vargrave was ? and De 
 Montaigne, well acquainted with the biography of the princi- 
 pal English statesmen, replied, that he had commenced his 
 career as Mr. Ferrers, and reminded Teresa that they had once 
 been introduced to him in Paris. Cesarini suddenly rose and 
 left the room ; his absence was not noted for his comings and 
 goings were ever strange and fitful. Teresa soon afterward 
 quitted the apartment with her children, and De Montaigne, 
 who was rather fatigued by the exertions and excitement of the 
 morning, stretched himself in his chair to enjoy a short siesta. 
 He was suddenly awakened by a feeling of pain and suffoca- 
 tion awakened in time to struggle against a strong gripe that 
 had fastened itself at his throat. The room was darkened in 
 the growing shades of the evening ; and, but for the glittering 
 and savage eyes that were fixed on him, he could scarcely dis- 
 cern his assailant. He at length succeeded, however, in free- 
 ing himself, and casting the intended assassin on the ground. 
 He shouted for assistance ; and the lights, borne by the ser- 
 vants who rushed into the room, revealed to him the face of 
 his brother-in-law ! Cesarini, though in strong convulsions, 
 still uttered cries and imprecations of revenge ; he denounced 
 De Montaigne as a traitor and a murderer ! In the dark con- 
 fusion of his mind, he had mistaken the guardian for the dis-
 
 ALICE J OR, THE MYSTERIES. 2OI 
 
 tant foe, whose name sufficed to conjure up the phantoms of 
 the dead, and plunge reason into fury. 
 
 It was now clear that there was danger and death in Cesa- 
 rini's disease. His madness was pronounced to be capable of 
 no certain and permanent cure : he was placed at a new asy- 
 lum (the superintendents of which were celebrated for human- 
 ity as well as skill), a little distance from Versailles, and there 
 he still remained. Recently his lucid intervals had become 
 more frequent and prolonged ; but trifles that sprung from his 
 own mind, and which no care could prevent or detect, sufficed 
 to renew his calamity in all its fierceness. At such times he 
 required the most unrelaxing vigilance, for his madness ever 
 took an alarming and ferocious character ; and had he been 
 left unshackled, the boldest and stoutest of the keepers would 
 have dreaded to enter his cell unarmed, or alone. 
 
 What made the disease of the mind appear more melancholy 
 and confirmed was, that all this time the frame seemed to in- 
 crease in health and strength. That is not an uncommon case 
 in instances of mania and it is generally the worst symptom. 
 In earlier youth, Cesarini had been delicate even to effeminacy ; 
 but now his proportions were enlarged his form (though still 
 lean and spare) muscular and vigorous as if in the torpor 
 which usually succeeded to his bursts of frenzy, the animal por- 
 tion gained by the repose or disorganization of the intellectual. 
 When in his better and calmer moods, in which indeed none but 
 the experienced could have detected his malady books made 
 his chief delight. But then he complained bitterly, if briefly, 
 of the confinement he endured of the injustice he suffered ; 
 and as, shunning all companions, he walked gloomily amidst 
 the grounds that surrounded that House of Woe, his unseen 
 guardians beheld him clenching his hands, as at some vision- 
 ary enemy ; or overheard him accuse some phantom of his 
 brain of the torments he endured. 
 
 Though the reader can detect in Lumley Ferrers the cause 
 of the frenzy, and the object of the imprecation, it was not so 
 with the De Montaignes, nor with the patient's keepers and 
 physicians ; for in his delirium he seldom or never gave name 
 to the shadows that he invoked not even to that of Florence. 
 It is, indeed, no unusual characteristic of madness to shun, as 
 by a kind of cunning, all mention of the names of those by 
 whom the madness has been caused. It is as if the Unfortu- 
 nates imagined that the madness might be undiscovered, if the 
 images connected with it were unbetrayed. 
 
 Such, at this time, was the wretched state of the man, whose
 
 202 ALICE J OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 talents had promised a fair and honorable career, had it not been 
 the wretched tendency of his mind, from boyhood upward, to 
 pamper every unwholesome and unhallowed feeling as a token 
 of the exuberance of genius. De Montaigne, though he touched 
 as lightly as possible upon this dark domestic calamity in his 
 first communications with Maltravers, whose conduct in that 
 melancholy tale of crime and woe had, he conceived, been stamped 
 with generosity and feeling, still betrayed emotions that told 
 how much his peace had been embittered. 
 
 "I seek to console Teresa," said he, turning away his manly 
 head, "and to point out all the blessings yet left to her ; but that 
 brother so beloved, from whom so much was so vainly expected! 
 still ever and ever, though she strives to conceal it from me, this 
 affliction comes back to her, and poisons every thought ! Oh ! 
 better a thousand times that he had died ! When reason, sense, 
 almost the soul, are dead how dark and fiend-like is this life 
 that remains behind ! And if it should be in the blood if Te- 
 resa's children dreadful thought ! " 
 
 De Montaigne ceased, thoroughly overcome. 
 
 "Do not, my dear friend, so fearfully exaggerate your mis- 
 fortune, great as it is ; Cesarini's disease evidently arose from no 
 physical conformation it was but the crisis, the development, 
 of a long-contracted malady of mind passions, morbidly in-> 
 dulged the reasoning faculty, obstinately neglected and yet 
 too he may recover. The farther memory recedes from the 
 shock he has sustained, the better the chance that his mind will 
 regain its tone." 
 
 De Montaigne wrung his friend's hand 
 
 "It is strange that from you should come sympathy and com- 
 fort! you whom he so injured! you whom his folly or his crime 
 drove from your proud career, and your native soil! But Prov- 
 idence will yet, I trust, redeem the evil of its erring creature, 
 and I shall yet live to see you restored to hope and home, a 
 happy husband, an honored citizen : till then, I feel as if the 
 curse lingered upon my race." 
 
 " Speak not thus whatever my destiny, I have recovered from 
 that wound ; and still, De Montaigne, I find in life that suffering 
 succeeds to suffering, and disappointment to disappointment, as 
 wave to wave. To endure is the only philosophy to believe 
 that we shall live again in a brighter planet, is the only hope 
 that our reason should accept from our desires."
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 " Monstra evenerunt tnihi, 
 
 Introit in sedes ater alienus earns, 
 Anguis per impluvium decidit de tegulis, 
 Gallma cecinit ! " TERENT.* 
 
 WITH his constitutional strength of mind, and conformably 
 with his acquired theories, Maltravers continued to struggle 
 against the latest and strongest passion of his life. It might be 
 seen in the paleness of his brow, and that nameless expression 
 of suffering which betrays itself in the lines about the mouth, 
 that his health was affected by the conflict within him ; and 
 many a sudden fit of absence and abstraction, many an impa- 
 tient sigh, followed by a forced and unnatural gayety, told the 
 observant Valerie that he was the prey of a sorrow he was too 
 proud to disclose. He compelled himself, however, to take, or 
 to affect, an interest in the singular phenomena of the social state 
 around him ; phenomena that, in a happier or serener mood, 
 would indeed have suggested no ordinary food for conjecture 
 and meditation. 
 
 The state of visible transition is the state of nearly all the en- 
 lightened communities in Europe. But nowhere is it so pro- 
 nounced as in that country which may be called the Heart of 
 European Civilization. There, all, to which the spirit of society 
 attaches itself, appears broken, vague, and half developed the 
 Antique in ruins, and the New not formed. It is, perhaps, the 
 only country in which the Constructive principle has not kept 
 pace with the Destructive. The Has Been is blotted out the 
 To Be is as the shadow of a far land in a mighty and perturbed 
 sea.f 
 
 Maltravers, who for several years had not examined the pro- 
 gress of modern literature, looked with mingled feelings of sur- 
 prise, distaste, and occasional and most reluctant admiration, 
 on the various works which the successors of Voltaire and 
 Rousseau have produced, and are pleased to call the offspring 
 of Truth united to Romance. 
 
 Profoundly versed in the mechanism and elements of those 
 masterpieces of Germany and England, from which the French 
 have borrowed so largely, while pretending to be original, Mal- 
 travers was shocked to see the monsters which these Franken- 
 
 * Prodigies have occurred ; a strange black dog came into the house; a snake glided from 
 the tiles, through the court; the hen crowed. 
 
 t The reader will remember that these remarks were written long before the last French 
 Revolution, and when the dynasty of Louis Philippe was generally considered most secure.
 
 264 ALICE ; Oft, THE MYStERtES. 
 
 steins had created from the relics and offal of the holiest sepul- 
 chres. The head of a giant on the limbs of a dwarf incon- 
 gruous members jumbled together parts fair and beautiful 
 the whole a hideous distortion ! 
 
 "It may be possible," said he to De Montaigne, "that these 
 works are admired and extolled ; but how they can be vindi- 
 cated by the examples of Shakespeare and Goethe, or even of 
 Byron, who redeemed poor and melodramatic conceptions with a 
 manly vigor of execution, an energy and completeness of pur- 
 pose that Dryden himself never surpassed, is to me utterly in- 
 conceivable." 
 
 " I allow that there is a strange mixture of fustian and maud- 
 lin in all these things," answered De Montaigne ; " but they 
 are but the windfalls of trees that may bear rich fruit in due 
 season ; meanwhile, any new school is better than eternal imi- 
 tations of the old. As for critical vindications of the works 
 themselves, the age that produces the phenomena is never the 
 age to classify and analyze them. We have had a deluge, and 
 now new creatures spring from the new soil." 
 
 " An excellent simile : they come forth from slime and mud 
 fetid and crawling unformed and monstrous. I grant excep- 
 tions ; and even in the New School, as it is called, I can admire 
 the real genius the vital and creative power of Victor Hugo. 
 But oh, that a nation which has known a Corneille should ever 
 
 spawn forth a ! And with these rickety and drivelling 
 
 abortions all having followers and adulators your Public can 
 still bear to be told that they have improved wonderfully on the 
 day when they gave laws and models to the literature of 
 
 Europe; they can bear to hear proclaimed a sublime 
 
 genius in the same circles which sneer down Voltaire ! " 
 
 Voltaire is out of fashion in France, but Rousseau still main- 
 tains his influence, and boasts his imitators. Rousseau was the 
 worse man of the two ; perhaps he was also the more dangerous 
 writer. But his reputation is more durable, and sinks deeper 
 into the heart of his nation; and the danger of his unstable and 
 capricious doctrines has passed away. In Voltaire we behold 
 the fate of all writers purely destructive ; their uses cease with 
 the evils they denounce. But Rousseau sought to construct as 
 well as to destroy ; and though nothing could well be more 
 absurd than his constructions, still man loves to look back and 
 see even delusive images castles in the air reared above the 
 waste where cities have been. Rather than leave even a burial- 
 ground to solitude, we populate it with ghosts. 
 
 By degrees, however, as he mastered all the features of the
 
 ALICE J OR, THE MYSTERIES. 05 
 
 French literature, Maltravers became more tolerant of the 
 present defects, and more hopeful of the future results. He 
 saw, in one respect, that that literature carried with it its own 
 ultimate redemption. 
 
 Its general characteristic contra-distinguished from the lit- 
 erature of the old French classic school is to take the heart 
 for its study ; to bring the passions and feelings into action, and 
 let the Within have its record and history as well as the With- 
 out. In all this, our contemplative analyst began to allow that 
 the French were not far wrong when they contended that 
 Shakespeare made the fountain of their inspiration a fountain 
 which the majority of our later English Fictionists have ne- 
 glected. It is not by a story woven of interesting incidents, 
 relieved by delineations of the externals and surface of char- 
 acter, humorous phraseology, and every-day ethics, that Fiction 
 achieves its grandest ends. 
 
 In the French literature, thus characterized, there is much false 
 morality, much depraved sentiment, and much hollow rant. 
 But still it carries within it the germ of an excellence which, 
 sooner or later, must, in the progress of national genius, arrive 
 at its full development. 
 
 Meanwhile, it is a consolation to know that nothing really 
 immoral is ever permanently popular, or ever, therefore, long 
 deleterious ; what is dangerous in a work of genius cures itself 
 in a few years. We can now read Werter, and instruct our 
 hearts by its exposition of weakness and passion our taste by 
 its exquisite and unrivalled simplicity of construction and detail, 
 without any fear that we shall shoot ourselves in top-boots ! We 
 can feel ourselves elevated by the noble sentiments of " The 
 Robbers," and our penetration sharpened as to the wholesale 
 immorality of conventional cant and hypocrisy, without any 
 clanger of turning banditti, and becoming cut-throats from the 
 love of virtue. Providence, that has made the genius of the 
 few in all times and countries the guide and prophet of the 
 many ; and appointed Literature as the sublime agent of Civili- 
 zation, of Opinion, and of Law, has endowed the elements it 
 employs with a divine power of self-purification. The stream 
 settles of itself by rest and time; the impure particles fly off, or 
 are neutralized by the healthful. It is only fools that call the 
 works of a master-spirit immoral. There does not exist in the 
 literature of the world one popular book that is immoral two 
 centuries after it is produced. For, in the heart of nations, the 
 False does not live so long; and the True is the Ethical to the 
 end of time.
 
 206 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 From the literary, Maltravers turned to the political state of 
 France his curious and thoughtful eye. He was struck by the 
 resemblance which this nation so civilized, so thoroughly 
 European bears in one respect to the despotisms of the East : 
 the convulsions of the capital decide the fate of the country; 
 Paris is the tyrant of France. He saw in this inflammable con- 
 centration of power, which must ever be pregnant with great 
 evils, one of the causes why the revolutions of that powerful 
 and polished people are so incomplete and unsatisfactory why, 
 like Cardinal Fleury, system after system, and Government after 
 Government, 
 
 * * " floruit sine fructu, 
 
 Defloruit sine Juctu."* 
 
 Maltravers regarded it as a singular instance of perverse 
 ratiocination, that, unwarned by experience, the French should 
 still persist in perpetuating this political vice ; that all their 
 policy should still be the policy of Centralization a principle 
 which secures the momentary strength, but ever ends in the 
 abrupt destruction, of States. It is, in fact, the perilous tonic, 
 which seems to brace the system, but drives the blood to the 
 head thus come apoplexy and madness. By centralization the 
 provinces are weakened, it is true ; but weak to assist as well 
 as to oppose a Government weak to withstand a mob. No- 
 where, nowadays, is a mob so powerful as in Paris ; the politi- 
 cal history of Paris is the history of mobs. Centralization is 
 an excellent quackery for a despot who desires power to last 
 only his own life, and who has but a life interest in the State ; 
 but to true liberty and permanent order, centralization is a 
 deadly poison. The more the provinces govern their own 
 affairs, the more we find everything, even to roads and post- 
 horses, are left to the people ; the rrore the Municipal Spirit 
 pervades every vein of the vast body, the more certain may we 
 be that reform and change must come from universal opinion, 
 which is slow, and constructs ere it destroys not from public 
 clamor, which is sudden, and not only pulls down the edifice, 
 but sells the bricks ! 
 
 Another peculiarity in the French Constitution struck and 
 perplexed Maltravers. This people, so pervaded by the repub- 
 lican sentiment this people, who had sacrificed so much for 
 Freedom this people, who, in the name of Freedom, had per- 
 petrated so much crime with Robespierre, and achieved so 
 much glory with Napoleon this people were, <rs a people, con- 
 tented to be utterly excluded from all power and voice in the 
 
 * Flourished without fruit, and was destroyed without regret.
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 207 
 
 State ! Out of thirty-three millions of subjects, less than two 
 hundred thousand electors ! Where was there ever an oligarchy 
 equal to this ? What a strange infatuation, to demolish an 
 aristocracy and yet to exclude a people ! What an anomaly in 
 political architecture, to build an inverted pyramid ! Where 
 was the safety-valve of governments where the natural events 
 of excitement in a population so inflammable ? The people 
 itself were left a mob : no stake in the State no action in its 
 affairs no legislative interest in its security.* 
 
 On the other hand, it was singular to see how the aristoc- 
 racy of birth broken down the aristocracy of letters had arisen. 
 A Peerage, half composed of journalists, philosophers, and 
 authors ! This was the beau idtal of Algernon Sydney's Aris- 
 tocratic Republic ; of the Helvetian visions of what ought to 
 be the dispensation of public distinctions ; yet was it, after all, 
 a desirable aristocracy ? Did society gain ? did literature 
 lose ? Was the Priesthood of Genius made more sacred and 
 more pure by these worldly decorations and hollow titles ? or 
 was aristocracy itself thus rendered a more disinterested, a 
 more powerful, or more sagacious element in the administration 
 of law or the elevation of opinion ? These questions, not 
 lightly to be answered, could not fail to arouse the speculation 
 and curiosity of a man who had been familiar with the closet 
 and the forum ; and in proportion as he found his interest ex- 
 cited in these problems to be solved by a foreign nation, did the 
 thoughtful Englishman feel the old instinct which binds the 
 citizen to the father-land begin to stir once more earnestly 
 and vividly within him. 
 
 " You, yourself individually, are passing, like us," said De 
 Montaigne one day to Maltravers, " through a state of transi- 
 tion. You have forever left the Ideal, and you are carrying 
 your cargo of experience over to the Practical. When you 
 reach that haven, you will have completed the development of 
 your forces." 
 
 " You mistake me ; I am but a spectator." 
 
 " Yes ; but you desire to go behind the scenes. And he who 
 once grows familiar with the green-room longs to be an actor." 
 
 With Madame de Ventadour and the De Montaignes Mal- 
 travers passed the chief part of his time. They knew how to 
 appreciate his nobler and to love his gentler attributes and 
 qualities ; they united in a warm interest for his future fate ; 
 they combated his Philosophy of Inaction ; and they felt that 
 it was because he was not happy that he was not wise. Expe- 
 
 * Has not all this proved prophetic ?
 
 208 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 rience was to him what ignorance had been to Alice. His 
 faculties were chilled and dormant. As affection to those who 
 are unskilled in all things, so is affection to those who despair of 
 all things. The mind of Maltravers was a world without a sun ! 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 " Coelebs quid agam." * HORAT. 
 
 IN a room at Fenton's Hotel sate Lord Vargrave and Caro- 
 line Lady Doltimore two months after the marriage of the 
 latter. 
 
 " Doltimore has positively fixed, then, to go abroad, on your 
 return from Cornwall ? " 
 
 " Positively to Paris. You can join us at Christmas, I 
 trust ? " 
 
 " I have no doubt of it ; and before then I hope that I shall 
 have arranged certain public matters, which at present harass 
 and absorb me even more than my private affairs." 
 
 "You have managed to obtain terms with Mr. Douce and to 
 delay the repayment of your debt to him ? " 
 
 "Yes, I hope so, till I touch Miss Cameron's income, which 
 will be mine, I trust, by the time she is eighteen." 
 
 "You mean the forfeit money of ^30,000 ?" 
 
 " Not I ! I mean what I said ! " 
 
 " Can you really imagine she will still accept your hand ?" 
 
 " With your aid, I do imagine it ! Hear me. You must 
 take Evelyn with you to Paris. I have no doubt but that she 
 will be delighted to accompany you ; nay, I have paved the 
 way so far. For, of course, as a friend of the family and guard- 
 ian to Evelyn, I have maintained a correspondence with Lady 
 Vargrave. She informs me that Evelyn has been unwell and 
 low-spirited ; that she fears Brook-Green is dull for her, etc. 
 I wrote, in reply, to say that the more my ward saw of the 
 world, prior to her accession, when of age, to the position she 
 would occupy in it, the more she would fulfil my late uncle's 
 wishes with respect to her education, and so forth. I added 
 that, as you were going to Paris and as you loved her so much 
 there could not be a better opportunity for her entrance into 
 life, under the most favorable auspices. Lady Vargrave's an- 
 swer to this letter arrived this morning ; she will consent to 
 such an arrangement, should you propose it." 
 
 * What shall I do, a bachelor ?
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 209 
 
 " But what good will result to yourself in this project ? at 
 Paris you will be sure of rivals, and " 
 
 "Caroline," interrupted Lord Vargrave, " I know very well 
 what you would say ; I also know all the danger I must incur. 
 But it is a choice of evils ; and I choose the least. You see 
 that while she is at Brook-Green, and under the eye of that sly 
 old curate, I can effect nothing with her. There, she is entirely 
 removed from my influence ; not so abroad not so under 
 your roof. Listen to me still further. In this country, and 
 especially in the seclusion and shelter of Brook-Green, I have 
 no scope for any of those means which I shall be compelled to 
 resort to, in failure of all else." 
 
 " What can you intend ?" said Caroline, with a slight 
 shudder. 
 
 " I don't know what I intend yet. But this, at least, I can 
 tell you that Miss Cameron's fortune I must and will have. 
 I am a desperate man, and I can play a desperate game, if 
 need be." 
 
 " And do you think that / will aid will abet." 
 
 " Hush ! not so loud ! Yes, Caroline, you will, and you 
 must, aid and abet me in any project I may form." 
 
 " Must ! Lord Vargrave ? " 
 
 "Ay ! " said Lumley, with a smile, and sinking his voice into 
 a whisper ; " ay ! -you are in my power ! " 
 
 "Traitor! you cannot dare you cannot mean !" 
 
 "I mean nothing more than to remind you of the ties that 
 exist between us ties which ought to render us the firmest 
 and most confidential of friends. Come, Caroline, recollect all 
 the benefits must not lie on one side ; I have obtained for you 
 rank and wealth ; I have procured you a husband you must 
 help me to a wife ! " 
 
 Caroline sunk back, and covered her face with her hands. 
 
 "I allow," continued Vargrave, coldly "I allow that your 
 beauty and talent were sufficient of themselves to charm a wiser 
 man than Doltimore ; but had I not suppressed jealousy 
 sacrificed love had I dropped a hint to your liege lord nay, 
 had I not fed his lap-dog vanity by all the cream and sugar of 
 flattering falsehoods you would be Caroline Merton still !" 
 
 "Oh! would that I were! Oh! that I were anything but 
 your tool your victim ! Fool that I was ! wretch that I am ! 
 I am rightly punished ! " 
 
 " Forgive me forgive me, dearest," said Vargrave soothingly ; 
 "I was to blame, forgive me : but you irritated, you maddened 
 me, by your seeming indifference to my prosperity my fate.
 
 zio ALICE; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 I tell you again and again, pride of my soul, I tell you, that 
 you are the only being 1 love ! and if you will allow me, if you 
 will rise superior, as I once fondly hoped, to all the cant and 
 prejudice of convention and education the only woman I 
 could ever respect, as well as love ! Oh, hereafter, when you 
 see me at that height to which I feel that I am born to climb, 
 let me think that to your generosity, your affection, your zeal, 
 I owed the ascent : at present I am on the precipice without 
 your hand I fall for ever. My own fortune is gone the miser- 
 able forfeit due to me, if Evelyn continues to reject my suit, 
 when she has arrived at the age of eighteen, is deeply mortgaged, 
 lam engaged in vast and daring schemes, in which I may either 
 rise to the highest station or lose that which I now hold. In 
 either case, how necessary to me is wealth : in the one instance, 
 to maintain my advancement; in the other, to redeem my fall." 
 
 "But did you not tell me," said Caroline, " that Evelyn pro- 
 posed and promised to place her fortune at your disposal, even 
 while rejecting your hand?" 
 
 " Absurd mockery ! " exclaimed Vargrave ; " the foolish boast 
 of a girl an impulse liable to every caprice. Can you suppose, 
 that when she launches into the extravagance natural to her 
 age, and necessary to her position, she will not find a thousand 
 demands upon her rent-roll not dreamt of now ? a thousand 
 vanities and baubles, that will soon erase my poor and hollow 
 claim from her recollection ? Can you suppose that, if she 
 marry another, her husband will ever consent to a child's 
 romance ? And even were all this possible, were it possible 
 that girls were not extravagant, and that husbands had nocom- 
 monsense, is it for me, Lord Vargrave, to be a mendicant upon 
 reluctant bounty? a poor cousin a pensioned led-captain? 
 Heaven knows I have as little false pride as any man, but still this 
 is a degradation I cannot stoop to. Besides, Caroline, I am no 
 miser, no Harpagon : I do not want wealth for wealth's sake, 
 but for the advantages it bestows respect honor position ; 
 and these I get as the husband of the great heiress. Should I 
 get them as her dependant ? No : for more than six years I 
 have built my schemes and shaped my conduct, according to 
 one assured and definite object ; and that object I shall not 
 now in the eleventh hour let slip from my hands. Enough of 
 this : you will pass Brook-Green in returning from Cornwall 
 you will take Evelyn with you to Paris leave the rest to me. 
 Fear no folly, no violence, from my plans, whatever they may 
 be : I work in the dark. Nor do I despair that Evelyn will 
 love, that Evelyn will voluntarily accept, me yet: my disposition
 
 ALICE; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 211 
 
 is sanguine ; I look to the bright side of things : do the 
 
 Here their conference was interrupted by Lord Doltimore, 
 who lounged carelessly into the room, with his hat on one side. 
 "Ah ! Vargrave, how are you? You will not forget the letters 
 of introduction? Where are you going, Caroline?" 
 
 " Only to my own room, to put on my bonnet ; the carriage 
 will be here in a few minutes." And Caroline escaped. 
 
 "So you go to Cornwall to-morrow, Doltimore?" 
 
 "Yes cursed bore! but Lady Elizabeth insists on seeing us, 
 and I don't object to a week's good shooting. The old lady, 
 too, has something to leave, and Caroline had no dowry : not 
 that I care for it ; but still marriage is expensive." 
 
 "By the by, you will want the five thousand pounds you lent 
 me?" 
 
 "Why, whenever it is convenient." 
 
 " Say no more it shall be seen to. Doltimore, I am very 
 anxious that Lady Doltimore's ctebdt at Paris should be brilliant : 
 everything depends on falling into the right set. For myself, 
 I don't care about fashion, and never did : but if I were mar- 
 ried, and an idle man like you, it might be different." 
 
 "Oh, you will be very useful to us when we return to London. 
 Meanwhile, you know, you have my proxy in the Lords. I 
 dare say there will be some sharp work the first week or two 
 after the recess." 
 
 "Very likely ; and depend on one thing, my dear Doltimore, 
 that when I am in the Cabinet, a certain friend of mine shall 
 be an earl. Adieu." 
 
 "Good-bye, my dear Vargrave, good-bye and, I say, I say, 
 don't distress yourself about that trifle a few months hence, 
 it will suit me just as well." 
 
 "Thanks I will just look into my accounts, and use you 
 without ceremony. Well I dare say we shall meet at Paris. 
 Oh, I forgot ! I observe that you have renewed your intimacy 
 with Legard. Now he is a very good fellow, and I gave him 
 that place to oblige you still, as you are no longer a gar f on 
 but perhaps I shall offend you?" 
 
 " Not at all. What is there against Legard ?" 
 
 " Nothing in the world but he is a bit of a boaster. I dare 
 say his ancestor was a Gascon poor fellow ! -and he affects 
 to say that you can't choose a coat, or buy a horse, without his 
 approval and advice that he can turn you round his finger. 
 Now this hurts your consequence in the world you don't get 
 credit for your own excellent sense and taste. Take my advice,
 
 212 ALICE; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 avoid these young hangers-on of fashion these club-room lions. 
 Having no importance of their own, they steal the importance 
 of their friends. Verbum sap." 
 
 " You are very right Legard is a coxcomb ; and now I see 
 why he talked of joining us at Paris." 
 
 " Don't let him do any such thing ! he will be telling the 
 Frenchmen that her ladyship is in love with him ha ! ha ! " 
 
 " Ha ! ha ! a very good joke poor Caroline ! very good 
 joke ! " 
 
 "Well, good-bye once more ;" and Vargrave closed the door. 
 
 " Legard go to Paris not if Evelyn goes there ! " muttered 
 Lumley. " Besides, I want no partner in the little that one can 
 screw out of this blockhead." 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 "Mr. Bumblecase, a word with you I have a little business." 
 " Farewell, the goodly Manor of Blackacre, with all its woods, underwoods, 
 and appurtenances whatever." WYCHERLEY : Plain Dealer. 
 
 IN quitting Fenton's Hotel, Lord Vargrave entered into one 
 of the clubs in St. James's Street: this was rather unusual with 
 him, for he was not a club man. It was not his system to spend 
 his time for nothing. But it was a wet December day the 
 House not yet assembled, and he had done his official business. 
 Here, as he was munching a biscuit and reading an article in 
 one of the ministerial papers the heads of which he himself 
 had supplied Lord Saxingham joined and drew him to the 
 window. 
 
 " I have reason to think," said the Earl, "that your visit to 
 Windsor did good." 
 
 " Ah, indeed ; so I fancied." 
 
 " I do not think that a certain personage will ever consent to 
 
 the question ; and the premier, whom I saw to-day, seems 
 
 chafed and irritated." 
 
 "Nothing can be better I know that we are in the right boat." 
 
 "I hope it is not true, Lumley, that your marriage with Miss 
 Cameron is broken off ; such was the on dit'\n the club, just be- 
 fore you entered." 
 
 " Contradict, it my dear lord contradict it. I hope by the 
 spring to introduce Lady Vargrave to you. But who broached 
 the absurd report ? " 
 
 " Why, your prottgJ, Legard, says he heard so from his uncle, 
 who heard it from Sir John Merton."
 
 ALICE; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 213 
 
 " Legardis a puppy, and Sir John Merton a jackass. Legard 
 had better attend to his office, if he wants to get on; and I wish 
 you'd tell him so. I have heard somewhere that he talks of 
 going to Paris you can just hint to him that he must give up 
 such idle habits. Public functionaries are not now what they 
 were people are expected to work for the money they pocket 
 otherwise Legard is a cleverish fellow, and deserves promotion. 
 A word or two of caution from you will do him a vast deal of 
 good." 
 
 " Be sure I will lecture him. Will you dine with me to-day, 
 Lumley ? " 
 
 " No. I expect my co-trustee, Mr. Douce, on matters of bus- 
 iness a tte-a-tete dinner." 
 
 LordVargrave had, as he conceived, very cleverly talked over 
 Mr. Douce into letting his debt to that gentleman run on for 
 the present ; and, in the mean while, he had overwhelmed Mr. 
 Douce with his condescensions. That gentleman had twice 
 dined with Lord Vargrave ; and Lord Vargrave had twice 
 dined with him. The occasion of the present more familiar 
 entertainment was in a letter from Mr. Douce, begging to see 
 Lord Vargrave on particular business ; and Vargrave, who by 
 no means liked the word business from a gentleman to whom he 
 owed money, thought that it would go off more smoothly if 
 sprinkled with champagne. 
 
 Accordingly, he begged " My dear Mr. Douce " to excuse 
 ceremony, and dine with him on Thursday, at seven o'clock 
 he was really so busy all the mornings. 
 
 At seven Mr. Douce came. The moment he entered, Vargrave 
 called out, at the top of his voice, ''Dinner immediately!" 
 And as the little man bowed, and shuffled, and fidgeted, and 
 wriggled (while Vargrave shook him by the hand), as if he 
 thought he was going himself to be spitted, his host said : 
 " With your leave, we'll postpone the budget till after dinner. 
 It is the fashion nowadays to postpone budgets as long as we 
 can eh ? Well, and how are all at home ? Devilish cold ; is 
 it not ? So you go to your villa every day ? That's what keeps 
 you in such capital health. You know I had a villa too though 
 I never had time to go there." 
 
 " Ah, yes I think, I remember, at at Ful-Full-Fulham ! " 
 gasped out Mr. Douce. " Your poor uncle's now Lady Var- 
 Var-Vargrave's jointure house. So so " 
 
 " She don't live there ! " burst in Vargrave (far too impatient 
 to be polite). " Too cockneyfied for her gave it up to me 
 very pretty place, but d d expensive. I could not afford it
 
 214 ALICE; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 never went there and so I have let it to my wine-mer- 
 chant ; the rent just pays his bill. You will taste some of the 
 sofas and tables to-day in his champagne ! I don't know 
 how it is, I always fancy my sherry smells like my poor uncle's 
 old leather chair: very odd smell it had a kind of respectable 
 smell ! I hope you're hungry dinner's ready." 
 
 Vargrave thus rattled away in order to give the good banker 
 to understand that his affairs were in most nourishing condition ; 
 and he continued to keep up the ball all dinner-time, stopping 
 Mr. Donee's little, miserable, gasping, dace-like moijth, with " A 
 glass of wine, Douce !" or " By the by, Douce," whenever he 
 saw that worthy gentleman about to make the ^Eschylean 
 improvement of a second person in the dialogue. 
 
 At length, dinner being fairly over, and the servants with- 
 drawn, Lord Vargrave, knowing that sooner or later Douce 
 would have his say, drew his chair to the fire, put his feet on 
 the fender, and cried, as he tossed off his claret, " Now, DOUCE, 
 
 WHAT CAN I DO FOR YOU ? " 
 
 Mr. Douce opened his eyes to their full extent, and then as 
 rapidly closed them ; and this operation he continued till, having 
 snuffed them so much that they could by no possibility burn any 
 brighter, he was convinced that he had not misunderstood his 
 lordship. 
 
 " Indeed, then," be began, in his most frightened manner, 
 " indeed I really your lordship is very good I wanted to 
 speak to you on business." 
 
 " Well, what can I do for you some little favor, eh ? Snug 
 sinecure for a favorite clerk, or a place in the Stamp Office for 
 your fat footman John, I think you call him ? You know, my 
 dear Douce, you may command me." 
 
 "Oh, indeed you are all good-good-goodness but but " 
 
 Vargrave threw himself back, and shutting his eyes and 
 pursing up his mouth, resolutely suffered Mr. Douce to un- 
 bosom himself without interruption. He was considerably 
 relieved to find that the business referred to related only 
 to Miss Cameron. Mr. Douce having reminded Lord Var- 
 grave, as he had often done before, of the wishes of his 
 uncle, that the greater portion of the money bequeathed to 
 Evelyn should be invested in land, proceeded to say that a 
 most excellent opportunity presented itself for such a purchase 
 as would have rejoiced the heart of the late lord. A superb 
 place, in the style of Blickling deer-park six miles round 
 10,000 acres of land, bringing in a clear 8000 a year purchase- 
 money only 240,000. The whole estate was, indeed, much
 
 ALICE : OR, THE MYSTERIES. 215 
 
 larger 18,000 acres ; but then the more distant farms could be 
 sold in different lots, in order to meet the exact sum Miss 
 Cameron's trustees were enabled to invest. 
 
 "Well," said Vargrave, "and where is it? My poor uncle 
 was after De Clifford's estate, but the title was not good." 
 
 "Oh! this is much much much fi-fi-finer; famous in- 
 vestment but rather far off in in the north. Li-Li-Lisle 
 Court." 
 
 " Lisle Court ! Why, does not that belong to Colonel Mal- 
 travers ?" 
 
 " Yes. It is, indeed, quite, I may say, a secret yes really a 
 se-se-secret not in the market yet notatall soon snapped up." 
 
 " Humph ! Has Colonel Maltravers been extravagant?" 
 
 "No but he does not I hear or rather Lady Julia so 
 I'm told, yes, indeed does not li-like going so far, and so they 
 spend the winter in Italy instead. Yes very odd very fine 
 place." 
 
 Lumley was slightly acquainted with the elder brother of his 
 old friend a man who possessed some of Ernest's faults very 
 proud, and very exacting, and very fastidious : but all these 
 faults were developed in the ordinary commonplace world, and 
 were not the refined abstractions of his younger brother. 
 
 Colonel Maltravers had continued, since he entered the Guards, 
 to be thoroughly the man of fashion, and nothing more. But rich 
 and wellborn, and highly connected, and thoroughly d la mode 
 as he was, his pride made him uncomfortable in London, while 
 his fastidiousness made him uncomfortable in the country. He 
 was rather a great person, but he wanted to be a very great per- 
 son. This he was at Lisle Court ; but that did not satisfy him 
 he wanted not only to be a very great person, but a very great 
 person among very great persons and squires and parsons bored 
 him. Lady Julia, his wife, was a fine lady, inane and pretty, 
 who saw everything through her husband's eyes. He was quite 
 master chez lui, was Colonel Maltravers ! He lived a great deal 
 abroad for on the continent his large income seemed princely, 
 while his high character, thorough breeding, and personal ad- 
 vantages, which were remarkable, secured him a greater posi- 
 tion in foreign courts than at his own. Two things had already 
 disgusted him with Lisle Court trifles they might be with 
 others, but they were not trifles to Cuthbert Maltravers ; in the 
 first place, a man who had been his father's attorney, and who 
 was the very incarnation of coarse, unrepellible familiarity, had 
 bought an estate close by the said Lisle Court, and had, horresco 
 referens, been made a baronet ! Sir Gregory Gubbins took pre*
 
 216 ALICE; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 cedence of Colonel Maltravers ! He could not ride out but he 
 met Sir Gregory ; he could not dine out but he had the pleasure 
 of walking behind Sir Gregory's bright blue coat with its bright 
 brass buttons. In his last visit to Lisle Court, which he had 
 then crowded with all manner of fine people, he had seen the 
 very first morning after his arrival seen from the large window 
 of his state saloon, a great staring white, red, blue, and gilt thing, 
 at the end of the stately avenue planted by Sir Guy Maltravers 
 in honor of the Victory over the Spanish Armada. He looked 
 in mute surprise, and everybody else looked ; and a polite Ger- 
 man Count, gazing through his eyeglass, said, "Ah ! dat is vat 
 you call a vim in your pays the vim of Colonel Maltravers ! " 
 
 This "vim" was the pagoda summer-house of Sir Gregory 
 Gubbins erected in imitation of the Pavilion at Brighton. 
 Colonel Maltravers was miserable the vim haunted him it 
 seemed ubiquitious he could not escape it it was built on the 
 highest spot in the county, ride, walk, sit where he would, 
 the vim stared at him ; and he thought he saw little Mandarins 
 shake their round little heads at him. This was one of the great 
 curses of Lisle Court the other was yet more galling. The 
 owners of Lisle Court had for several generations possessed the 
 dominant interest in the county town. The Colonel himself 
 meddled little in politics, and was too fine a gentleman for the 
 drudgery of Parliament : he had offered the seat to Ernest, 
 when the latter had commenced his public career ; but the re- 
 sult of a communication proved that their political views were 
 dissimilar, and the negotiation dropped without ill-feeling on 
 either side. Subsequently a vacancy occurred; and Lady Julia's 
 brother (just made a Lord of the Treasury) wished to come into 
 Parliament, so the county town was offered to him. Now, the 
 proud commoner had married into the family of a peer as proud 
 as himself, and Colonel Maltravers was always glad whenever he 
 could impress his consequence on his connections by doing 
 them a favor. He wrote to his steward to see that the thing was 
 properly settled, and came down on the nomination-day "to 
 share the triumph and partake the gale." Guess his indig- 
 nation, when he found the nephew of Sir Gregory Gubbins was 
 already in the field ! The result of the election was, that Mr. 
 Augustus Gubbins came in, and that Colonel Maltravers was 
 pelted with cabbage-stalks, and accused of attempting to sell 
 the worthy and independent electors to a government nominee ! 
 In shame and disgust, Colonel Maltravers broke up his estab- 
 lishment at Lisle Court, and once more retired to the continent. 
 
 About a week from the date now touched upon, Lady Julia
 
 ALICE; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 217 
 
 and himself had arrived in London from Vienna ; and a new 
 mortification awaited the unfortunate owner of Lisle Court. A 
 railroad company had been established, of which Sir Gregory 
 Gubbins was a principal shareholder; and the speculator, Mr. 
 Augustus Gubbins, one of the "most useful men in the house," 
 had undertaken to carry the bill through Parliament. Colonel 
 Maltravers received a letter of portentous size, enclosing the 
 map of the places which this blessed railway was to bisect ; and 
 lo ! just at the bottom of his park ran a portentous line, which 
 informed him of the sacrifice he was expected to make for the 
 public good especially for the good of that very county town, 
 the inhabitants of which had pelted him with cabbage-stalks ! 
 
 Colonel Maltravers lost all patience. Unacquainted with our 
 wise legislative proceedings, he was not aware that a railway 
 planned is a very different thing from a railway made ; and that 
 parliamentary committees are not by any means favorable to 
 schemes for carrying the public through a gentleman's park. 
 
 "This country is not to be lived in," said he to Lady Julia ; 
 "it gets worse and worse every year. I am sure I never had any 
 comfort in Lisle Court. I've a great mind to sell it." 
 
 "Why, indeed, as we have no sons, only daughters, and 
 Ernest is so well provided for," said Lady Julia ; "and the place 
 is so far from London, and the neighborhood is so disagreeable, 
 I think that we could do very well without it." 
 
 Colonel Maltravers made no answer, but he revolved the pros 
 and cons ; and then he began to think how much it cost him in 
 gamekeepers, and carpenters, and bailiffs, and gardeners, and 
 Heaven knows whom besides; and then the pagoda flashed 
 across him ; and then the cabbage-stalks : and at last he went to 
 his solicitor. 
 
 " You may sell Lisle Court," said he quietly. 
 
 The solicitor dipped his pen in the ink. "The particulars, 
 Colonel?" 
 
 " Particulars of Lisle Court ! everybody, that is, every gentle- 
 man, knows Lisle Court!" 
 
 "Price, sir!" 
 
 " You know the rents calculate accordingly. It will be too 
 large a purchase for one individual ; sell the outlying woods 
 and farms separately from the rest." 
 
 "We must draw up an advertisement, Colonel." 
 
 " Advertise Lisle Court ! out of the question, sir. I can have 
 no publicity given to my intention: mention it quietly to any 
 capitalist ; but keep it out of the papers till it is all settled. In 
 a week or two you will find a purchaser the sooner the better."
 
 2l8 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 Besides his horror of newspaper comments and newspaper 
 puffs, Colonel Maltravers dreaded that his brother then in 
 Paris should learn his intention, and attempt to thwart it; and, 
 somehow or other, the colonel was a little in awe of Ernest, and 
 a little ashamed of his resolution. He did not know that, by a 
 singular coincidence, Ernest himself had thought of selling Bur- 
 leigh. 
 
 The solicitor was by no means pleased with this way of set- 
 tling the matter. However, he whispered it about that Lisle 
 Court was in the market; and as it really was one of the most 
 celebrated places of its kind in England, the whisper spread 
 among bankers, and brewers, and soap-boilers, and other rich 
 people the Medici of the New Noblesse rising up amongst us 
 till at last it reached the ears of Mr. Douce. 
 
 Lord Vargrave, however bad a man he might be, had not 
 many of those vices of character which belong to what I may 
 call the personal class of vices that is, he had no ill will to indi- 
 viduals. He was not, ordinarily, a jealous man, nor a spiteful, 
 nor a malignant, nor a vindictive man: his vices arose from utter 
 indifference to all men, and all things except as conducive to 
 his own ends. He would not have injured a worm if it did him 
 no good, but he would have set any house on fire, if he had no 
 other means of roasting his own eggs. Yet still, if any feeling 
 of personal rancor could harbor in his breast, it was first towards 
 Evelyn Cameron ; and, secondly, towards Ernest Maltravers. 
 For the first time in his life, he did long for revenge revenge 
 against the one for stealing his patrimony, and refusing his 
 hand ; and that revenge he hoped to gratify. As to the other, 
 it was not so much dislike he felt, as an uneasy sentiment of in- 
 feriority. However well he himself had got on in the world, he 
 yet grudged the reputation of a man whom he had remembered 
 a wayward, inexperienced boy : he did not love to hear any one 
 praise Maltravers. He fancied, too, that his feeling was recip- 
 rocal, and that Maltravers was pained at hearing of any new 
 step in his own career. In fact, it was that sort of jealousy 
 which men often feel for the companions of their youth, whose 
 characters are higher than their own, and whose talents are of 
 an order they do not quite comprehend. Now, it certainly did 
 seem, at that moment, to Lord Vargrave, that it would be a most 
 splendid triumph over Mr. Maltravers of Burleigh, to be lord 
 of Lisle Court, the hereditary seat of the elder branch of the 
 family; to be, as it were, in the very shoes of Mr. Ernest Mal- 
 travers's elder brother. He knew, too, that it was a property of 
 great consequence : Lord Vargrave of Lisle Court would hold
 
 ALICE; OK, THE MYSTERIES. 219 
 
 a very different position in the peerage from Lord Vargrave of 
 
 , Fulhani ! Nobody would call the owner of Lisle Court 
 
 an adventurer ; nobody would suspect such a man of caring 
 three straws about place and salary. And if he married Eve- 
 lyn, and if Evelyn bought Lisle Court, would not Lisle Court 
 be his? He vaulted over the t/s, stiff monosyllables though 
 they were, with a single jump. Besides, even should the thing 
 come to nothing, there was the very excuse he sought for join- 
 ing Evelyn at Paris, for conversing with her, consulting her. It 
 was true that the will of the late lord left it solely at the discre- 
 tion of the trustees to select such landed investment as seemed 
 best to them. But still it was, if not legally necessary, at least 
 but proper courtesy, to consult Evelyn. And plans, and draw- 
 ings, and explanations, and rent-rolls, would justify him in spend- 
 ing morning after morning alone with her. 
 
 Thus cogitating, Lord Vargrave suffered Mr. Douce to stam- 
 mer out sentence upon sentence, till at length, as he rang for cof- 
 fee, his lordship stretched himself with the air of a man stretch- 
 ing himself into self-complacency or a good thing, and said: 
 
 " Mr. Douce, I will go down to Lisle Court as soon as I can 
 I will see it I will ascertain all about it I will consider fav- 
 orably of it I agree with you, I think it will do famously." 
 
 " But," said Mr. Douce, who seemed singularly anxious about 
 the matter, " we must make haste, my lord; for really yes, in- 
 deed if if if Baron Roths Rothschild should that is to 
 say " 
 
 " Oh, yes, I understand keep the thing close, my dear Douce; 
 make friends with the colonel's lawyer ; play with him a little, 
 till I can run down." 
 
 "Besides, you see, you are such a good man of business, my 
 lord that you see, that yes, really there must be time to 
 draw out the purchase-money sell out at a prop prop " 
 
 " To be sure, to be sure bless me, how late it is ! I am afraid 
 my carrrage is ready ? I must go to Madame de L "s." 
 
 Mr. Douce, who seemed to have much more to say, was 
 forced to keep it in for another time, and to take his leave. 
 
 Lord Vargrave went to Madame de L 's His position in 
 
 what is called Exclusive Society was rather peculiar. By those 
 who affected to be the best judges, the frankness of his manner, 
 and the easy oddity of his conversation, were pronounced at 
 variance with the tranquil serenity of thorough breeding. But 
 still he was a great favorite both with fine ladies and dandies. 
 His handsome, keen countenance, his talents, his politics, his 
 intrigues, and an animated boldness in his bearing, compen-
 
 22O ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 sated for his constant violation of all the minutiae of orthodox con- 
 ventionalism. 
 
 At this house he met Colonel Maltravers, and took an oppor- 
 tunity to renew his acquaintance with that gentleman. He then 
 referred, in a confidential whisper, to the communication he had 
 received touching Lisle Court. 
 
 "Yes," said the colonel, "I suppose I must sell the place, if 
 I can do so quietly. To be sure, when I first spoke to my law- 
 yer it was in a moment of vexation, on hearing that the rail- 
 road was to go through the park, but I find that I overrated 
 the danger. Still, if you will do me the honor to go and look 
 over the place, you will find very good shooting ; and when you 
 come back, you can see if it will suit you. Don't say anything 
 about it, when you are there; it is better not to publish my in- 
 tention all over the county. I shall have Sir Gregory Gubbins 
 offering to buy it, if you do ! " 
 
 " You may depend on my discretion. Have you heard any- 
 thing of your brother lately ? " 
 
 "Yes ; I fancy he is going to Switzerland. He would soon 
 be in England, if he heard I was going to part with Lisle 
 Court ! " 
 
 " What, it would vex him so ? " 
 
 "I fear it would ; but he has a nice old place of his own, not 
 half so large, and therefore not half so troublesome, as Lisle 
 Court." 
 
 "Ay ! and he did talk of selling that nice old place." 
 
 " Selling Burleigh ! you surprise me. But really country 
 places in England are a bore. I suppose he has his Gubbins 
 as well as myself ! " 
 
 Here the chief minister of the government adorned by Lord 
 Vargrave's virtues passed by, and Lumley turned to greet him. 
 
 The two ministers talked together most affectionately in a 
 close whisper, so affectionately, that one might have seen, 
 with half an eye, that they hated each other like poison ! 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 "Inspicere tanquam in speculum, in vitas omnium 
 Jubeo."* TERENT. 
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVERS still lingered at Paris : he gave up all 
 notion of proceeding further. He was, in fact, tired of travel. 
 But there was another reason that chained him to that " Navel 
 * I bid you look into the lives of all men, as it were into a mirror.
 
 ALICE J OR, THE MYSTERIES. 221 
 
 of the Earth " there is not anywhere a better sounding-board 
 to London rumors than the English quariier between the 
 Boulevard des Italiennes and the Tuileries ; here, at all events, 
 he should soonest learn the worst : and every day, as he took 
 up the English newspapers, a sick feeling of apprehension and 
 fear came over him. No ! till the seal was set upon the bond 
 till the Rubicon was passed till Miss Cameron was the wife of 
 Lord Vargrave, he could neither return to the home that was 
 so eloquent with the recollections of Evelyn, nor, by removing 
 further from England, delay the receipt of an intelligence which 
 he vainly told himself he was prepared to meet. 
 
 He continued to seek such distractions from thought as were 
 within his reach ; and, as his heart was too occupied for pleas- 
 ures which had, indeed, long since palled, those distractions 
 were of the grave and noble character which it is a prerogative 
 of the intellect to afford to the passions. 
 
 De Montaigne was neither a Doctrinaire nor a Republican 
 and yet, perhaps, he was a little of both. He was one who 
 thought that the tendency of all European States is towards De- 
 mocracy ; buthe by no means looked upon democracy as a pan- 
 acea for all legislative evils. He thought that, while a writer 
 should be in advance of his time, a statesman should content 
 himself with marching by its side ; that a nation could not be 
 ripened, like an exotic, by artificial means ; that it must be de- 
 veloped only by natural influences. He believed that forms of 
 government are never universal in their effects. Thus, De Mon- 
 taigne conceived that we were wrong in attaching more impor- 
 tance to legislative than to social reforms. He considered, for 
 instance, that the surest sign of our progressive civilization is in 
 our growing distaste to capital punishments. He believed not 
 in the ultimate/<rr/><r/z0# of mankind, but in their progressive 
 perfectibility. He thought that improvement was indefinite; but 
 he did not place its advance more under Republican than under 
 Monarchical forms. "Provided," he was wont to say, "all our 
 checks to power are of the right kind, it matters little to what 
 hands the power itself is confided." 
 
 "^gina and Athens," said he, " were republics commercial 
 and maritime placed under the same sky, surrounded by the 
 same neighbors, and rent by the same struggles between oligarchy 
 and democracy. Yet, while one left the world an immortal 
 heirloom of genius where are the poets, the philosophers, the 
 statesmen of the other ? Arrian tells us of republics in India 
 still supposed to exist by modern investigators but they are 
 not more productive of liberty of thought, of ferment of intel-
 
 222 ALICE; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 lect, than the principalities. In Italy there were commonwealths 
 as liberal as the republic of Florence; but they did not produce 
 a Machiavelli or a Dante. What daring thought, what gigantic 
 speculation, what democracy of wisdom and genius, have sprung 
 up amongst the despotism of Germany ! You cannot educate 
 two individuals so as to produce the same results from both: 
 you cannot, by similar constitutions (which are the education 
 of nations), produce the same results from different communities. 
 The proper object of statesmen should be, to give every facility 
 to the people to develop themselves, and every facility to phil- 
 osophy to dispute and discuss as to the ultimate objects to be 
 obtained. But you cannot, as a practical legislator, place your 
 country under a melon-frame: it must grow of its own accord." 
 
 I do not say whether or not De Montaigne was wrong ; but 
 Maltravers saw at least that he was faithful to his theories ; 
 that all his motives were sincere all his practice pure. He 
 could not but allow, too, that, in his occupations and labors, 
 De Montaigne appeared to feel a sublime enjoyment, that, in 
 linking all the powers of his mind to active and useful objects, 
 De Montaigne was infinitely happier that the Philosophy of 
 Indifference, the scorn of ambition, had made Maltravers. 
 The influence exercised by the large-souled and practical 
 Frenchman over the fate and the history of Maltravers was 
 very peculiar. 
 
 De Montaigne had not, apparently and directly, operated 
 upon his friend's outward destinies ; but he had done so in- 
 directly, by operating on his mind. Perhaps it was he who 
 had consolidated the first wavering and uncertain impulses of 
 Maltravers towards literary exertion ; it was he who had con- 
 soled him for the mortifications at the early part of his career ; 
 and now, perhaps, he might serve, in the full vigor of his intel- 
 lect, permanently to reconcile the Englishman to the claims 
 of life. 
 
 There were, indeed, certain conversations which Maltravers 
 held with De Montaigne, the germ and pith of which it is 
 necessary that I should place before the reader, for I write 
 the inner as well as the outer history of a man ; and the great 
 incidents of life are not brought about only by the dramatic 
 agencies of others, but also by our own reasonings and habits 
 of thought. What I am now about to set down may be weari- 
 some, but it is not episodical ; and I promise that it shall be 
 the last didactic conversation in the work. 
 
 One day, Maltravers was relating to De Montaigne all that 
 he had been planning at Burleigh for the improvement of his
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 223 
 
 peasantry, and all his theories respecting Labor-schools and 
 Poor-rates, when De Montaigne abruptly turned round and 
 said : 
 
 " You have, then, really found that in your own little village, 
 your exertions exertions not very arduous, not demanding a 
 tenth part of your time have done practical good ?" 
 
 " Certainly I think so," replied Maltravers, in some sur- 
 prise. 
 
 " And yet it was but yesterday, that you declared ' that all 
 the labors of Philosophy and Legislation were labors vain ; 
 their benefits equivocal and uncertain ; that as the sea, where 
 it loses in one place, gains in another, so civilization only 
 partially profits us, stealing away one virtue while it yields 
 another, and leaving the large proportions of good and evil 
 eternally the same.' " 
 
 "True; but I never said that man might not relieve indi- 
 viduals by individual exertion ; though he cannot by abstract 
 theories nay, even by practical action in the wide circle, 
 benefit the mass." 
 
 " Do you not employ on behalf of individuals the same 
 moral agencies that wise legislation or sound philosophy would 
 adopt towards the multitude ? For example, you find that the 
 children of your village are happier, more orderly, more 
 obedient, promise to be wiser and better men in their own 
 station of life, from the new and, I grant, excellent, system of 
 school discipline and teaching that you have established. 
 What you have done in one village, why should not legislation 
 do throughout a kingdom ? Again, you find that, by simply 
 holding out hope and emulation to industry by making stern, 
 distinctions between the energetic and the idle the inde- 
 pendent exertion and the pauper-mendicancy you have found 
 a lever by which you have literally moved and shifted the 
 ITttle world around you. But what is the difference here be- 
 tween the rules of a village lord and the laws of a wise legisla- 
 ture ? The moral feelings you have appealed to exist univer- 
 sally the moral remedies you have practised are as open to 
 legislation as to the individual proprietor." 
 
 " Yes ; but when you apply to a nation the same principles 
 which regenerate a village, new counterbalancing principles 
 arise. If I give education to my peasants, I send them into 
 the world with advantages superior to their fellows ; advantages 
 which, not being common to their class, enable them to outstrip 
 their fellows. But if this education were universal to the 
 whole tribe, no man would have an advantage superior to the
 
 224 ALICE; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 others ; the knowledge they would have acquired being shared 
 by all, would leave all as they now are, hewers of wood and 
 drawers of water : the principle of individual hope, which 
 springs from knowledge, would soon be baffled by the vast 
 competition that universal knowledge would produce. Thus 
 by the universal improvement would be engendered an uni- 
 versal discontent. 
 
 " Take a broader view of the subject. Advantages given to 
 the few around me superior wages lighter toils a greater 
 sense of the dignity of man are not productive of any change 
 in society. Give these advantages to the whole mass of the 
 laboring classes, and what in the small orbit is the desire of the 
 individual to rise, becomes in the large circumference the 
 desire of the class to rise ; hence social restlessness, social 
 change, revolution and its hazards. For revolutions are pro- 
 duced but by the aspirations of one order, and the resistance 
 of the other. Consequently, legislative improvement differs 
 widely from individual amelioration ; the same principle, the 
 same agency, that purifies the small body, becomes destructive 
 when applied to the large one. Apply the flame to the log on 
 the hearth, or apply it to the forest, is there no distinction in 
 the result ? the breeze that freshens the fountain passes to the 
 ocean, current impels current, wave urges wave, and the breeze 
 becomes the storm ! " 
 
 "Were there truth in this train of argument," replied De 
 Montaigne; "had we ever abstained from communicating to 
 the multitude the enjoyments and advantages of the Few 
 had we shrunk from the good, because the good is a parent of 
 the change and its partial ills, what now would be society ? Is 
 there no difference in collective happiness and virtue between 
 the painted Picts and the Druid worship, and the glorious har- 
 mony, light, and order of the great English nation ?" 
 
 " The question is popular," said Maltravers, with a smile ; 
 "and, were you my opponent in an election, would be cheered 
 on any hustings in the kingdom. But I have lived among 
 savage tribes savage, perhaps, as the race that resisted Caesar, 
 and their happiness seems to me, not perhaps the same as that 
 of the few whose sources of enjoyment are numerous, refined, 
 and, save by their own passions, unalloyed ; but equal to that 
 of the mass of men in states the most civilized and advanced. 
 The artisans, crowded together in the fetid air of factories, 
 with physical ills gnawing at the core of the constitution, from 
 the cradle to the grave ; drudging on from dawn to sunset, and 
 flying for recreation to the dread excitement of the dram-shop,
 
 ALlCfc ; OR, TJtE MYSf EfcifcS. 22$ 
 
 ftr the wild and vain hopes of political fanaticism, are not in 
 my eyes happier than the wild Indians with hardy frames, and 
 calm tempers, seasoned to the privations for which you pity 
 them, and uncursed with desires of that better state never to 
 be theirs. The Arab in his desert has seen all the luxuries of 
 the pasha in his harem ; but he envies them not. He is con- 
 tented with his barb, his tent, his desolate sands, and his spring 
 of refreshing water. 
 
 " Are we not daily told do not our priests preach it from 
 their pulpits that the cottage shelters happiness equal to that 
 within the palace ? Yet what the distinction between the peas- 
 ant and the prince, differing from that between the peasant 
 and the savage? There are more enjoyments and more priva- 
 tions in the one than in the other ; but if, in the latter case, the 
 enjoyments, though fewer, be more keenly felt, if the priva- 
 tions, though apparently sharper; fall upon duller sensibilities 
 and hardier frames, your gauge of proportion loses all its 
 value. Nay, in civilization there is for the multitude an evil 
 that exists not in the savage state. The poor man sees daily 
 and hourly all the vast disparities produced by civilized society: 
 and, reversing the divine parable, it is Lazarus from afar, and 
 from the despondent pit, looks upon Dives in the lap of Para- 
 dise : therefore, his privations, his sufferings, are made more 
 keen by comparison with the luxuries of others. Not so in the 
 desert and the forest. There, but small distinctions, and those 
 softened by immemorial and hereditary usage that has in it 
 the sanctity of religion separate the savage from his chief ! 
 The fact is, that in civilization we behold a splendid aggre- 
 gate : literature and science, wealth and luxury, commerce and 
 glory ; but we see not the million victims crushed beneath the 
 wheels of the machine the health sacrificed the board bread- 
 less the gaols filled the hospitals reeking the human life 
 poisoned in every spring, and poured forth like water ! Neither 
 do we remember all the steps, marked by desolation, crime, and 
 bloodshed, by which this barren summit has been reached. 
 Take the history of any civilized state England, France, Spain 
 before she rotted back into second childhood the Italian 
 Republics the Greek Commonwealths the Empress of the 
 Seven Hills what struggles,what persecutions, what crimes.what 
 massacres ! Where, in the page of history, shall we look back 
 and say 'here improvement has diminished the sum of evil' ? 
 Extend, too, your scope beyond the state itself : each state has 
 won its acquisitions by the woes' of others. Spain springs 
 above the Old World on the blood-stained ruins of the New :
 
 26 ALICE ; ok, THE 
 
 and the groans and the gold of Mexico produce the splendors 
 of the Fifth Charles ! 
 
 " Behold England the wise, the liberal, the free England 
 through what struggles she has passed ; and is she yet con- 
 tented ? The sullen oligarchy of the Normans our own crim- 
 inal invasions of Scotland and France the plundered people 
 the butchered kings the persecution of the Lollards the wars 
 of Lancaster and York the new dynasty of the Tudors, that 
 at once put back Liberty, and put forward Civilization ! the 
 Reformation, cradled in the lap of a hideous despot, and nursed 
 by violence and rapine the stakes and fires of Mary ; and 
 the craftier cruelties of Elizabeth ; England, strengthened by 
 the desolation of Ireland the Civil Wars the reign of Hypo- 
 crisy, followed by the reign of naked Vice ; the nation that be- 
 headed the graceful Charles gaping idly on the scaffold of the 
 lofty Sidney; the vain Revolution of 1688, which, if a jubilee in 
 England, was a massacre in Ireland the bootless glories of 
 Marlborough the organized corruption of Walpole the frantic 
 war with our own American sons the exhausting struggles 
 with Napoleon ! 
 
 " Well, we close the page we say, Lo ! a thousand years 
 of incessant struggles and afflictions ! millions have per- 
 ished, but Art has survived ; our boors wear stockings, our 
 women drink tea, our poets read Shakespeare, and our astrono- 
 mers improve on Newton ! Are we now contented ? No ! 
 more restless than ever. New classes are called into power ; 
 new forms of government insisted on. Still the same catch- 
 words Liberty here, Religion there Order with one faction, 
 Amelioration with the other. Where is the goal, and what have 
 we gained? Books are written, silks are woven, palaces are 
 built mighty acquisitions for the few but the peasant is a 
 peasant still ! The crowd are yet at the bottom of the wheel ; 
 better off, you say. No, for they are not more contented ! 
 The Artisan is as anxious for change as ever the Serf was ; 
 and the steam engine has its victims as well as the sword. 
 
 "Talk of legislation ; all isolated laws pave the way to whole- 
 sale changes in the form of government ! Emancipate Catho- 
 lics, and you open the door to the democratic principle, that opin- 
 ion should be free. If free with the sectarian, it should be free 
 with the elector. The Ballot is a corollary from the Catholic 
 Relief-bill. Grant the Ballot, and the new corollary of enlarged 
 suffrage. Suffrage enlarged is divided but by a yielding surface 
 (a circle widening in the waters) from universal suffrage. Uni- 
 versal suffrage is Democracy. Is democracy better than the
 
 ALic& ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. ttf 
 
 aristocratic commonwealth? Look at the Greeks, who knew 
 both forms, are they agreed which is the best ? Plato, Thucy- 
 dides, Xenophon, Aristophanes the Dreamer, the Historian, 
 the Philosophic Man of Action, the penetrating Wit have no 
 ideals in Democracy ! Algernon Sidney, the martyr of liberty, 
 allows no government to the multitude. Brutus died for a re- 
 public, but a republic of Patricians,! What form of govern- 
 ment is, then, the best? All dispute, the wisest cannot agree. 
 The many still say ' a Republic'; yet, as you yourself will allow, 
 Prussia, the Despotism, does all that Republics do. Yes, but 
 a good Despot is a lucky accident ; true, but a just and benev- 
 olent Republic is as yet a monster equally short-lived. When 
 the people have no other tyrant, their own public opinion be- 
 comes one. No secret espionage is more intolerable to a free 
 spirit than the broad glare of the American'eye. 
 
 " A rural public is but a patriarchal tribe no emulation, no 
 glory; peace and stagnation. What Englishman what French- 
 man, would wish to be a Swiss ? A commercial republic is but 
 an admirable machine for making money. Is Man created for 
 nothing nobler than freighting ships, and speculating on silk 
 and sugar? In fact, there is no certain goal in legislation ; we 
 go on colonizing Utopia, and fighting phantoms in the clouds. 
 Let us content ourselves with injuring no man, and doing good 
 only in our own little sphere. Let us leave states and senates 
 to fill the sieve of the Danaules, and roll up the stone of 
 Sisyphus." 
 
 "My dear friend," said De Montaigne, "you have certainly 
 made the most of an argument, which, if granted, would con- 
 sign government to fools and knaves, and plunge the commu- 
 nities of mankind into the Slough of Despond. But a very 
 commonplace view of the question might suffice to shake your 
 system. Is life, mere animal life, on the whole, a curse or a 
 blessing?" 
 
 "The generality of men in all countries," answered Maltrav- 
 ers, "enjoy existence and apprehend death ; were it otherwise, 
 the world had been made by a Fiend, and not by a God ! " 
 
 " Well, then, observe how the progress of society cheats the 
 grave! In great cities, where the effects of civilization must 
 be the most visible, the diminution of mortality in a correspond- 
 ing ratio with the increase of civilization is most remarkable. 
 In Berlin, from the year 1747 to 1755, the annual mortality was 
 as one to twenty-eight ; but from 1816 to 1822 it was as one to 
 thirty-four ! You ask what England has gained by her pro- 
 gress in the arts. I will answer you by her bills of mortality;
 
 22 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 In London, Birmingham, and Liverpool deaths have decreased 
 in less than a century from one to twenty to one to forty (pre- 
 cisely one-half !). Again, whenever a community nay, a 
 single city, decreases in civilization, and in its concomitants, 
 activity and commerce, its mortality instantly increases. But 
 if civilization be favorable to the prolongation of life, must it 
 not be favorable to all that blesses life to bodily health, to 
 mental cheerfulness, to the capacities for enjoyment ? And 
 how much more grand, how much more sublime, becomes the 
 prospect of gain, if we reflect that, to each life thus called 
 forth, there is a soul a destiny beyond the grave, multiplied 
 immortalities ! What an apology for the continued progress 
 of states ! But you say that, however we advance, we continue 
 impatient and dissatisfied. Can you really suppose that, be- 
 cause man in every state is discontented with his lot, there is 
 no difference in the degree and quality of his discontent no 
 distinction between pining for bread and longing for the moon ? 
 Desire is implanted within us, as the very principle of exist- 
 ence ; the physical desire fills the world, and the moral desire 
 improves it ; where there is desire, there must be discontent ; 
 if we are satisfied with all things, desire is extinct. But a cer- 
 tain degree of discontent is not incompatible with happiness, 
 nay, it has happiness of its own ; what happiness like hope ? 
 what is hope but desire ? The European serf, whose seigneur 
 could command his life, or insist as a right on the chastity of 
 his daughter, desires to better his condition. God has compas- 
 sion on his state ; Providence calls into action the ambition of 
 leaders, the contests of faction, the movement of men's aims 
 and passions ; a change passes through society and legislation, 
 and the serf becomes free! He desires still, but what? no 
 longer personal security, no longer the privileges of life and 
 health, but higher wages, greater comfort, easier justice for di- 
 minished wrongs. Is there no difference in the quality of that 
 desire? Was one a greater torment than the other is? Rise 
 a scale higher : A new class is created the Middle Class 
 the express creature of Civilization. Behold the burgher and 
 the citizen, still struggling, still contending, still desiring, and 
 therefore still discontented. But the discontent does not prey 
 upon the springs of life ; it is the discontent of hope, not de- 
 spair; it calls forth faculties, energies, and passions, in which 
 there is more joy than sorrow. It is this desire which makes 
 the citizen in private life an anxious father, a careful master, 
 an active, and therefore not an unhappy, man. You allow that 
 individuals can effect individual good ; this very restlessness^
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYST EkIES, 229 
 
 this very discontent with the exact place that he occupies, 
 makes the citizen a benefactor in his narrow circle. Com- 
 merce, better than charity, feeds the hungry and clothes the 
 naked. Ambition, better than brute affection, gives education 
 to our children, and teaches them the love of industry, the 
 pride of independence, the respect for others and them- 
 selves ! " 
 
 "In other words, a deference to such qualities as can best 
 fit them to get on in the world, and make the most money ! " 
 
 " Take that view if you will ; but the wiser, the more civil- 
 ized the state, the worse chances for the rogue to get on ! 
 there may be some art, some hypocrisy, some avarice, nay, 
 some hardness of heart, in paternal example and professional 
 tuition. But what are such sober infirmities to the vices that 
 arise from defiance and despair? Your savage has his virtues, 
 but they are mostly physical fortitude, abstinence, patience. 
 Mental and moral virtues must be numerous or few, in propor- 
 tion to the range of ideas and the exigencies of social life. 
 With the savage, therefore, they must be fewer than with civil- 
 ized men ; and they are consequently limited to those simple 
 and rude elements which the safety of his state renders neces- 
 sary to him. He is usually hospitable, sometimes honest. But 
 vices are necessary to his existence, as well as virtues ; he is at 
 war with a tribe that may destroy his own, and treachery with- 
 out scruple, cruelty without remorse, are essential to him ; he 
 feels their necessity, and calls them virtues! Even the half- 
 civilized man, the Arab whom you praise, imagines he has a 
 necessity for your money ; and his robberies become virtues to 
 him. But in civilized states vices are at least not necessary to 
 the existence of the majority ; they are not, therefore, wor- 
 shipped as virtues. Society unites against them ; treachery, 
 robbery, massacre, are not essential to the strength or safety 
 of the community ; they exist, it is true, but they are not cul- 
 tivated, but punished. The thief in St. Giles's has the virtues 
 of your savage ; he is true to his companions, he is brave in 
 danger, he is patient in privation ; he practises the virtues nec- 
 essary to the bonds of his calling and the tacit laws of his 
 vocation. He might have made an admirable savage ; but 
 surely the mass of civilized men are better than the thief ? " 
 
 Maltravers was struck, and paused a little before he replied ; 
 and then he shifted his ground. " But at least all our laws, all 
 our efforts, must leave the multitude in every state condemned 
 to a labor that deadens intellect, and a poverty that embitters 
 life."
 
 $$6 ' AllCfc j OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 "Supposing this were true, still there are multitudes besides 
 the multitude. In each state Civilization produces a middle 
 class, more numerous to-day than the whole peasantry of a 
 thousand years ago. Would Movement and Progress be with- 
 out their divine uses, even if they limited their effect to the 
 production of such a class? Look also to the effect of art, 
 and refinement, and just laws, in the wealthier and higher 
 classes. See how their very habits of life tend to increase the 
 sum of enjoyment see the mighty activity that their very 
 luxury, the very frivolity of their pursuits, create ! Without 
 an aristocracy, would there have been a middle class ? without 
 a middle class, would there ever have been an interposition 
 between lord and slave? Before Commerce produces a middle 
 class, Religion creates one. The Priesthood, whatever its 
 errors, was the curb to Power. But, to return to the multi- 
 tude you say that in all times they are left the same. Is it 
 so ? I come to statistics again : I find that not only civiliza- 
 tion, but liberty, has a prodigious effect upon human life. It is, 
 as it were, by the instinct of self-preservation that liberty is so 
 passionately desired by the multitude. A negro slave, for 
 instance, dies annually as one to five or six, but a free African 
 in the English service only as one to thirty-five ! Freedom is 
 not, therefore, a mere abstract dream a beautiful name a 
 Platonic aspiration ; it is interwoven with the most practical of 
 all blessings, life itself ! And can you say fairly that, by laws, 
 labor cannot be lightened and poverty diminished ? We have 
 granted already that, since there are degrees in discontent, 
 there is a difference between the peasant and the serf, how 
 know you what the peasant a thousand years hence may be ? 
 Discontented, you will say still discontented. Yes ; but if he 
 had not been discontented, he would have been a serf still ! 
 Far from quelling this desire to better himself, we ought to 
 hail it as the source of his perpetual progress. That desire 
 to him is often like imagination to the poet, it transports him 
 into the Future 
 
 " Crura sonant ferro, sed canit inter opus" 
 
 it is, indeed, the gradual transformation from the desire of De- 
 spair to the desire of Hope, that makes the difference between 
 man and man between misery and bliss." 
 
 "And then comes the crisis. Hope ripens into deeds; the 
 stormy revolution, perhaps the armed despotism ; the relapse 
 into the second infancy of states ! " 
 
 " Can we, with new agencies at our command new morality
 
 ALICE; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 231 
 
 new wisdom predicate of the Future by the Past ? In an- 
 cient states, the mass were slaves ; civilization and freedom 
 rested with oligarchies ; in Athens 20,000 citizens, 400,000 
 slaves ! How easy decline, degeneracy, overthrow, in such 
 states a handful of soldiers and philosophers without a Peo- 
 ple ! Now we have no longer barriers to the circulation of the 
 blood of states. The absence of slavery, the existence of the 
 Press ; the healthful proportions of kingdoms, neither too con- 
 fined nor too vast, have created new hopes, which history 
 cannot destroy. As a proof, look to all late revolutions : in 
 England the Civil Wars, the Reformation, in France her aw- 
 ful Saturnalia, her military despotism ! Has either nation fallen 
 back ? The deluge passes, and behold, the face of things more 
 glorious than before ! Compare the French of to-day with the 
 French of the old regime. You are silent ; well, and if in all 
 states there is ever some danger of evil in their activity, is that 
 a reason why you are to lie down inactive? why you are to leave 
 the crew to battle for the helm ? How much may individuals, 
 by the diffusion of their own thoughts, in letters or in action, 
 regulate the order of vast events now prevent now soften 
 now animate now guide ! And isa'man, to whom Providence 
 and Fortune have imparted such prerogatives, to stand aloof, 
 because he can neither foresee the Future nor create Perfec- 
 tion? And you talk of no certain and definite goal! How 
 know we that there is a certain and definite goal, even in 
 Heaven ? how know we that excellence may not be illimitable? 
 Enough that we improve that we proceed. Seeing in the 
 great design of earth that benevolence is an attribute of the De- 
 signer, let us leave the rest to Posterity and to God." 
 
 " You have disturbed many of my theories," said Maltravers, 
 candidly ; " and I will reflect on our conversation : but, after 
 all, is every man to aspire to influence others ? to throw his 
 opinions into the great scales in which human destinies are 
 weighed? Private life is not criminal. It is no virtue to write 
 a book, or to make a speech. Perhaps, I should be as well en- 
 gaged in returning to my country village, looking at my schools, 
 and wrangling with the parish overseers " 
 
 " Ah," interrupted the Frenchman, laughing ; "if I have 
 driven you to this point, I will go no further. Every state of 
 life has its duties ; every man must be himself the judge of 
 what he is most fit for. It is quite enough that he desires to be 
 active, and labors to be useful ; that he acknowledges the pre- 
 cept, ' never to be weary in well-doing.' The divine appetite 
 once fostered, let it select its own food. But the man who,
 
 232 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 after fair trial of his capacities, and with all opportunity for their 
 full development before him, is convinced that he has faculties 
 which private life cannot wholly absorb must not repine that 
 human nature is not perfect, when he refuses even to exercise 
 the gifts he himself possesses." 
 
 Now these arguments have been very tedious ; in some places 
 they have been old and trite ; in others they may appear too 
 much to appertain to the abstract theory of first principles. 
 Yet from such arguments, pro and con, unless I greatly mistake, 
 are to be derived corollaries equally practical and sublime ; the 
 virtue of Action the obligations of Genius and the philoso- 
 phy that teaches us to confide in the destinies, and labor in the 
 service, of mankind. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 " I'll tell you presently her very picture : 
 Stay yes, it is so, Lelia." 
 
 The Captain, Act v. Scene i. 
 
 MALTRAVERS had not shrunk into a system of false phil- 
 osophy from wayward and sickly dreams, from resolute self- 
 delusion ; on the contrary, his errors rested on his convictions 
 the convictions disturbed, the errors were rudely shaken. 
 
 But when his mind began restlessly to turn once more towards 
 the duties of active life ; when he recalled all the former 
 drudgeries and toils of political conflict, or the wearing fatigues 
 of literature, with its small enmities, its false friendships, and 
 its meagre and capricious rewards, ah ! then, indeed, he 
 shrunk in dismay from the thoughts of the solitude at home ! 
 No lips to console in dejection, no heart to sympathize in 
 triumph, no love within to counterbalance the hate without 
 and the best of man, his household affections, left to wither 
 away, or to waste themselves on ideal images, or melancholy 
 remembrance. 
 
 It may, indeed, be generally remarked (contrary to a common 
 notion), that the men who are most "happy at home are the 
 most active abroad. The animal spirits are necessary to 
 healthful action ; and dejection and the sense of solitude will 
 turn the stoutest into dreamers. The hermit is the antipodes 
 of the citizen ; and no gods animate and inspire us like the 
 Lares. 
 
 One evening, after an absence from Paris of nearly a fort- 
 night, at De Montaigne's villa, in the neighborhood of St. Cloud,
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 233 
 
 Maltravers, who, though he no longer practised the art, was not 
 less fond than heretofore of music, was seated in Madame de 
 Ventadour's box at the Italian Opera ; and Valerie, who was 
 above all the woman's jealousy of beauty, was expatiating with 
 great warmth of eulogium upon the charms of ayoung English 
 lady whom she had met at Lady G 's the preceding eve- 
 ning 
 
 " She is just my beau ideal of the true English beauty," said 
 Valerie : " it is not only the .exquisite fairness of the com- 
 plexion, nor the eyes so purely blue, which the dark lashes 
 relieve from the coldness common to the light eyes of the 
 Scotch and Germans, that are so beautifully national, but the 
 simplicity of manner, the unconsciousness of admiration, the 
 mingled modesty and sense of the expression. No, I have 
 seen women more beautiful, but I never saw one more lovely ; 
 you are silent I expected some burst of patriotism in return 
 for my compliment to your countrywoman ! " 
 
 " But I am so absorbed in that wonderful Pasta " 
 
 " You are no such thing ; your thoughts are fer away. But 
 can you tell me anything about my fair stranger and her 
 friends? In the first place, there is a Lord Doltimore, whom I 
 knew before you need say nothing about him ; in the next, 
 there is his new-married bride, handsome, dark but you are 
 not well ! " 
 
 " It was the draught from the door go on, I beseech you 
 the young lady the friend, her name ? " 
 
 " Her name I do not remember ; but she was engaged to be 
 married to one of your statesmen, Lord Vargrave the marriage 
 is broken off I know not if that be the cause of a certain 
 melancholy in her countenance a melancholy I am sure not 
 natural to its Hebe-like expression. But who have just entered 
 the opposite box ? Ah, Mr. Maltravers, do look, there is the 
 beautiful English girl ! " 
 
 And Maltravers raised his eyes, and once more beheld the 
 countenance of Evelyn Cameron !
 
 234 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 BOOK VII. 
 
 e. SOPH. CEdip. Tyran. 681. 
 ' Words of dark import gave suspicion birth." POTTER. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 " Luce. Is the wind there ? 
 That makes for me. 
 Isab. Come I forget a business." 
 
 Wit without Money, 
 
 LORD VARGRAVE'S travelling carriage was at his door, and 
 he himself was putting on his great-coat in his library, when 
 Lord Saxingham entered. 
 
 " What ! you are going into the country ? " 
 
 "Yes I wrote you word to see Lisle Court." 
 
 " Ay, true ; I had forgot. Somehow or other my memory is 
 not so good as it was." 
 
 " But, let me see, Lisle Court is in shire. Why, you will 
 
 pass within ten miles of C ." 
 
 "C ! shall I? I am not much versed in the geography 
 
 of England never learned it at school. As for Poland, Kam- 
 schatka, Mexico, Madagascar, or any other place as to which 
 knowledge would be use/id, I have every inch of the way at 
 
 my fingers' end. But Apropos of C , it is the town in which 
 
 my late uncle made his fortune." 
 
 " Ah, so it is. I recollect you were to have stood for C , 
 
 but gave it up to Staunch ; very handsome in you. Have you 
 any interest there still ?" 
 
 " I think my ward has some tenants, a 'street or two, one 
 called Richard Street, and the other Templeton Place. I had 
 intended some weeks ago to have gone down there, and seen 
 what interest was still left to our family ; but Staunch himself 
 told me that C was a sure card." 
 
 " So he thought ; but he has been with me this morning in 
 great alarm : he now thinks he shall be thrown out. A Mr. 
 Winsley, who has a great deal of interest there, and was a sup- 
 porter of his, hangs back on account of the question. 
 
 This is unlucky, as Staunch is quite with us ; and if he were 
 to ra{ now U would be most unfortunate,"
 
 ALICE J OR, THE MYSTERIES. 235 
 
 " Winsley ! Winsley ! my poor uncle's right-hand man. 
 A great brewer always chairman of the Templeton Commit- 
 tee. I know the name, though I never saw the man." 
 
 " If you could take C in your way ? " 
 
 " To be sure. Staunch must not be lost. We cannot throw 
 away a single vote, much more one of such weight, eighteen 
 
 stone at the least ! I'll stop at C on pretence of seeing 
 
 after rny ward's houses, and have a quiet conference with Mr. 
 Winsley. Hem ! Peers must not interfere in elections eh ? 
 Well, good-bye ; take care of yourself. I shall be back in a 
 week, I hope, perhaps less." 
 
 In a minute more, Lord Vargrave and Mr. George Frederick 
 Augustus Howard, a slim young gentleman of high birth and 
 connections, but who, having, as a portionless cadet, his own 
 way to make in the world, condescended to be his lordship's 
 private secretary, were rattling over the streets the first stage 
 to C . 
 
 It was late at night when Lord Vargrave arrived at the head 
 inn of that grave and respectable cathedral city, in which once 
 Richard Templeton, Esq., saint, banker, and politician, had 
 exercised his dictatorial sway. Sic transit gloria mundi! As 
 he warmed his hands by the fire in the large wainscoted apart- 
 ment into which he was shown, his eye met a full-length en- 
 graving of his uncle, with a roll of paper in his hands, meant 
 for a parliamentary bill for the turnpike trusts in the neighbor- 
 hood of C . The sight brought back his recollections of 
 
 that pious and saturnine relation, and insensibly the minister's 
 thoughts flew to his death-bed, and to the strange secret which 
 in that last hour he had revealed to Lumley, a secret which 
 had done much in deepening Lord Vargrave's contempt for 
 the forms and conventionalities of decorous life. And here it 
 may be mentioned though in the course of this volume a pen- 
 etrating reader may have guessed as much that, whatever 
 that secret, it did not refer expressly or exclusively to the late 
 lord's singular and ill-assorted marriage. Upon that point 
 much was still left obscure to arouse Lumley's curiosity, had 
 he been a man whose curiosity was very vivacious. But on 
 this he felt but little interest. He knew enough to believe that 
 no further information could benefit himself personally : why 
 should he trouble his head with what never would fill his pockets ? 
 
 An audible yawn from the slim secretary roused Lord Var- 
 grave from his revery. 
 
 " I envy you, my young friend," said he, good-humoredly 
 " It is a pleasure we lose as we grow older that of being sleepy.
 
 236 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 However, ' to bed,' as Lady Macbeth says. Faith, I don't won- 
 der the poor devil of a thane was slow in going to bed with such 
 a tigress. Good-night to you." 
 
 CHAPTER IT. 
 
 " Ma fortune va prendre une face nouvelle." * 
 
 RACINE : Androm. Act i. Scene i. 
 
 THE next morning Vargrave inquired the way to Mr. Wins- 
 ley's, and walked alone to the house of the brewer. The slim 
 secretary went to inspect the cathedral. 
 
 Mr. Winsley was a little, thickset man, with a civil but blunt 
 electioneering manner. He started when he heard Lord Var- 
 grave's name, and bowed with great stiffness. Vargrave saw 
 at a glance that there was some cause of grudge in the mind of 
 the worthy man ; nor did Mr. Winsley long hesitate before he 
 cleansed his bosom of its perilous stuff. 
 
 "This is an unexpected honor, my lord : I don't know how 
 to account for it." 
 
 " Why, Mr. Winsley, your friendship with my late uncle can, 
 perhaps, sufficiently explain and apologize for a visit from a 
 nephew sincerely attached to his memory." 
 
 " Humph ! I certainly did all in my power to promote Mr. 
 Ternpleton's interests. No man, I may say, did more ; and 
 yet I don't think it was much thought of the moment he turned 
 
 his back upon the electors of C . Not that I bear any 
 
 malice ; I am well-to-do, and value no man's favor no man's, 
 my lord ! " 
 
 " You amaze me ! I always heard my poor uncle speak of 
 you in the highest terms." 
 
 " Oh ! well, it don't signify pray say no more of it. Can 
 I offer your lordship a glass of wine ? " 
 
 " No, I am much obliged to you ; but we really must set this 
 little matter right. You know that after his marriage my uncle 
 
 never revisited C ; and that shortly before his death he 
 
 sold the greater part of his interest in this city. His young 
 wife, I suppose, liked the neighborhood of London ; and when 
 elderly gentlemen do marry, you know, they are no longer their 
 own masters ; but if you had ever come to Fulham ah ! then, 
 indeed, my uncle would have rejoiced to see his old friend." 
 
 " Your lordship thinks so," said Mr. Winsley, with a sardonic 
 smile. "You are mistaken ; I did call at Fulham ; and though 
 
 * My fortune is about to take a turn.
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 237 
 
 I sent in my card, Lord Vargrave's servant (he was then My 
 Lord) brought back word that his lordship was not at home." 
 
 " But that must have been true ; he was out, you may 
 depend on it." 
 
 " I saw him at the window, my lord," said Mr. Winsley taking 
 a pinch of snuff. 
 
 (Oh, the deuce ! I'm in for it, thought Lumley.) " Very 
 strange, indeed ! but how can you account for it ? Ah ! per- 
 haps the health of Lady Vargrave she was so very delicate 
 then, and my poor uncle lived for her you know that he left 
 all his fortune to Miss Cameron?" 
 
 " Miss Cameron ! Who is she, my lord ?" 
 
 " Why, his daughter-in-law ; Lady Vargrave was a widow a 
 Mrs. Cameron." 
 
 "Mrs. Cam I remember now they put Cameron in 
 the newspapers ; but I thought it was a mistake. But, per- 
 haps " (added Winsley, with a sneer of peculiar malignity), 
 "perhaps, when your worthy uncle thought of being a peer, he 
 did not like to have it known that he married so much beneath 
 him." 
 
 "You quite mistake, my dear sir ; my uncle never denied 
 that Mrs. Cameron was a lady of no fortune or connections 
 widow to some poor Scotch gentleman, who died, I think, in 
 India." 
 
 " He left her very ill off, poor thing, but she had a great 
 deal of merit, and worked hard she taught my girls to play " 
 
 " Your girls ! did Mrs. Cameron ever reside in C ? " 
 
 " To be sure ; but she was then called Mrs. Butler just as 
 pretty a name, to my fancy." 
 
 " You must make a mistake ; my uncle married this lady in 
 Devonshire. 5 ' 
 
 " Very possibly," quoth the brewer doggedly. " Mrs. But- 
 ler left the town with her little girl, some time before Mr. Tem- 
 pleton married." 
 
 "Well, you are wiser than I am," said Lumley, forcing a 
 smile. " But how can you be sure that Mrs. Butler and Mrs. 
 Cameron are one and the same person ? You did not go into 
 the house you could not have seen Lady Vargrave " (and 
 here Lumley shrewdly guessed if the tale were true at the 
 cause of his uncle's exclusion of his old acquaintance). 
 
 "No ; but I saw her ladyship on the lawn," said Mr. Wins- 
 ley, with another sardonic srnile ; "and I asked the porter at 
 the lodge, as I went out, if that was Lady Vargrave, and he 
 said 'yes.' However, my lord, bygones are bygones I bear
 
 238 ALICE ; OR, THE MVStEUlES. 
 
 no malice ; your uncle was a good man ; and if he had but 
 said to me, ' Winsley, don't say a word about Mrs. Butler,' he 
 might have reckoned on me just as much as when in his elec- 
 tions he used to put five thousand pounds in my hand and say, 
 'Winsley, no bribery it is wicked ; let this be given in charity.' 
 Did any one ever know how that money went ? Was your 
 uncle ever accused of corruption ? But, my dear lord, surely 
 you will take some refreshment ? " 
 
 " No, indeed ; but if you will let me dine with you to-mor- 
 row, you'll oblige me much, and, whatever my uncle's faults 
 (and latterly, poor man, he was hardly in his senses, what a 
 will he made !) let not the nephew suffer for them. Come, Mr. 
 Winsley," and Lumley held out his hand with enchanting 
 frankness, "you know my motives are disinterested I have no 
 parliamentary interest to serve we have no constituents for 
 our Hospital of Incurables, and oh ! that's right we're 
 friends, I see ! Now, I must go and look after my ward's 
 houses. Let me see, the agent's name is is " 
 
 " Perkins, I think, my lord," said Mr. Winsley, thoroughly 
 softened by the charm of Vargrave's words and manner. " Let 
 me put on my hat, and show you his house." 
 
 "Will you? that's very kind ; give me all the election news 
 by the way you know I was once within an ace of being your 
 member." 
 
 Vargrave learned from his new friend some further particu- 
 lars relative to Mrs. Butler's humble habits and homely mode 
 
 of life at C , which served completely to explain to him why 
 
 his proud and worldly uncle had so carefully abstained from 
 all intercourse with that city, and had prevented the nephew 
 from standing for its vacant representation. It seemed, how- 
 ever, that Winsley whose resentment was not of a very active 
 or violent kind had not communicated the discovery he had 
 made to his fellow-townspeople ; but had contented himself 
 with hints and aphorisms, whenever he had heard the subject 
 of Mr. Templeton's marriage discussed, which had led the 
 gossips of the place to imagine that he had made a worse 
 selection than he really had. As to the accuracy of Winsley's 
 assertion, Vargrave, though surprised at first, had but little 
 doubt on consideration, especially when he heard that Mrs. 
 Butler's principal patroness had been the Mrs. Leslie now the 
 intimate friend of Lady Vargrave. But what had been the 
 career what the earlier condition and struggles of this simple 
 and interesting creature? with her appearance at C , com- 
 menced all that surmise could invent. Not greater was the
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 239 
 
 mystery that wrapped the apparition of Manco Capac by the 
 lake Titiaca, than that which shrouded the places and the 
 trials whence the lowly teacher of music had emerged amidst 
 the streets of C . 
 
 Weary, and somewhat careless, of conjecture, Lord Var- 
 grave, in dining with Mr. Winsley, turned the conversation 
 upon the business on which he had principally undertaken his 
 journey viz. the meditated purchase of Lisle Court. 
 
 " I myself am not a very good judge of landed property," 
 said Vargrave ; " I wish I knew of an experienced surveyor to 
 look over the farms and timber : can you help me to such a 
 one ? " 
 
 Mr. Winsley smiled, and glanced at a rosy-cheeked young 
 lady, who simpered and turned away. " I think my daughter 
 could recommend one to your lordship, if she dared." 
 
 "Oh, pa!" 
 
 " I see. Well, Miss Winsley, I will take no recommendation 
 but yours." 
 
 Miss Winsley made an effort. 
 
 " Indeed, my lord, I have always heard Mr. Robert Hobbs 
 considered very clever in his profession." 
 
 " Mr. Robert Hobbs is my man ! His good health and a 
 fair wife to him." 
 
 Miss Winsley glanced at mamma, and then at a younger 
 sister, and then there was a titter and then a fluttering and 
 then a rising and Mr. Winsley, Lord Vargrave, and the slim 
 secretary, were left alone. 
 
 " Really, my lord," said the host, resettling himself, and 
 pushing the wine " though you have guessed our little family 
 arrangement, and I have some interest in the recommendation, 
 since Margaret will be Mrs. Robert Hobbs in a few weeks 
 yet I do not know a more acute, intelligent young man any- 
 where. Highly respectable, with an independent fortune ; his 
 father is lately dead, and made at least thirty thousand pounds 
 in trade. His brother Edward is also dead ; so he has the bulk 
 of the property, and he follows his profession merely for amuse- 
 ment. He would consider it a great honor." 
 
 "And where does he live?" 
 
 "Oh, not in this county a long way off; close to ; 
 
 but it is all in your lordship's road. A very nice house he has 
 too. I have known his family since I was a boy ; it is astonish- 
 ing how his father improved the place, it was a poor little 
 lath-and-plaster cottage when the late Mr. Hobbs bought it, 
 and it is now a very excellent family house."
 
 240 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 "Well, you shall give me the address and a letter of introduc- 
 tion, and so much for that matter. But to return to politics ;" 
 and here Lord Vargrave ran eloquently on, till Mr. Winsley 
 thought him the only man in the world who could save the 
 country from that utter annihilation the possibility of which 
 he had never even suspected before. 
 
 It may be as well to add, that, on wishing Lord Vargrave 
 good-night, Mr. Winsley whispered in his ear, "Your lordship's 
 friend, Lord Staunch, need be under no apprehension we are 
 all right ! " 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 " This is the house, sir. Love's Pilgrimage, Act iv. Sc. 2. 
 " Redeunt Saturnia regna." * VIRGIL. 
 
 THE next morning, Lumley and his slender companion were 
 rolling rapidly over the same road on which, sixteen years ago, 
 way-worn and weary, Alice Darvil had first met with Mrs. 
 Leslie ; they were talking about a new opera-dancer as they 
 whirled by the very spot. 
 
 It was about five o'clock in the afternoon, the next day, when 
 the carriage stopped at a cast-iron gate, on which was inscribed 
 the epigraph, " Hobbs' Lodge Ring the Bell." 
 
 "A snug place enough," said Lord Vargrave, as they were 
 waiting the arrival of the footman to unbar the gate. 
 
 " Yes," said Mr. Howard. "If a retired Cit could be trans- 
 formed into a house, such is the house he would be." 
 
 Poor Dale Cottage ! the home of Poetry and Passion ! But 
 change visits the Commonplace as well as the Romantic. 
 Since Alice had pressed to that cold grating her wistful eyes, 
 time had wrought its allotted revolutions the old had died 
 the young grown up. Of the children playing on the lawn, 
 death had claimed some, and marriage others, and the holy- 
 day of youth was gone for all. 
 
 The servant opened the gate. Mr. Robert Hobbs was at 
 home ; he had friends with him he was engaged. Lord Var- 
 grave sent in his card, and the introductory letter from Mr. 
 Winsley. In two seconds, these missives brought to the gate 
 Mr. Robert Hobbs himself ; a smart young man, with a black 
 stock, red whiskers, and an eye-glass pendant to a hair-chain 
 which was possibly a gage d' amour from Miss Margaret 
 Winsley. 
 
 * A former state of things returnt..
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 241 
 
 A profusion of bows, compliments, apologies, etc., the 
 carriage drove up the sweep, and Lord Vargrave descended, 
 and was immediately ushered into Mr. Hobbs's private room. 
 The slim secretary followed, and sat silent, melancholy, and 
 upright, while the peer affably explained his wants and wishes to 
 the surveyor. 
 
 Mr. Hobbs was well acquainted with the locality of Lisle 
 Court, which was little more than thirty miles distant ; he 
 should be proud to accompany Lord Vargrave thither the next 
 morning. But, might he venture might he dare might he 
 
 presume a gentleman who lived at the town of was to 
 
 dine with him that day ; a gentleman of the most profound 
 knowledge of agricultural affairs ; a gentleman who knew every 
 farm, almost every acre, belonging to Colonel Maltravers if 
 his lordship could be induced to wave ceremony, and dine with 
 Mr. Hobbs, it might be really useful to meet this gentleman. 
 The slim secretary, who was very hungry, and who thought he 
 sniffed an uncommonly savory smell, looked up from his 
 boots, Lord Vargrave smiled. 
 
 "My young friend here is too great an admirer of Mrs. 
 Hobbs, who is to be, not to feel anxious to make the 
 acquaintance of any members of the family she is to enter." 
 
 Mr. George Frederick Augustus Howard blushed indignant 
 refutation of the calumnious charge. Vargrave continued : 
 
 " As for me, I shall be delighted to meet any friends of yours, 
 and am greatly obliged for your consideration. We may dis- 
 miss the postboys, Howard, and what time shall we summon 
 them ? ten o'clock ? " 
 
 "If your lordship would condescend to accept a bed, we can 
 accommodate your lordship and this gentleman, and start at 
 any hour in the morning that " 
 
 "So be it," interrupted Vargrave. "You speak like a man 
 of business. Howard, be so kind as to order the horses for six 
 o'clock to-morrow. We'll breakfast at Lisle Court." 
 
 This matter settled, Lord Vargrave and Mr. Howard were 
 shown into their respective apartments. Travelling dresses were 
 changed the dinner put back and the fish overboiled ; but 
 what mattered common fish, when Mr. Hobbs had just caught 
 such a big one ? Of what consequence he should be henceforth 
 and ever ! A peer a minister a stranger to the county, to 
 come all this way to consult /////// to be his guest ! to be 
 shown off, and patted, and trotted out before all the rest of the 
 company ! Mr. Hobbs was a made man ! Careless of all this, 
 ever at home with any one, and delighted, perhaps, to es-
 
 242 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 cape a tet<:-a-iete with Mr. Howard in a strange inn, Vargrave 
 lounged into the drawing-room, and was formally presented to 
 the expectant family and the famishing guests. 
 
 During the expiring bachelorship of Mr. Robert Hobbs, his 
 sister, Mrs. Tiddy (to whom the reader was first introduced as 
 a bride gathering the wisdom of economy and large joints from 
 the frugal lips of her mamma), officiated as lady of the house, 
 a comely matron, and well-preserved, except that she had lost 
 a front tooth, in a jaundiced satinet gown, with a fall of 
 British blonde, and a tucker of the same : Mr. Tiddy being a 
 starch man, and not willing that the luxuriant charms of Mrs. 
 T. should be too temptingly exposed ! There was also Mr. 
 Tiddy, whom his wife had married for love, and who was now 
 well-to-do ; a fine-looking man, with large whiskers, and a Ro- 
 man nose, a little awry. Moreover, there was a Miss Biddy or 
 Bridget Hobbs, a young lady of four or five-and-twenty, who 
 was considering whether she might ask Lord Vargrave to write 
 something in her album, and who cast a bashful look of admi- 
 ration at the slim secretary, as he now sauntered into the room, 
 in a black coat, black waistcoat, black trousers, and black neck- 
 cloth, with a black pin, looking much like an ebony cane split 
 half-way up. Miss Biddy was a fair young lady, a leetle faded, 
 with uncommonly thin arms and white satin shoes, on which the 
 slim secretary cast his eyes and shuddered ! 
 
 In addition to the family group were the Rector of , an 
 
 agreeable man, who published sermons and poetry ; also Sir 
 William Jekyll, who was employing Mr. Hobbs to make a map 
 of an estate he had just purchased ;'also two country squires 
 and their two wives ; moreover, the physician of the neighbor- 
 ing town, a remarkably tall man, who wore spectacles and told 
 anecdotes ; and, lastly, Mr. Onslow, the gentleman to whom 
 Mr. Hobbs had referred, an elderly man of prepossessing ex- 
 terior, of high repute as the most efficient magistrate, the best 
 farmer, and the most sensible person in the neighborhood. This 
 made the party, to each individual of which the great man 
 bowed and smiled ; and the great man's secretary bent, conde- 
 scendingly, three joints of his backbone. 
 
 The bell was now rung dinner announced. Sir William 
 Jekyll led the way with one of the she-squires, and Lord Var- 
 grave offered his arm to the portly Mrs. Tiddy. 
 
 Vargrave, as usual, was the' life of the feast. Mr. Howard, 
 who sat next to Miss Bridget, conversed with her between the 
 courses, " in dumb show." Mr. Onslow and the physician 
 played second and third to Lord Vargrave. When the dinner
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 243 
 
 was over, and the ladies had retired, Vargrave found himself 
 seated next to Mr. Onslow, and discovered in his neighbor a 
 most agreeable companion. They talked principally about 
 Lisle Court, and from Colonel Maltravers the conversation 
 turned naturally upon Ernest. Vargrave proclaimed his early 
 intimacy with the latter gentleman, complained, feelingly, that 
 politics had divided them of late, and told two or three anec- 
 dotes of their youthful adventures in the East. Mr. Onslow 
 listened to him with much attention. 
 
 " I made the acquaintance of Mr. Maltravers many years 
 ago," said he, " and upon a very delicate occasion. I was 
 greatly interested in him, I never saw one so young (for he 
 was then but a boy) manifest feelings so deep. By the dates 
 you have referred to, your acquaintance with him must have 
 commenced very shortly after mine. Was he, at that time, 
 cheerful in good spirits ? " 
 
 " No, indeed hypochondriacal to the greatest degree." 
 
 "Your lordship's intimacy with him, and the confidence that 
 generally exists between young men, induce me to suppose that 
 he may have told you a little romance connected with his early 
 years." 
 
 Lumley paused to consider ; and this conversation, which 
 had been carried on apart, was suddenly broken into by the tall 
 doctor, who wan ted to know whether his lordship had ever heard 
 the anecdote about Lord Thurlow and the late King. The 
 anecdote was as long as the doctor himself ; and when it was 
 over, the gentlemen adjourned to the drawing-room, and all con- 
 versation was immediately drowned by " Row, brothers, row," 
 which had only been suspended till the arrival of Mr. Tiddy, 
 who had a fine bass voice. 
 
 Alas ! eighteen years ago, in that spot of earth, Alice Darvil 
 had first caught the soul of music from the lips of Genius and 
 of Love ! But better as it is less romantic, but more proper 
 as Hobbs' Lodge was less pretty, but more safe from the winds 
 and rains, than Dale Cottage. 
 
 Miss Bridget ventured to ask the good-humored Lord Var- 
 grave if he sang ? " Not I, Miss Hobbs but Howard, there 
 Ah, if you heard him ! " The consequence of this hint was, 
 that the unhappy secretary, who alone, in a distant corner, was 
 unconsciously refreshing his fancy with some cool weak coffee, 
 was instantly beset with applications from Miss Bridget, Mrs. 
 Tiddy, Mr. Tiddy and the tall doctor, to favor the company 
 with a specimen of his talents. Mr. Howard could sing he 
 could even play the guitar, But to sing at Hobbs' Lodge to
 
 244 ALICE J OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 sing to the accompaniment of Mrs. Tiddy to have his gentle 
 tenor crushed to death in a glee by the heavy splay-foot of Mr. 
 Tiddy's manly bass the thought was insufferable ! He fal- 
 tered forth assurances of his ignorance, and hastened to bury 
 his resentment in the retirement of a remote sofa. Vargrave, 
 who had forgotten the significant question of Mr. Onslovv, re- 
 newed in a whisper his conversation with that gentleman rela- 
 tive to the meditated investment, while Mr. and Mrs. Tiddy 
 sang, " Come dwell with me ;" and Onslow was so pleased with 
 his new acquaintance, that he volunteered to make a fourth in 
 Lumley's carriage the next morning, and accompany him to 
 Lisle Court. This settled, the party soon afterwards broke up. 
 At midnight Lord Vargrave was fast asleep ; and Mr. Howard 
 tossing restlessly to and fro on his melancholy couch, was re- 
 volving all the hardships that await a native of St. James's, who 
 ventures forth among 
 
 " The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads 
 Do grow beneath their shoulders ! " 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 " But how were these doubts to be changed into absolute certainty ?" 
 
 EDGAR HUNTLEY. 
 
 THE next morning, while it was yet dark, Lord Vargrave's 
 carriage picked up Mr. Onslow at the door of a large old-fash- 
 ioned house, at the entrance of the manufacturing town of . 
 
 The party were silent and sleepy, till they arrived at Lisle 
 Court, the sun had then appeared the morning was clear 
 the air frosty and bracing. And as, after traversing a noble 
 park, a superb quadrangular pile of brick, flanked by huge 
 square turrets, coped with stone, broke upon the gaze of Lord 
 Vargrave, his worldly heart swelled within him, and the image 
 of Evelyn became inexpressibly lovely and seductive. 
 
 Though the housekeeper was not prepared for Vargrave's 
 arrival at so early an hour, yet he had been daily expected : the 
 logs soon burned bright in the ample hearth of the breakfast- 
 room the urn hissed the cutlets smoked and while the rest 
 of the party gathered round the fire, and unmuffled themselves 
 of cloaks and shawl-handkerchiefs, Vargrave seizing upon the 
 housekeeper traversed with delighted steps the magnificent suite 
 of rooms gazed on the pictures admired the state bed- 
 chambers peeped into the offices and recognized in all a 
 mansion worthy of a Peer of England ; but which a more pru-
 
 ALICE J OR, THE MYSTERIES. 245 
 
 dent man would have thought, with a sigh, required careful 
 management of the rent-roll raised from the property adequately 
 to equip and maintain. Such an idea did not cross the mind 
 of Vargrave ; he only thought how much he should be honored 
 and envied, when, as Secretary of State, he should yearly fill 
 those feudal chambers with the pride and rank of England ! 
 It was characteristic of the extraordinary sanguineaess and self- 
 confidence of Vargrave, that he entirely overlooked one slight 
 obstacle to this prospect, in the determined refusal of Evelyn 
 to accept that passionate homage which he ofi'ered to her 
 fortune ! 
 
 When breakfast was over the steward was called in, and the 
 party, mounted upon ponies, set out to reconnoitre. After 
 spending the short day most agreeably in looking over the gar- 
 dens, pleasure-grounds, park, and home-farm, and settling to 
 visit the more distant parts of the property the next day, the 
 party were returning home to dine, when Vargrave's eye caught 
 the glittering ^vhi^n of Sir Gregory Gubbins. 
 
 He pointed it out to Mr. Onslow, and laughed much at hear- 
 ing of the annoyance it occasioned to Colonel Maltravers. 
 " Thus," said Lumley, " do we all crumple the rose-leaf under 
 us, and quarrel with couches the most luxuriant ! As for me, 
 I will wager, that were this property mine, or my ward's, in 
 three weeks we should have won the heart of Sir Gregory, made 
 him pull down his whim, and coaxed him out of his interest in 
 
 the city of . A good seat for you, Howard, some day or 
 
 other." 
 
 " Sir Gregory has prodigiously bad taste," said Mr. Hobbs. 
 " For my part, I think that there ought to be a certain modest 
 simplicity in the display of wealth got in business ; that was 
 my poor father's maxim." 
 
 " Ah ! " said Vargrave, " Hobbs' Lodge is a specimen. Who 
 was your predecessor in that charming retreat ? " 
 
 " Why the place then called Dale Cottage belonged to a 
 Mr. Berners, a rich bachelor in business, who was rich enough 
 not to mind what people said of him, and kept a lady there. 
 She ran off from him, and he then let it to some young man 
 a stranger very eccentric, I hear a Mr. Mr. Butler and he, 
 too, gave the cottage an unlawful attraction a most beautiful 
 girl, 1 have heard." 
 
 "Butler!" echoed Vargrave "Butler Butler!" Lumley 
 recollected that such had been the real name of Mrs. Cameron. 
 
 Onslow looked hard at Vargrave. 
 
 " You recognize the name, my lord," said he in a whisper, as
 
 246 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 Hobbs had turned to address himself to Mr. Howard. " I 
 thought you very discreet when I asked you, last night, if you 
 remembered the early follies of your friend." A suspicion at 
 once flashed upon the quick mind of Vargrave : Butler was a 
 name on the mother's side in the family of Maltravers ; the 
 gloom of Ernest when he first knew him the boy's hints that 
 the gloom was connected with the affections the extraordinary 
 and single accomplishment of Lady Vargrave in that art of 
 which Maltravers was so consummate a master- the similarity 
 of name all taken in conjunction with the meaning question 
 of Mr. Onslovv, were enough to suggest to Vargrave that he 
 might be on the verge of a family secret, the knowledge of 
 which could be turned to advantage. He took care not to con- 
 fess his ignorance, but artfully proceeded to draw out Mr. On- 
 slow's communications. 
 
 " Why, it is true," said he, " that Maltravers and I had no 
 secrets. Ah ! we were wild fellows then the name of Butler 
 is in his family eh ?" 
 
 " It is. I see you know all." 
 
 " Yes ; he told me the story, but it is eighteen years ago. Do 
 refresh my memory. Howard, my good fellow, just ride on and 
 expedite dinner ; Mr. Hobbs, will you go with Mr. What's-his- 
 name, the steward, and look over the maps, outgoings, etc. ? 
 Now, Mr. Onslow so Maltravers took the cottage, and a lady 
 with it ? ay, I remember." 
 
 Mr. Onslow (who was in fact that magistrate to whom Ernest 
 had confided his name and committed the search after Alice, 
 and who was really anxious to know if any tidings of the poor 
 girl had ever been ascertained) here related that history with 
 which the reader is acquainted ; the robbery of the cottage 
 the disappearance of Alice the suspicions that connected that 
 disappearance with her ruffian father the despair and search 
 of Maltravers. He added that Ernest, both before his depart- 
 ure from England, and on his return, had written to him to 
 learn if Alice had ever been heard of ; the replies of the magis- 
 trate were unsatisfactory. "And do you think, my lord, that 
 Mr. Maltravers has never to this day ascertained what became 
 of the poor young woman ? " 
 
 "Why, let me see, what was her name ?" 
 
 The magistrate thought a moment, and replied, "Alice 
 Darvil." 
 
 " Alice ! " exclaimed Vargrave. " Alice ! " aware that such 
 was the Christian name of his uncle's wife, and now almost con- 
 vinced of the truth of his first vague suspicion.
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 247 
 
 "You seem to know the name." 
 
 " Of Alice ; yes but not Darvil. No, no ; I believe he has 
 never heard of the girl to this hour. Nor you either?" 
 
 " I have not. One little circumstance related to me by Mr. 
 Hobbs, your surveyor's father, gave me some uneasiness. About 
 two years after the young woman disappeared, a girl, of very 
 humble dress and appearance, stopped at the gate of Hobbs' 
 Lodge, and asked earnestly for Mr. Butler. On hearing he was 
 gone, she turned away, and was seen no more. It seems that 
 this girl had an infant in her arms which rather shocked the 
 propriety of Mr. and Mrs. Hobbs. The old gentleman told 
 me the circumstance a few days after it happened, and I caused 
 inquiry to be made for the stranger ; but she could not be 
 discovered. I thought at first this possibly might be the lost 
 Alice ; but I learned that, during his stay at the cottage, your 
 friend despite his error, which we will not stop to excuse, 
 had exercised so generous and wide a charity amongst the 
 poor in the town and neighborhood, that it was a more proba- 
 ble supposition of the two, that the girl belonged to some 
 family he had formerly relieved, and her visit was that of a 
 mendicant, not a mistress. Accordingly, after much consider- 
 ation, I resolved not to mention the circumstance to Mr. Mal- 
 travers, when he wrote to me on his return from the Continent. 
 A considerable time had then elapsed since the girl had applied 
 to Mr. Hobbs ; all trace of her was lost the incident might 
 open wounds that time must have nearly healed might give 
 false hopes or, what was worse, occasion a fresh and unfounded 
 remorse at the idea of Alice's destitution ; it would, in fact, 
 do no good, and might occasion much unnecessary pain. I 
 therefore suppressed all mention of it." 
 
 " You did right ; and so the poor girl had an infant in her 
 arms ? humph ! What sort of looking person was this Alice 
 Darvil? pretty, of course?" 
 
 " I never saw her ; and none but the persons employed in 
 the premises knew her by sight they described her as remark- 
 ably lovely." 
 
 " Fair and slight, with blue eyes, I suppose ? those are the 
 orthodox requisites of a heroine." 
 
 " Upon my word I forget ; indeed I should never have re- 
 membered as much as I do, if the celebrity of Mr. Maltravers, 
 and the consequence of his family in these parts, together with 
 the sight of his own agony the most painful I ever witnessed 
 had not served to impress the whole affair very deeply on my 
 mind."
 
 248 ALICE , OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 " Was the girl who appeared at the gate of Hobbs* Lodge 
 described to you?" 
 
 " No ; they scarcely observed her countenance, except that 
 her complexion was too fair for a gipsy's ; yet, now I think of 
 it, Mrs. Tiddy, who was with her father when he told me the 
 adventure, dwelt particularly on her having (as you so pleasantly 
 conjecture) fair hair and blue eyes. Mrs. Tiddy, being just 
 married, was romantic at that day." 
 
 " Well, it is an odd tale. But life is full of odd tales. Here 
 we are at the house it really is a splendid old place !" 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 " Pendent opera interrupta." * VIRGIL. 
 
 THE history Vargrave had heard, he revolved much when he 
 retired to rest. He could not but allow that there was still 
 little ground for more than conjecture, that Alice Darvil and 
 Alice Lady Vargrave were one and the same person. It might, 
 however, be of great importance to him to trace this conjecture 
 to certainty. The knowledge of a secret of early sin and 
 degradation in one so pure, so spotless, as Lady Vargrave, 
 might be of immense service in giving him a power over her, 
 which he could turn to account with Evelyn. How could he 
 best prosecute further inquiry ? by repairing to Brook-Green 
 or the thought struck him by visiting and "pumping" Mrs. 
 
 Leslie, the patroness of Mrs. Butler of C , the friend of 
 
 Lady Vargrave ? It was worth trying the latter it was little 
 out of his way back to London. His success in picking the 
 brains of Mr. Onslow of a secret encouraged him in the hope 
 of equal success with Mrs. Leslie. He decided accordingly, 
 and fell asleep to dream of Christmas battues, royal visitors, 
 the cabinet, the premiership ! Well, no possession equals the 
 dreams of it ! Sleep on, my lord ! you would be restless 
 enough if you were to get all you want. 
 
 For the next three days, Lord Vargrave was employed in 
 examining the general outlines of the estate, and the result of this 
 survey satisfied him as to the expediency of the purchase. On 
 the third day, he was several rru'les from the house when a 
 heavy rain came on. Lord Vargrave was constitutionally 
 hardy, and, not having been much exposed to the visitations 
 of the weather of late years, was not practically aware that, 
 
 * The things begun are interrupted and suspended.
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 249 
 
 when a man is past forty, he cannot endure \vilh impunity all 
 that falls innocuously on the elasticity of twenty-six. He did 
 not, therefore, heed the rain that drenched him to the skin, 
 and neglected to change his dress till he had finished reading 
 some letters and newspapers which awaited his return at Lisle 
 Court. The consequence of this imprudence was, that, the 
 next morning when he woke, Lord Vargrave found himself, for 
 almost the first time in his life, seriously ill. His head ached 
 violently cold shiverings shook his frame like an ague ; the 
 very strength of the constitution, on which the fever had begun 
 to fasten itself, augmented it? danger. Lumley the last man 
 in the world to think of the possibility of dying fought up 
 against his own sensations ordered his post-horses, as his visit 
 of survey was now over, and scarcely even alluded to his indis- 
 position. About an hour before he set off, his letters arrived ; 
 one of these informed him that Caroline, accompanied by 
 Evelyn, had already arrived in Paris ; the other was from 
 Colonel Legard, respectfully resigning his office, on the ground 
 of an accession of fortune by the sudden death of the admiral, 
 and his intention to spend the ensuing year in a continental 
 excursion. This last letter occasioned Vargrave considerable 
 alarm ; he had always felt a deep jealousy of the handsome ex- 
 guardsman, and he at once suspected that Legard was about to 
 repair to Paris as his rival. He sighed, and looked round the 
 spacious apartment, and gazed on the wide prospects of grove 
 and turf that extended from the window, and said to himself 
 "Is another to snatch these from my grasp?" His impatience 
 to visit Mrs. Leslie to gain ascendency over Lady Vargrave 
 to repair to Paris to scheme to manoeuvre to triumph 
 accelerated the progress of the disease that was now burning 
 in his veins ; and the hand that he held out to Mr. Hobbs, as 
 he stepped into his carriage, almost scorched the cold, plump, 
 moist fingers of the surveyor. Before six o'clock in the even- 
 ing, Lord Vargrave confessed reluctantly to himself, that he 
 was too ill to proceed much further. " Howard," said he then, 
 breaking a silence that had lasted some hours, " don't be 
 alarmed I feel that I am about to have a severe attack, 
 I shall stop at M (naming a large town they were approach- 
 ing) ; I shall send for the best physician the place affords ; if 
 I am delirious to-morrow, or unable to give my own orders, 
 have the kindness to send express for Dr. Holland but don't 
 leave me yourself, my good fellow. At my age, it is a hard 
 thing to have no one in the world to care for me in illness; 
 d n affection when I am well ! "
 
 250 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 After this strange burst, which very much frightened Mr. 
 Howard, Lumley relapsed into silence, not broken till he 
 
 reached M The best physician was sent for ; and the 
 
 next morning, as he had half-foreseen and foretold, Lord Var- 
 gra.ve was delirious ! 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 " Nought under Heaven so strongly doth allure 
 The sense of man, and all his mind possess, 
 As Beauty's love-bait." SPENCER. 
 
 LEGARD was, as I have before intimated, a young man of 
 generous and excellent dispositions, though somewhat spoiled 
 by the tenor of his education, and the gay and reckless society 
 which had administered tonics to his vanity and opiates to his 
 intellect. The effect which the beauty, the grace, the innocence 
 of Evelyn, had produced upon him had been most deep and 
 most salutary. It had rendered dissipation tasteless and in- 
 sipid it had made him look more deeply into his own heart, 
 and into the rules of life. Though, partly from the irksome- 
 ness of dependence upon an uncle at once generous and un- 
 gracious, partly from a diffident and feeling sense of his own 
 inadequate pretensions to the hand of Miss Cameron, and partly 
 from the prior and acknowledged claims of Lord Vargrave he 
 had accepted, half in despair, the appointment offered to him, 
 he still found it impossible to banish that image which had 
 been the first to engrave upon ardent and fresh affections an 
 indelible impression. He secretly chafed at the thought that 
 it was to a fortunate rival that he owed the independence and 
 the station he had acquired, and resolved to seize an early op- 
 portunity to free himself from obligations that he deeply regret- 
 ted he had incurred. At length he learned that Lord Vargrave 
 had been refused that Evelyn was free ; and, within a few 
 days from that intelligence, the admiral was seized with apo- 
 plexy and Legard suddenly found himself possessed, if not 
 of wealth, at least of a competence sufficient to redeem his 
 character as a suitor from the suspicion attached to a fortune- 
 hunter and adventurer. Despite the new prospects opened to 
 him by the death of his uncle, and despite the surly caprice 
 which had mingled with and alloyed the old admiral's kindness, 
 Legard was greatly shocked by his death ; and his grateful and 
 gentle nature was at first only sensible to grief for the loss he 
 had sustained. But when, at last, recovering from his sorrow,
 
 ALICE; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 251 
 
 he saw Evelyn disengaged and free, and himself in a position 
 honorably to contest her hand, he could not resist the sweet 
 and passionate hopes that broke upon him. He resigned, as 
 we have seen, his official appointment and set out for Paris. 
 He reached that city a day or two after the arrival of Lord and 
 Lady Doltimore. He found the former, who had not forgotten 
 the cautions of Vargrave, at first cold and distant ; but partly 
 from the indolent habit of submitting to Legard's dictates on 
 matters of taste, partly from a liking to his society, and prin- 
 cipally from the popular suffrages of fashion, which had always 
 been accorded to Legard, and which were noways diminished 
 by the news of his accession of fortune Lord Doltimore, weak 
 and vain, speedily yielded to the influences of his old associate, 
 and Legard became quietly installed as the enfant de la maison. 
 Caroline was not in this instance a very faithful ally to Var- 
 grave's views and policy. In his singular liaison with Lady 
 Doltimore, the crafty manoeuverer had committed the vulgar 
 fault of intriguers : he was over-refined, and had overreached 
 himself. At the commencement of their strange and unprin- 
 cipled intimacy, Vargrave had had, perhaps, no other thought 
 than that of piquing Evelyn, consoling his vanity, amusing his 
 ennui, and indulging rather his propensities as a gallant, than 
 promoting his more serious objects as a man of the world. By 
 degrees, and especially at Knaresdean, Vargrave himself became 
 deeply entangled by an affair that he had never before con- 
 templated as more important than a passing diversion : instead 
 of securing a friend to assist him in his designs on Evelyn, he 
 suddenly found that he had obtained a mistress anxious for 
 his love, and jealous of his homage. With his usual promptitude 
 and self-confidence, he was led at once to deliver himself of all 
 the ill consequences of his rashness to get rid of Caroline as 
 a mistress and to retain her as a tool, by marrying her to 
 Lord Doltimore. By the great ascendency which his character 
 acquired over her, and by her own worldly ambition, he suc- 
 ceeded in inducing her to sacrifice all romance to an union 
 that gave her rank and fortune ; and Vargrave then rested 
 satisfied, that the clever wife would not only secure him a per- 
 manent power over the political influence and private fortune 
 of the weak husband, but also abet his designs in securing an 
 alliance equally desirable for himself. Here it was that Var- 
 grave's incapacity to understand the refinements and scruples 
 of a woman's affection and nature, however guilty the one, and 
 however worldly the other, foiled and deceived him. Caroline, 
 though the wife of another, could not contemplate, without
 
 252 ALICE J OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 anguish, a similar bondage for her lover ; and, having some- 
 thing of the better qualities of her sex still left to her, she 
 recoiled from being an accomplice in arts that were to drive 
 the young, inexperienced, and guileless creature who called her 
 "friend" into the arms of a man who openly avowed the most 
 mercenary motives, and who took gods and men to witness that 
 his heart was sacred to another. Only in Vargrave's presence 
 were these scruples overmastered ; but the moment he was 
 gone they returned in full force : she had yielded, from positive 
 fear, to his commands that she should convey Evelyn to Paris; 
 but she trembled to think of the vague hints and dark menaces 
 that Vargrave had let fall as to ulterior proceedings, and was 
 distracted at the thought of being implicated in some villainous 
 or rash design. When, therefore, the man whose rivalry Var- 
 grave most feared was almost established at her home, she made 
 but a feeble resistance : she thought that, if Legard should 
 become a welcome and accepted suitor before Lumley arrived, 
 the latter would be forced to forego whatever hopes he yet 
 cherished, and that she should be delivered from a dilemma, 
 the prospect of which daunted and appalled her. Added to 
 this, Caroline was now, alas ! sensible that a fool is not so easily 
 governed her resistance to an intimacy with Legard would 
 have been of little avail : Doltimore, in these matters, had an 
 obstinate will of his own ; and, whatever might once have been 
 Caroline's influence over her liege, certain it is that such influ- 
 ence had been greatly impaired of late by the indulgence of a 
 temper, always irritable, and now daily more soured by regret, 
 remorse, contempt for her husband, and the melancholy dis- 
 covery that fortune, youth, beauty, and station are no talismans 
 against misery. 
 
 It was the gayest season of Paris ; and, to escape from her- 
 self, Caroline plunged eagerly into the vortex of its dissipations. 
 If Doltimore's heart was disappointed, his vanity was pleased 
 at the admiration Caroline excited ; and he himself was of an 
 age and temper to share in the pursuits and amusements of his 
 wife. Into these gayeties, new to their fascination, dazzled by 
 their splendor, the young Evelyn entered with her hostess ; 
 and ever by her side was the unequalled form of Legard. Each of 
 them in the bloom of youth, each of them at once formed to 
 please, and to be pleased by, that fair Armida which we call the 
 AVorld, there was, necessarily, a certain congeniality in their 
 views and sentiments, their occupations and their objects ; nor 
 was there, in all that brilliant city, one more calculated to cap- 
 tivate the eye and fancy than George Legard. But still, to a
 
 ALICE J OR, THE MYSTERIES. 253 
 
 certain degree,"diffident and fearful, Legard never yet spoke of 
 love; nor did their intimacy at this time ripen to that point in 
 which Evelyn could have asked herself if there were danger in 
 the society of Legard, or serious meaning in his obvious ad- 
 miration. Whether that melancholy, to which Lady Vargrave 
 had alluded in her correspondence with Lumley, were occa- 
 sioned by thoughts connected with Maltravers, or unacknowl- 
 edged recollections of Legard, it remains for the acute reader 
 himself to ascertain. 
 
 The Doltimores had been about three weeks in Paris ; and, 
 for a fortnight of that time, Legard had been their constant 
 guest, and half the inmate of their hotel ; when, on that night 
 which has been commemorated in our last book, Maltravers 
 suddenly once more beheld the face of Evelyn, and in the same 
 hour learned that she was free ; he quitted Valerie's box : with 
 a burning pulse and a beating heart, joy and surprise and hope 
 sparkling in his eyes, and brightening his whole aspect, he hast- 
 ened to Evelyn's side. 
 
 It was at this time Legard, who sate behind Miss Cameron, 
 unconscious of the approach of a rival, happened, by one of 
 those chances which occur in conversation, to mention the 
 name of Maltravers. He asked Evelyn if she had yet met him? 
 
 "What! is he then in Paris?" asked Evelyn quickly. "I 
 heard, indeed," she continued, " that he left Burleigh for Paris, 
 but imagined he had gone on to Italy." 
 
 " No, he is still here ; but he goes, I believe, little into the 
 society Lady Doltimore chiefly visits. Is he one of your favor- 
 ites, Miss Cameron ? " 
 
 There was a slight increase of color in Evelyn's beautiful 
 cheek, as she answered : 
 
 " Is it possible not to admire and be interested in one so 
 gifted ? " 
 
 " He has certainly noble and fine qualities," returned Legard; 
 " but I cannot feel at ease with him ; a coldness a hauteur 
 a measured distance of manner seem to forbid even esteem. 
 Yet / ought not to say so," he added, with a pang of self- 
 reproach. 
 
 " No, indeed, you ought not to say so," said Evelyn, shaking 
 her head with a pretty affectation of anger ; " for I know that 
 you pretend to like what I like, and admire what I admire ; 
 and I am an enthusiast in all that relates to Mr. Maltravers ! " 
 
 " I know that I would wish to see all things through Miss 
 Cameron's eyes," whispered Legard softly ; and this was the 
 rnost meaning speech he had ever yet made,
 
 254 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 Evelyn turned away, and seemed absorbed in the opera ; and 
 at that instant the door of the box opened, and Maltravers 
 entered. 
 
 In herjopen, undisguised, youthful delight at seeing him again, 
 Maltravers felt indeed " as if Paradise were opened in her face." 
 In his own agitated emotions, he scarcely noticed that Legard 
 had risen and resigned his seat to him : he availed himself of 
 the civility, greeted his old acquaintance with a smile and bow 
 and in a few minutes he was in deep converse with Evelyn. 
 
 Never had he so successfully exerted the singular, the master- 
 fascination that he could command at will the more powerful, 
 from its contrast to his ordinary coldness : in the very expression 
 of his eyes the very tone of his voice there was that in Mal- 
 travers, seen at his happier moments, which irresistibly inter- 
 ested and absorbed your attention : he could make you forget 
 everything but himself, and the rich, easy, yet earnest elo- 
 quence, which gave color to his language and melody to his 
 voice. In that hour of renewed intercourse with one who had 
 at first awakened, if not her heart, at least her imagination and 
 her deeper thoughts, certain it is that even Legard was not 
 missed. As she smiled and listened, Evelyn dreamt not of the 
 anguish she inflicted. Leaning against the back of the box, 
 Legard surveyed the absorbed attention of Evelyn, the adoring 
 eyes of Maltravers, with that utter and crushed wretchedness 
 which no passion but jealousy, and that only while it is yet a virgin 
 agony can bestow ! He had never before even dreamt of rivalry 
 in such a quarter ; but there was the ineffable instinct, which 
 lovers have, and which so seldom errs, that told him at once 
 that in Maltravers was the greatest obstacle: and peril his pas- 
 sion could encounter. He waited in hopes that Evelyn would 
 take the occasion to turn to him at least when the fourth act 
 closed. She did not ; and, unable to constain his emotions, 
 and reply to the small-talk of Lord Doltimore, he abruptly 
 quitted the box. 
 
 When the opera was over, Maltravers offered his arm to Eve- 
 lyn ; she accepted it, and then she looked round for Legard 
 He was gone.
 
 AtlCE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 BOOK VIII. 
 
 Q ZEV, ri fiov dpuaai fcpovfavoat irfpt ; 
 O Fate ! O Heaven ! what have ye then decreed ? SOPH. (Ed. Tyr. 
 
 * * 
 
 * * * 
 
 aKpordrav elaavafiaa' a 
 
 upovaev viv EIQ avaynav. Ibib. 874. 
 
 Insolent pride 
 
 * * 
 
 The topmost crag of the great precipice 
 Surmounts to rush to ruin. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 * " She is young, wise, fair, 
 In these to Nature she's immediate heir. 
 * * * * 
 
 * Honors best thrive, 
 When rather from our acts we them derive 
 Than our foregoers {"-All's Well that Ends Well. 
 
 LETTER FROM ERNEST MALTRAVERS TO THE HON. FREDERICK 
 CLEVELAND. 
 
 " EVELYN is free she is in Paris I have seen her I see 
 her daily. 
 
 " How true it is that we cannot make a philosophy of indif- 
 ference? The affections are stronger than all our reasonings. 
 We must take them into our alliance, or they will destroy all 
 our theories of self-government. Such fools of fate are we, 
 passing from system to system from scheme to scheme vain- 
 ly seeking to shut out passion and sorrow forgetting that they 
 are born within us and return to the soul as the seasons to 
 the earth ! Yet, years, many years ago when I first looked 
 gravely into my own nature and being here when I first awak- 
 ened to the dignity and solemn responsibilities of human life 
 I had resolved to curb and tame myself into a thing of rule and 
 measure. Bearing within me the wound scarred over but never 
 healed the consciousness of wrong to the heart that had leaned
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 upon me haunted by the mournful memory of my lost Alice 
 I shuddered at new affections bequeathing new griefs. Wrapped 
 in a haughty egotism, I wished not to extend my empire over a 
 wider circuit than my own intellect and passions. I turned 
 from the trader-covetousness of bliss, that would freight the 
 wealth of life upon barks exposed to every wind upon the seas 
 of Fate I was contented with the hope to pass life alone, hon- 
 ored, though unloved. Slowly and reluctantly I yielded to the 
 fascinations of Florence Lascelles. The hour that sealed the 
 compact between us was one of regret and alarm. In vain I 
 sought to deceive myself I felt that I did not love. And then 
 I imagined that Love was no longer in my nature that 1 had 
 exhausted its treasures before my time, and left my heart a 
 bankrupt. Not till the last not till that glorious soul broke 
 out in all its brightness, the nearer it approached the source to 
 which it has returned did I feel of what tenderness she was 
 worthy and I was capable. She died, and the world was dark- 
 ened ! Energy ambition my former aims and objects were 
 all sacrificed at her tomb. But amidst ruins and through the 
 darkness, my soul yet supported me ; I could no longer hope, 
 but I could endure. I was resolved that I would not be sub- 
 dued, and that the world should not hear me groan. Amidst 
 strange and far-distant scenes amidst hordes to whom my very 
 language was unknown in wastes and forests which the step of 
 civilized man, with his sorrows and his dreams, had never 
 trodden I wrestled with my soul, as the patriarch of old wrest- 
 led with the angel and the angel was at last the victor ! You 
 do not mistake me you know that it was not the death of 
 Florence alone that worked in me that awful revolution, but 
 with that death the last glory fled from the face of things, that 
 had seemed to me beautiful of old. Hers was a love that ac- 
 companied and dignified the schemes and aspirations of man- 
 hood a love that was an incarnation of ambition itself ; and 
 all the evils and disappointments that belong to ambition seemed 
 to crowd around my heart like vultures to a feast, allured and 
 invited by the dead. But this at length was over ; the bar- 
 barous state restored me to the civilized. I returned to my 
 equals, prepared no more to be an actor in the strife, but a calm 
 spectator of the turbulent arena. I once more laid my head 
 beneath the roof of my fathers ; and, if without any clear and 
 definite object, I at least hoped to find amidst ' my old heredi- 
 tary trees ' the charm of contemplation and repose. And 
 scarce in the first hours of my arrival had I indulged that 
 dream, when a fair face, a sweet voice, that had once before
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 257 
 
 left deep and unobliterated impressions on my heart, scattered 
 all my philosophy to the winds. I saw Evelyn ! and if ever 
 there was love at first sight, it was that which I felt for her : I 
 lived in her presence, and forgot the Future ! Or, rather, I was 
 with the Past in the bowers of my springtide of life and hope ! 
 It was an afterbirth of youth my love for that young heart ! 
 
 " It is, indeed, only in maturity that we know how lovely 
 were our earliest years ! What depth of wisdom in the old 
 Greek myth, that allotted Hebe as the prize to the God who 
 had been the Arch-Laborer of life ! and whom the satiety of 
 all that results from experience had made enamoured of all that 
 belongs to the Hopeful and the New ! 
 
 "This enchanting child this delightful Evelyn this ray of 
 undreamt-of sunshine smiled away all my palaces of ice ! I 
 loved, Cleveland I loved more ardently, more passionately, 
 more wildly than ever I did of old ! But, suddenly I learned 
 that she was affianced to another, and felt that it was not for 
 me to question, to seek the annulment of the bond. I had been 
 unworthy to love Evelyn, if I had not loved Honor more ! I 
 fled from her presence, honestly and resolutely ; I sought to 
 conquer a forbidden passion ; I believed that I had not won 
 affection in return ; I believed, from certain expressions that I 
 overheard Evelyn utter to another, that her heart as well as her 
 hand was given to Vargrave. I came hither ; you know how 
 sternly and resolutely I strove to eradicate a weakness that 
 seemed even without justification of hope ! If I suffered, I be- 
 trayed it not. Suddenly Evelyn appeared again before me ! 
 and suddenly I learned that she was free ! Oh, the rapture of 
 that moment! Could you have seen her bright face, her en- 
 chanting smile, when we met again ! Her ingenuous innocence 
 did not conceal her gladness at seeing me ! What hopes broke 
 upon me ! Despite the difference of our years, I think she 
 loves me ! that in that love I am about at last to learn what 
 blessings there are in life ! 
 
 " Evelyn has the simplicity, the tenderness, of Alice, with the 
 refinement and culture of Florence herself ; not the genius 
 not the daring spirit not the almost fearful brilliancy of that 
 ill-fated being but with a taste as true to the Beautiful, with a 
 soul as sensitive to the Sublime ! In Evelyn's presence I feel 
 a sense of peace, of security, of home ! Happy ! thrice happy ! 
 he who will take her to his breast ! Of late she has assumed 
 a new charm in my eyes a certain pensiveness and abstraction 
 have succeeded to her wonted gayety. Ah ! Love is pensive ; 
 is it not, Cleveland ? How often I ask myself that question !
 
 258 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 And yet, amidst all my hopes, there are hours when I tremble 
 and despond ! How can that innocent and joyous spirit sym- 
 pathize with all that mine has endured and known ? How, 
 even though her imagination be dazzled by some prestige around 
 my name, how can I believe that I have awakened her heart to 
 that deep and real love of which it is capable, and which youth 
 excites in youth ? When we meet at her home, or amidst the 
 quiet yet brilliant society which is gathered round Madame de 
 Ventadour or the De Montaignes, with whom she is an especial 
 favorite when we converse when I sit by her, and her soft 
 eyes meet mine I feel not the disparity of years ; my heart 
 speaks to her, and that is youthful still ! But in the more gay 
 and crowded haunts to which her presence allures me, when I 
 see that fairy form surrounded by those who have not outlived 
 the pleasures that so naturally dazzle and captivate her then, 
 indeed, I feel that my tastes, my habits, my pursuits, belong to 
 another season of life, and ask myself anxiously if my nature 
 and my years are those that can make her happy ? Then, in- 
 deed, I recognize the wide interval that time and trial place 
 between one whom the world has wearied, and one for whom 
 the world is new. If she should discover hereafter that youth 
 should love only youth, my bitterest anguish would be that of 
 remorse ! I know how deeply I love, by knowing how immeas- 
 urably dearer her happiness is than my own ! I will wait, 
 then, yet awhile I will examine I will watch well that I do not 
 deceive myself. As yet, I think I have no rivals whom I heed 
 fear ; surrounded as she is by the youngest and the gayest, she 
 still turns with evident pleasure to me, whom she calls her 
 friend. She will forego even the amusements she most loves, 
 for society in which we can converse more at ease. You re- 
 member, for instance, young Legard ? he is here ; and before 
 I met Evelyn, was much at Lady Doltimore's house. I cannot 
 be blind to his superior advantages of youth and person ; and 
 there is something striking and prepossessing in the gentle yet 
 manly frankness of his manner, and yet no fear of his rival- 
 ship ever haunts me. True, that of late he has been little in 
 Evelyn's society; nor do I think, in the frivolity of his pursuits, 
 he can have educated his mind to appreciate Evelyn, or be pos- 
 sessed of those qualities which would render him worthy of her. 
 But there is something good in the young man, despite his 
 foibles something that wins upon me ; and you will smile to 
 learn, that he has even surprised from me usually so reserved 
 on such matters the confession of my attachment and hopes ! 
 Evelyn often talks to me of her mother, and describes her in
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 2g<) 
 
 colors so glowing, that I feel the greatest interest in one who has 
 helped to form so beautiful and pure a mind. Can you learn 
 who Lady Vargrave was? there is evidently some mystery 
 thrown over her birth and connections; and, from what I can 
 hear, this arises from their lowliness. You know that, though 
 I have been accused of family pride, it is a pride of a peculiar 
 sort. I am proud, not of the length of a mouldering pedigree, 
 but of some historical quarterings in my escutcheon of some 
 blood of scholars and of heroes that rolls in my veins; it is the 
 same kind of pride that an Englishman may feel in belonging 
 to a country that has produced Shakespeare and Bacon. I 
 have never, I hope, felt the vulgar pride that disdains want of 
 birth in others ; and I care not three straws whether my wife 
 be descended from a king or a peasant. It is myself, and not 
 my connections, who alone can disgrace my lineage ; therefore, 
 however humble Lady Vargrave's parentage, do not scruple to 
 inform me, should you learn any intelligence that bears upon it. 
 
 " I had a conversation last night with Evelyn, that delighted 
 me. By some accident we spoke of Lord Vargrave ; and she 
 told me, with an enchanting candor, of the position in which 
 she stood with him, and the conscientious and noble scruples she 
 felt as to the enjoyment of a fortune, which her benefactor and 
 stepfather had evidently intended to be shared with his nearest 
 relative. In these scruples I cordially concurred ; and if I 
 marry Evelyn, my first cara will be to carry them into effect 
 by securing to Vargrave, as far as the law may permit, the 
 larger part of the income I should like to say all at least till 
 Evelyn's children would have the right to claim it ; a right not 
 to be enforced during her own, and, therefore, probably not 
 during Vargrave's life. I own that this would be no sacrifice, 
 for I am proud enough to recoil from the thought of being 
 indebted for fortune to the woman I love. It was that kind 
 of pride which gave coldness and restraint to my regard 
 for Florence ; and for the rest, my own property (much 
 increased by the simplicity of my habits of life for the last 
 few years) will suffice for all Evelyn or myself could re- 
 quire. Ah ! madman, that I am ! I calculate already on 
 marriage, even while I have so much cause for anxiety as to 
 love. But my heart beats my heart has grown a dial, that 
 keeps the account of time ; by its movements I calculate the 
 moments in an hour I shall see her ! 
 
 "Oh! never! never! in my wildest and earliest visions, 
 could I have fancied that I should love as I love now ! Adieu, 
 my oldest and kindest friend ! If I am happy at last, it will be
 
 2<JO ALICE I OR, fHE MYSTERIES. 
 
 something to feel that I shall have satisfied your expectations 
 of my youth. 
 
 " Affectionately yours, 
 
 "E. MALTRAVERS." 
 
 " Rue de , Paris, 
 
 "January , 18 ." 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 * * * " In her youth 
 
 There is a prone and speechless dialect 
 
 Such as moves men." Measure for Measure. 
 
 " Abbess. Haply in private 
 Adriana. And in assemblies too." Comedy of Errors. 
 
 IT was true, as Maltravers had stated, that Legard had of late 
 been little at Lady Doltimore's, or in the same society as Eve- 
 lyn. With the vehemence of an ardent and passionate nature, 
 he yielded to the jealous rage and grief that devoured him. He 
 saw too clearly, and from the first, that Maltravers adored Eve- 
 lyn ; and, in her familiar kindness of manner towards him, in 
 the unlimited veneration in which she appeared to hold his gifts 
 and qualities, he thought that that love might become recipro- 
 cal. He became gloomy and morose ; he shunned Evelyn 
 he forbore to enter into the lists against his rival. Perhaps the 
 intellectual superiority of Maltravers the extraordinary con- 
 versational brilliancy that he could display when he pleased 
 
 the commanding dignity of his manners even the matured 
 authority of his reputation and years, might have served to awe 
 the hopes, as well as to wound the vanity, of a man accustomed 
 himself to be the oracle of a circle. These might have strongly 
 influenced Legard in withdrawing himself from Evelyn's society; 
 but there was one circumstance, connected with motives much 
 more generous, that mainly determined his conduct. It hap- 
 pened that Maltravers, shortly after his first interview with Eve- 
 lyn, was riding alone one day, in the more sequestered part of 
 the Bois de Boulogne, when he encountered Legard, also alone, 
 and on horseback. The latter, on succeeding to his uncle's for- 
 tune, had taken care to repay his debt to Maltravers ; he had 
 
 jdone so in a short, but feeling and grateful letter, which had 
 been forwarded to Maltravers at Paris, and which pleased and 
 touched him. Since that time he had taken a liking to the young 
 man, and now, meeting him at Paris, he sought, to a certain
 
 AtiCE ; OR, iE MYSTERIES. 26 1 
 
 extent, Legard's more intimate acquaintance. Maltravers was 
 in that happy mood, when we are inclined to be friends with 
 all men. It is true, however, that, though unknown to himself, 
 that pride of bearing, which often gave to the very virtues of 
 Maltravers an unamiable aspect, occasionally irritated one who 
 felt he had incurred to him an obligation of honor and of life, never 
 to be effaced ; it made the sense of this obligation more intolera- 
 ble to Legard ; it made him more desirous to acquit himself of 
 the charge. But, on this day, there was so much cordiality in 
 the greeting of Maltravers, and he pressed Legard in so friendly 
 a manner to join him in his ride, that the young man's heart was 
 softened, and they rode together, conversing familiarly on such 
 topics as were in common between them. At last the conver- 
 sation fell on Lord and Lady Doltimore ; and thence Maltravers, 
 whose soul was full of one thought, turned it indirectly towards 
 Evelyn. 
 
 "Did you ever see Lady Vargrave?" 
 
 "Never," replied Legard, looking another way ; "but Lady 
 Doltimore says she is as beautiful as Evelyn herself, if that be 
 possible ; and still so young in form and countenance, that she 
 looks rather like her sister than her mother ! " 
 
 " How I should like to know her I " said Maltravers, with sud- 
 den energy. 
 
 Legard changed the subject. He spoke of the Carnival of 
 balls of masquerades of operas of reigning beauties ! 
 
 "Ah ! " said Maltravers, with a half sigh, " yours is the age 
 for those dazzling pleasures; to me they are 'the twice-told 
 tale.' " 
 
 Maltravers meant it not, but this remark chafed Legard. He 
 thought it conveyed a sarcasm on the childishness of his own 
 mind, or the levity of his pursuits : his color mounted, as he 
 replied : 
 
 " It is not, I fear, the slight difference of years between us, it 
 is the difference of intellect you would insinuate ; but you should 
 remember all men have not your resources ; all men cannot pre- 
 tend to genius ! " 
 
 "My dear Legard," said Maltravers kindly, "do not fancy 
 that I could have designed an insinuation half so presumptuous 
 and impertinent. Believe me, I envy you, sincerely and sadly, 
 all those faculties of enjoyment which I have worn away. Oh, 
 how I envy you ! for, were they still mine, then then, indeed, 
 I might hope to mould myself into greater congeniality with the 
 beautiful and the young ! " 
 
 Maltravers paused a moment, and resumed with a grave smile;
 
 2<>2 AUCE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 "I trust, Legard, that you will be wiser than I have been ; that 
 you will gather your roses while it is yet May : and that you will 
 not live to thirty-six, pining for happiness and a home, a dis- 
 appointed and desolate man ; till, when your ideal is at last found, 
 you shrink back appalled, to discover that you have lost none of 
 the tendencies to love, but many of the graces by which love is 
 to be allured !" 
 
 There was so much serious and earnest feeling in these words, 
 that they went home at once to Legard's sympathies. He felt 
 irresistibly impelled to learn the worst. 
 
 " Maltravers ! " said he, in a hurried tone, " it would be an idle 
 compliment to say that you are not likely to love in vain : per 
 haps it is indelicate in me to apply a general remark ; and yet 
 yet I cannot but fancy that I have discovered your secret, and 
 that you are not insensible to the charms of Miss Cameron !" 
 
 " Legard ! " said Maltravers, and so strong was his fervent 
 attachment to Evelyn, that it swept away all his natural cold- 
 ness and reserve "I tell you plainly and frankly, that in my 
 love for Evelyn Cameron lie the last hopes I have in life. I 
 have no thought, no ambition, no sentiment that is not vowed 
 to her. If my love should be unreturned, I may strive to en- 
 dure the blow I may mix with the world I may seem to oc- 
 cupy myself in the aims of others but my heart will be broken! 
 Let us talk of this no more you have surprised my secret, 
 though it must have betrayed itself. Learn from me how preter- 
 naturally strong how generally fatal is love deferred to that 
 day when in the stern growth of all the feelings love writes 
 itself on granite ! " 
 
 Maltravers, as if impatient of his own weakness, put spurs to 
 his horse, and they rode on rapidly for some time without speak- 
 ing. 
 
 That silence was employed by Legard in meditating over all 
 he had heard and witnessed in recalling all that he owed to 
 Maltravers ; and before that silence was broken the young man 
 nobly resolved not even to attempt, not even to hope, a rivalry 
 with Maltravers ; to forego all the expectations he had so fondly 
 nursed to absent himself from the company of Evelyn to 
 requite faithfully and firmly that act of generosity to which he 
 owed the preservation of his life the redemption of his honor! 
 
 Agreeably to this determination, he abstained from visiting 
 those haunts in which Evelyn shone ; and if accident brought 
 them together, his manner was embarrassed and abrupt. She 
 wondered at last, perhaps, she resented it may be that she 
 grieved ; for certain it is that Maltravers was right in thinking
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 263 
 
 that her manner had lost the gayety that distinguished it at 
 Merton Rectory. But still it may be doubted whether Evelyn 
 had seen enough of Legard, and whether her fancy and romance 
 were still sufficiently free from the magical influences of the 
 genius that called them forth in the eloquent homage of Mal- 
 travers, to trace, herself, to any causes connected with her 
 younger lover the listless melancholy that crept over her. In 
 very young women new alike to the world and the nokvvledge 
 of themselves many vague and undefined feelings herald the 
 dawn of Love ; shade after shade and light upon light suc- 
 ceeds, before the sun breaks forth, and the earth awakens to his 
 presence. 
 
 It was one evening that Legard had suffered himself to be 
 led into a party at the ambassador's, and there, as he stood by 
 the door, he saw, at a little distance, Maltravers conversing 
 with Evelyn. Again he writhed beneath the tortures of his 
 jealous anguish ; and there, as he gazed and suffered, he resolved 
 (as Maltravers had done before him) to fly from the place that 
 had a little while ago seemed to him Elysium ! He would quit 
 Paris, he would travel he would not see Evelyn again till the 
 irrevocable barrier was passed, and she was the wife of Mal- 
 travers ! In the first heat of this determination, he turned 
 towards some young men standing near him, one of whom 
 was about to visit Vienna. He gayly proposed to join him a 
 proposal readily accepted, and began conversing on the journey, 
 the city, its splendid and proud society, with all that cruel 
 exhilaration which the forced spirits of a stricken heart can 
 alone display, when Evelyn (whose conference with Maltravers 
 was ended) passed close by him. She was leaning on Lady 
 Doltimore's arm, and the admiring murmur of his companions 
 caused Legard to turn suddenly round. 
 
 " You are not dancing to-night, Colonel Legard," said Caroline, 
 glancing towards Evelyn. "The more the season for balls 
 advances, the more indolent you become." 
 
 Legard muttered a confused reply, one-half of which seemed 
 petulant, while the other half was inaudible. 
 
 " Not so indolent as you suppose," said his friend : "Legard 
 meditates an excursion sufficient, I hope, to redeem his character 
 in your eyes. It is a long journey, and, what is worse, a very 
 cold journey, to Vienna." 
 
 " Vienna ! do you think of going to Vienna ? " cried Caroline. 
 
 "Yes," said Legard. "I hate Paris, any place better than 
 this odious city ! " and he moved away. 
 
 Evelyn's eyes followed him sadly and gravely. She remained
 
 264 ALICE J OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 by Lady Doltimore's side, abstracted and silent for several 
 minutes. 
 
 Meanwhile Caroline, turning to Lord Devonport (the friend 
 who had proposed the Viennese excursion), said, "It is cruel 
 in you to go to Vienna, it is doubly cruel to rob Lord Dolti- 
 more of his best friend, and Paris of its best waltzer." 
 
 " Oh, it is a voluntary offer of Legard's, Lady Doltimore, 
 believe me, I have used no persuasive arts. But the fact is, that 
 we have been talking of a fair widow, the beauty of Austria, 
 and as proud and as unassailable as Ehrenbreitstein itself. 
 Legard's vanity is piqued, and so as a professed lady-killer 
 he intends to see what can be effected by the handsomest 
 Englishman of his time." 
 
 Caroline laughed, and new claimants on her notice suc- 
 ceeded to Lord Devonport. It was not till the ladies were 
 waiting their carriage in the shawl-room, that Lady Doltimore 
 noticed the paleness and thoughtful brow of Evelyn. 
 
 "Are you fatigued or unwell, dear?" she said. 
 
 "No," answered Evelyn, forcing a smile, and at that moment 
 they were joined by Maltravers, with the intelligence that it 
 would be some minutes before the carriage could draw up. 
 Caroline amused herself, in the interval, by shrewd criticisms 
 on the dresses and characters of her various friends. Caroline 
 had grown an amazing prude in her judgment of others ! 
 
 "What a turban! prudent for Mrs. A to wear bright 
 
 red : it puts out her face, as the sun puts out the fire. Mr. 
 Maltravers, do observe Lady B with that very young gentle- 
 man. After all her experience in angling, it is odd that she 
 should still only throw in for small fish. Pray, why is the 
 
 marriage between Lady C D and Mr. F broken off ? 
 
 Is it true that he is so much in debt ? and is so very very 
 profligate? They say she is heart-broken." 
 
 "Really, Lady Doltimore," said Maltravers, smiling, " I am 
 
 but a bad scandalmonger. But poor F is not, I believe, 
 
 much worse than others. How do we know whose fault it is 
 when a marriage is broken off ? Lady C D heart- 
 broken ! what an idea ! Nowadays there is never any affection 
 in compacts of that sort; and the chain that binds the frivolous 
 nature is but a gossamer thread. Fine gentlemen and fine 
 ladies ! their loves and their marriages 
 
 " ' May flourish and may fade 
 A breath may make them, as a breath has made. 
 
 Never believe that a heart long accustomed to beat only in good 
 society can be broken it is rarely even touched ! "
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 265 
 
 Evelyn listened attentively, and seemed struck. She sighed, 
 and said in a very low voice, as to herself, "It is true how 
 could I think otherwise?" 
 
 For the next few days Evelyn was unwell, and did not quit 
 her room. Maltravers was in despair. The flowers the 
 books the music he sent his anxious inquiries, his earnest 
 and respectful notes touched with that ineffable charm which 
 Heart and Intellect breathe into the most trifling coinage from 
 their mint all affected Evelyn sensibly ; perhaps she con- 
 trasted them with Legard's indifference and apparent caprice, 
 perhaps in that contrast, Maltravers gained more than by all 
 his brilliant qualities. Meanwhile, without visit without mes- 
 sage without farewell unconscious, it is true, of Evelyn's 
 illness, Legard departed for Vienna. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 " A pleasing land * * * 
 Of dreams that wave before the half-shut eye, 
 And of gay castles in the clouds that pass, 
 For ever flashing round a summer sky." THOMSON. 
 
 DAILY hourly increased the influence of Evelyn over Mal- 
 travers. Oh, what a dupe is a man's pride ! what a fool his 
 wisdom ! That a girl a mere child, one who scarce knew 
 her own heart beautiful as it was, whose deeper feelings still 
 lay coiled up in their sweet buds, that she should thus master 
 this proud, wise man ! But as thou our universal teacher 
 as thou, O Shakespeare ! haply speaking from the hints of thine 
 own experience hast declared 
 
 " None are so truly caught, when they are catch'd, 
 As wit turned fool ; folly in wisdom hatched, 
 Hath wisdom's warrant." 
 
 Still, methinks that, in that surpassing and dangerously in- 
 dulged affection which levelled thee, Maltravers, with the weak- 
 est, which overturned all thy fine philosophy of Stoicism, and 
 made thee the veriest slave of the "Rose-Garden," still, Mal- 
 travers, thou mightst, at least, have seen that thou hadst lost 
 for ever all right to pride, all privilege to disdain the herd ! 
 But thou wert proud of thine own infirmity ! And far sharper 
 must be that lesson which can teach thee that Pride thine 
 angel is ever pre-doomed to fall ! 
 
 What a mistake to suppose that the passions are strongest in
 
 266 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 youth ! The passions are not stronger, but the control over 
 them is weaker. They are most easily excited they are more 
 violent and more apparent, but they have less energy, less 
 durability, less intense and concentrated power, than in ma- 
 turer life. In youth, passion succeeds to passion, J5nd one 
 breaks upon the other, as waves upon a rock, till the heart frets 
 itself to repose. In manhood, the great deep flows on, more 
 calm but more profound, its serenity is the proof of the might 
 and terror of its course were the wind to blow and the storm 
 to rise. 
 
 A young man's ambition is but vanity, it has no definite 
 aim, it plays with a thousand toys. As with one passion, so 
 with the rest. In youth, love is ever on the wing, but, like the 
 birds in April, it hath not yet built its nest. With so long a 
 career of summer and hope before it, the disappointment of to- 
 day is succeeded by the novelty of to-morrow, and the sun that 
 advances to the noon but dries up its fervent tears. But when 
 we have arrived at that epoch of life, when, if the light fail us, 
 if the last rose wither, we feel that the loss cannot be retrieved, 
 and that the frost and the darkness are at hand, Love becomes 
 to us a treasure that we watch over and hoard with a miser's 
 care. Our youngest-born affection is our darling and our idol, 
 the fondest pledge of the Past, the most cherished of our hopes 
 for the Future. A certain melancholy that mingles with our 
 joy at the possession only enhances its charm. We feel our- 
 selves so dependent on it for all that is yet to come. Our other 
 barks our gay galleys of pleasure our stately argosies of 
 pride have been swallowed up by the remorseless wave. On 
 this last vessel we freight our all to its frail tenement we com- 
 mit ourselves. The star that guides it is our guide, and in the 
 tempest that menaces we behold our own doom ! 
 
 Still Maltravers shrank from the confession that trembled on 
 his lips still he adhered to the course he had prescribed to 
 himself. If ever (as he had implied in his letter to Cleveland) 
 if ever Evelyn should discover they were not suited to each 
 other ! The possibility of such an affliction impressed his 
 judgment the dread of it chilled his heart ! With all his pride, 
 there was a certain humility in Maltravers that was perhaps 
 one cause of his reserve. He knew what a beautiful possession 
 is youth its sanguine hopes its elastic spirit its inexhaustible 
 resources ! What to the eyes of woman were the acquisitions 
 which manhood had brought him ? the vast, but the sad ex- 
 perience the arid wisdom the philosophy based on disap- 
 pointment ? He might be loved but for the vain glitter of name
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 267 
 
 and reputation, and love might vanish as custom dimmed the 
 illusion. Men of strong affections are jealous of their own 
 genius. They know how separate a thing from the household 
 character genius often is, they fear lest they should be loved 
 for a quality, not for themselves. 
 
 Thus communed he with himself thus, as the path had 
 become clear to his hopes, did new fears arise ; and thus did 
 love bring, as it ever does, in its burning wake 
 
 " The pang, the agony, the doubt ! " 
 
 Maltravers then confirmed himself in the resolution he had 
 formed : he would cautiously examine Evelyn and himself he 
 would weigh in the balance every straw that the wind should 
 turn up he would not aspire to the treasure, unless he could 
 feel secure that the coffer could preserve the gem. This was 
 not only a prudent, it was a just and a generous determination. 
 It was one which we all ought to form if the fervor of our pas- 
 sions will permit us. We have no right to sacrifice years to 
 moments, and to melt the pearl that has no price in a single 
 draught ! But can Maltravers adhere to his wise precautions? 
 The truth must be spoken it was perhaps the first time in his 
 life that Maltravers had been really in love. 
 
 As the reader will remember, he had not been in love with 
 the haughty Florence ; admiration, gratitude the affection of 
 the head, not that of the feelings, had been the links that 
 bound him to the enthusiastic correspondent revealed in the 
 gifted beauty, and the gloomy circumstances connected with 
 her ?arly fate had left deep furrows in his memory. Time 
 and vicissitude had effaced the wounds, and the Light of the 
 Beautiful dawned once more in the face of Evelyn. Valerie 
 de Ventadour had been but the fancy of a roving breast. Alice, 
 the sweet Alice ! her, indeed, in the first flower of youth, he 
 had loved with a boy's romance. He had loved her deeply, 
 fondly but perhaps he had never been in love with her ; he 
 had mourned her loss for years insensibly to himself her loss 
 had altered his character and cast a melancholy gloom over all 
 the colors of his life. But she whose range of ideas was so 
 confined she who had but broke into knowledge, as the chrys- 
 alis into the butterfly how much in that prodigal and gifted 
 nature, bounding onwards into the broad plains of life, must 
 the peasant girl have failed to fill ! They had had nothing in 
 common, but their youth and their love. It was a dream that 
 had hovered over the poet-boy in the morning twilight a 
 dream he had often wished to recall a dream that had haunted
 
 268 ALICE ; Ok, HE MYSTERIES. 
 
 him in the noon-day, but had, as all boyish visions ever have 
 done, left the heart unexhausted, and the passions unconsumed ! 
 Years long years since then had rolled away, and yet per- 
 haps one unconscious attraction that drew Maltravers so sud- 
 denly towards Evelyn was a something indistinct and undefin- 
 able that reminded him of Alice. There was no similarity in 
 their features; but at times a tone in Evelyn's voice a "trick 
 of the manner" an air a gesture recalled him, over the 
 gulfs of Time, to Poetry, and Hope, and Alice. 
 
 In the youth of each the absent and the present one there 
 was resemblance in their simplicity, their grace. Perhaps, 
 Alice, of the two, had in her nature more real depth, more ar- 
 dor of feeling, more sublimity of sentiment, than Evelyn. But 
 in her primitive ignorance, half her noblest qualities were em- 
 bedded and unknown. And Evelyn his equal in rank 
 Evelyn, well cultivated Evelyn, so long courted so deeply 
 studied had such advantages over the poor peasant girl ! Still 
 the poor peasant girl often seemed to smile on him from that 
 fair face. And in Evelyn he half loved Alice again ! 
 
 So these two persons now met daily ; their intercourse was 
 even more familiar than before their several minds grew hourly 
 more developed and transparent to each other. But of love, 
 Maltravers still forbore to speak ; they were friends, no 
 more ; such friends as the disparity of their years and their ex- 
 perience might warrant them to be. And in that young and 
 innocent nature with its rectitude, its enthusiasm, and its pious 
 and cheerful tendencies Maltravers found freshness in the 
 desert, as the camel-driver lingering at the well. Insensibly his 
 heart warmed again to his kind. And as the harp of David to 
 the ear of Saul, was the soft voice that lulled remembrance and 
 awakened hope in the lonely man. 
 
 Meanwhile, what was the effect that the presence, the atten- 
 tions, of Maltravers produced on Evelyn ! Perhaps it was of 
 that kind which most flatters us and most deceives. She never 
 dreamed of comparing him with others. To her thoughts he 
 stood aloof and alone from all his kind. It may seem a para- 
 dox, but it might be that she admired and venerated him almost 
 too much for love. Still her pleasure in his society was so evi- 
 dent and unequivocal, her deference to his opinion so marked, 
 she sympathized in so many of his objects she had so much 
 blindness or forbearance for his faults (and he never sought to 
 mask them), that the most diffident of men might have drawn 
 from so many symptoms hopes the most auspicious. Since the 
 departure of Legard, the gayeties of Paris lost their charm for
 
 ALICE J OR, THE MYSTERIES. 269 
 
 Evelyn, and more than ever she could appreciate the society of 
 her friend. He thus gradually lost his earlier fears of her form- 
 ing too keen an attachment to the great world ; and as noth- 
 ing could be more apparent than Evelyn's indifference to the 
 crowd of flatterers and suitors that hovered round her, Maltra- 
 vers no longer dreaded a rival. He began to feel assured that 
 they had both gone through the ordeal ; and that he might ask 
 for love without a doubt of its immutability and faith. At this 
 period, they were both invited, with the Doltimores, to spend a 
 few days at the villa of De Montaigne, near St. Cloud. And 
 there it was that Maltravers determined to know his fate ! 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 " Chaos of Thought and Passion all confused." POPE. 
 
 IT is to the contemplation of a very different scene that the 
 course of our story now conducts us. 
 
 Between St. Cloud and Versailles there was at that time per- 
 haps there still is a lone and melancholy house, appropriated 
 to the insane. Melancholy not from its site, but the purpose 
 to which it is devoted. Placed on an eminence, the windows 
 of the mansion command beyond the gloomy walls that gird 
 the garden ground one of those enchanting prospects which 
 win for France her title to La Belle. There, the glorious Seine 
 is seen in the distance, broad and winding through the varied 
 plains, and beside the gleaming villages and villas. There, too, 
 beneath the clear blue sky of France, the forest-lands of Ver- 
 sailles and St. Germain's stretch in dark luxuriance around and 
 afar. There you may see sleeping on the verge of the land- 
 scape the mighty city crowned with the thousand spires from 
 which, proud above the rest, rises the eyrie of Napoleon's eagle, 
 the pinnacle of Notre Dame. 
 
 Remote, sequestered, the place still commands the survey of 
 the turbulent world below. And Madness gazes upon pros- 
 pects that might well charm the thoughtful eyes of Imagination 
 or of Wisdom ! In one of the rooms of this house sateCastruc- 
 cio Cesarini. The apartment was furnished even with ele- 
 gance; a variety of books strewed the tables nothing for com- 
 fort or for solace, that the care and providence of affection 
 could dictate, was omitted. Cesarini was alone : leaning his 
 c'heek upon his hand, he gazed on the beautiful and tranquil 
 view we have described. "And am I never to set a free foot
 
 270 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 on that soil again ? " he muttered indignantly, as he broke from 
 his revery. 
 
 The door opened, and the keeper of the sad abode (a surgeon 
 of humanity and eminence) entered, followed by De Montaigne. 
 Cesarini turned round and scowled upon the latter ; the sur- 
 geon, after a few words of salutation, withdrew to a corner of 
 the room, and appeared absorbed in a book. De Montaigne 
 approached his brother-in-law " I have brought you some 
 poems just published at Milan, my dear Castruccio they will 
 please you." 
 
 " Give me my liberty ! " cried Cesarini, clenching his hands. 
 " Why am I to be detained here ? Why are my nights to be 
 broken by the groans of maniacs, and my days devoured in a 
 solitude that loathes the aspect of things around me ? Am / 
 mad? You know I am not ! It is an old trick to say that poets 
 are mad you mistake our agonies for insanity. See, I am 
 calm I can reason.: give me any test of sound mind no mat- 
 ter how rigid I will pass it. I am not mad I swear I am 
 not ! " 
 
 "'No, my dear Castruccio," said De Montaigne, soothingly, 
 " but you are still unwell you still have fever, when next I 
 see you perhaps you may be recovered sufficiently to dismiss the 
 doctor and change the air. Meanwhile, is there anything you 
 would have added or altered ? " 
 
 Cesarini had listened to this speech with a mocking sarcasm 
 on his lip, but an expression of such hopeless wretchedness in 
 his eyes, as they alone can comprehend who have witnessed 
 madness in its lucid intervals. He sunk down, and his head 
 drooped gloomily on his breast. " No," said he ; "I want 
 nothing but free air or death no matter which." 
 
 De Montaigne stayed some time with the unhappy man, and 
 sought to soothe him ; but it was in vain. Yet, when he rose 
 to depart, Cesarini started up, and fixing on him his large wist- 
 ful eyes, exclaimed : " Ah ! do not leave me yet. It is so 
 dreadful to be alone with the dead and the worse than dead ! " 
 
 The Frenchman turned aside to wipe his eyes, and stifle the 
 rising at his heart ; and again he sate, and again he sought to 
 soothe. At length Cesarini, seemingly more calm, gave him 
 leave to depart. " Go," said he, " go tell Teresa I am better 
 that I love her tenderly that I shall live to tell her children 
 not to be poets. Stay ; you asked if there was aught I wished 
 changed yes this room ; it is too still : I hear my own pulse 
 beat so loudly in the silence it is horrible ! there is a room 
 below, by the window of which there is a tree, and the wind
 
 ALICE : OR, THE MYSTERIES. 271 
 
 rocks its boughs to and fro, and it sighs and groans like a liv- 
 ing thing ; it will be pleasant to look at that tree, and see the 
 birds come home to it, yet that tree is wintry and blasted too ! 
 it will be pleasant to hear it fret and chafe in the stormy 
 nights : it will be a friend to me, that old tree! let me have 
 that room. Nay, look not at each other it is not so high as 
 this but the window is barred I cannot escape ! " And 
 Cesarini smiled. 
 
 " Certainly," said the surgeon, " if you prefer that room ; but 
 it has not so fine a view." 
 
 " 1 hate the view of the world that has cast me off when 
 may I change ? " 
 
 " This very evening." 
 
 "Thank you it will be a great revolution in my life." 
 
 And Cesarini's eyes brightened, and he looked happy. De 
 Montaigne, thoroughly unmanned, tore himself away. 
 
 The promise was kept, and Cesarini was transferred that 
 night to the chamber he had selected. 
 
 As soon as it was deep night the last visit of the keeper 
 paid and, save now and then, by some sharp cry in the more 
 distant quarter of the house, all was still, Cesarini rose from his 
 bed ; a partial light came from the stars that streamed through 
 the frosty and keen air, and cast a sickly gleam through the 
 heavy bars of the casement. It was then that Cesarini drew 
 from under his pillow a long-cherished and carefully concealed 
 treasure. Oh ! with what rapture had he first possessed him- 
 self of it ! with what anxiety had it been watched and guarded! 
 how many cunning stratagems and profound inventions had 
 gone towards the baffling the jealous search of the keeper and 
 his myrmidons ! The abandoned and wandering mother never 
 clasped her child more fondly to her bosom, nor ga/ed upon its 
 features with more passionate visions for the future. And what 
 had so enchanted the poor prisoner so deluded the poor ma- 
 niac ? A large nail ! He had found it accidentally in the gar- 
 den he had hoarded it for weeks it had inspired him with the 
 hope of liberty. Often, in the days far gone, he had read of 
 the wonders that had been effected of the stones removed and 
 the bars filed, by the selfsame kind of implement. He remem- 
 bered that the most celebrated of those bold unfortunates who 
 live a life against law had said, " Choose my prison, and give 
 me but a rusty nail, and I laugh at your gaolers and your walls!" 
 He crept to the window he examined his relic by the dim 
 starlight he kissed it passionately, and the tears stood in his 
 eyes,
 
 272 ALICE; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 Ah ! who shall determine the worth of things ? No king that 
 night so prized his crown, as the madman prized that rusty inch 
 of wire the proper prey of the rubbish-cart and dunghill. 
 Little didst thou think, old blacksmith, when thou drewest the 
 dull metal from the fire, of what precious price it was to be- 
 come ! 
 
 Cesarini, with the astuteness of his malady, had long marked 
 out this chamber for the scene of his operations ; he had ob- 
 served that the framework in which the bars were set seemed 
 old and worm-eaten that the window was but a few feet from 
 the ground that the noise made in the winter nights by the 
 sighing branches of the old tree without would deaden the 
 sound of the lone workman. Now, then, his hopes were to be 
 crowned. Poor Fool ! and even thou hast hope still ! All that 
 night he toiled and toiled, and sought to work his iron into a 
 file ; now he tried the bars, and now the framework. Alas ! he 
 had not learned the skill in such tools, possessed by his re- 
 nowned model and inspirer ; the flesh was worn from his fingers 
 the cold drops stood on his brow and morning surprised 
 him, advanced not a hair's-breadth in his labor. 
 
 He crept back to bed, and again hid the useless implement, 
 and at last he slept. 
 
 And, night after night, the same task the same results ! But 
 at length, one day, when Cesarini returned from his moody walk 
 in the gardens (fl/easure-grounds they were called by the owner), 
 he found better workmen than he at the window ; they were re- 
 pairing the framework, they were strengthening the bars all 
 hope was now gone ! The unfortunate said nothing ; too cun- 
 ning to show his despair he eyed them silently, and cursed 
 them ; but the old tree was left still, and that was something 
 company and music. 
 
 A day or two after this barbarous counterplot, Cesarini was 
 walking in the gardens, towards the latter part of the afternoon 
 (just when, in the short days, the darkness begins to steal apace 
 over the chill and westering sun), when he was accosted by a 
 fellow-captive, who had often before sought his acquaintance ; 
 for they try to have friends those poor people ! Even we do 
 the same ; though we say we are not mad ! This man had been 
 a warrior had served with Napoleon had received honors 
 and ribands might, for aught we know, have dreamed of being 
 a marshal ! But the demon smote him in the hour of his pride. 
 It was his disease to fancy himself a Monarch. He believed, 
 for he forgot chronology, that he was at once the Iron Mask, 
 and the true sovereign of France and Navarre, confined in state
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 273 
 
 by the usurpers of his crown. On other points he was gener- 
 ally sane ; a tall, strong man, with fierce features, and stern 
 lines, wherein could be read many a bloody tale of violence and 
 wrong of lawless passions of terrible excesses to which 
 madness might be at once the consummation and the curse. 
 This man had taken a fancy to Cesarini ; and in some hours 
 Cesarini had shunned him less than others ; for they could alike 
 rail against all living things. The lunatic approached Cesarini 
 with an air of dignity and condescension : 
 
 " It is a cold night, sir, and there will be no moon. Has it 
 never occurred to you that the winter is the season for escape ?" 
 
 Cesarini started the ex-officer continued : 
 
 " Ay, I see by your manner that you, too, chafe at our igno- 
 minious confinement. I think that together we might brave 
 the worst. You probably are confined on some state offence. 
 I give you full pardon, if you assist me. For myself, I have 
 but to appear in my capital old Louis le Grand must be near 
 his last hour." 
 
 " This madman my best companion ! " thought Cesarini, re- 
 volted at his own infirmity, as Gulliver started from the Yahoo. 
 " No matter, he talks of escape." 
 
 " And how think you," said the Italian, aloud, " how think 
 you, that we have any chance of deliverance ?" 
 
 " Hush speak lower," said the soldier. "In the inner gar- 
 den, I have observed for the last two days that a gardener is 
 employed in nailing some fig-trees and vines to the wall. Be- 
 tween that garden and these grounds there is but a paling, 
 which we can easily scale. He works till dusk ; at the latest 
 hour we can, let us climb noiselessly over the paling, and creep 
 along the vegetable beds till we reach the man. He uses a lad- 
 der for his purpose, the rest is clear, we must fell and gag 
 him twist his neck if necessary I have twisted a neck before," 
 quoth the maniac, with a horrid smile. " The ladder will 
 help us over the wall and the night soon grows dark at this 
 season." 
 
 Cesarini listened, and his heart beat quick. " Will it be too 
 late to try to-night ? " said he in a whisper. 
 
 "Perhaps not," said the soldier, who retained all his military 
 acuteness. " But are you prepared ? don't you require time 
 to man yourself ! " 
 
 " No no I have had time enough ! I am ready." 
 
 " Well, then, hist ! we are watched one of the gaolers ! 
 Talk easily smile laugh. This way." They passed by one 
 of the watch of the place, and just as they were in his hearing,
 
 274 ALICE; OR, THE MVSTERIES. 
 
 the soldier turned to Cesarini, " Sir, will you favor me with 
 your snuff-box? " 
 
 " I have none." 
 
 " None what a pity ! My good friend," and he turned to 
 the scout, "may I request you to look in my room for my snuff- 
 box ? it is on the chimney-piece it will not take you a minute." 
 
 The soldier was one of those whose insanity was deemed 
 most harmless, and his relations, who were rich and well-born, 
 had requested every indulgence to be shown to him. The 
 watch suspected nothing, and repaired to the house. As soon 
 as the trees hid him, " Now," said the soldier, " stoop almost 
 on all fours, and run quick." 
 
 So saying, the maniac crouched low, and glided along with a 
 rapidity which did not distance Cesarini. They reached the 
 paling that separated the vegetable garden from the pleasure 
 ground the soldier vaulted over it with ease Cesarini, with 
 more difficulty, followed, they crept along ; the herbs and 
 vegetable beds, with their long bare stalks, concealed their move- 
 ments ; the man was still on the ladder. " La bonne Esperance ! " 
 said the soldier, through his ground teeth, muttering some old 
 watchword of the wars, and (while Cesarini, below, held the 
 ladder steadfast) he rushed up the steps and, with a sudden 
 effort of his muscular arm, hurled the gardener to the ground. 
 The man, surprised, half-stunned, and wholly terrified, did not 
 attempt to wrestle with the two madmen, he uttered loud cries 
 for help ! But help came too late ; these strange and fearful 
 comrades had already scaled the wall, had dropped on the other 
 side, and were fast making across the dusky fields to the neigh- 
 boring forest. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 " Hopes and Fars 
 
 Start up alarmed, and o'er life's narrow verge 
 Look down : on what ? a fathomless abyss ? " YOUNG. 
 
 MIDNIGHT and intense frost ! there they were houseless 
 and breadless the two fugitives, in the heart of that beautiful 
 forest which has rung to the horns of many a royal chase. The 
 soldier, whose youth had been inured to hardships, and to the 
 conquests which our mother-wit wrings from the stepdame 
 Nature had made a fire by the friction of two pieces of dry 
 wood ; such wood was hard to be found, for the snow whitened 
 the level ground, and lay deep in the hollows ; and when it was
 
 ALICE; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 275 
 
 discovered, the fuel was slow to burn ; however, the fire blazed 
 red at last. On a little mound, shaded by a semicircle of huge 
 trees, sate the outlaws of Human Reason. They cowered over 
 the blaze opposite to each other, and the glare crimsoned their 
 features. And each in his heart longed to rid himself of his 
 mad neighbor ; and each felt the awe of solitude the dread 
 of sleep beside a comrade whose soul had lost God's light ! 
 
 " Ho ! " said the warrior, breaking a silence that had been 
 long kept, " this is cold work at the best, and hunger pinches 
 me ; I almost regret the prison." 
 
 " I do not feel the cold," said Cesarini, " and I do not care 
 for hunger ; I am revelling only in the sense of liberty ! " 
 
 "Try and sleep," quoth the soldier, with a coaxing and sin- 
 ister softness of voice ; " we will take it by turns to watch." 
 
 " I cannot sleep take you the first turn." 
 
 " Harkye, sir ! " said the soldier sullenly ; " I must not have 
 my commands disputed ; now we are free, we are no longer 
 equal ; I am heir to the crowns of France and Navarre. Sleep, 
 I say ! " 
 
 "And what Prince or Potentate, King or Kaisar," cried Ces- 
 arini, catching the quick contagion of the fit that had seized 
 his comrade, "can dictate to the Monarch of Earth and Air 
 the Elements and the music-breathing Stars ! I am Cesarini 
 the Bard ! and the huntsman Orion halts in his chase above to 
 listen to my lyre ! Be stilled, rude man ! thou scarest away the 
 angels, whose breath even now was rushing through my hair ! " 
 
 " It is too horrible ! " cried the grim man of blood, shiver- 
 ing; "my enemies are relentless, and give me a madman for a 
 gaoler ! " 
 
 " Ha ! a madman ! " exclaimed Cesarini, springing to his 
 feet, and glaring at the soldier with eyes that caught and 
 rivalled the blaze of the fire. "And who are you ? what devil 
 from the deep hell, that art leagued with my persecutors 
 against me? " 
 
 With the instinct of his old calling and valor, the soldier 
 also rose when he saw the movement of his companion ; and 
 his fierce features worked with rage and fear. 
 
 " Avaunt ! " said he, waving his arm ; " we banish thee from 
 our presence ! This is our palace and our guards are at 
 hand ! " pointing to the still and skeleton trees that grouped 
 round in ghastly bareness. " Begone ! " 
 
 At that moment they heard at a distance the deep barking of 
 a dog, and each cried simultaneously "They are after me ! 
 betrayed ! " The soldier sprung at the throat of Cesarini; but
 
 276 ALICE ; OR. THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 the Italian, at the same instant, caught a half-burnt brand from 
 the fire, and dashed the blazing end in the face of his assailant. 
 The soldier uttered a cry of pain, and recoiled back, blinded 
 and dismayed. Cesarini, whose madness, when fairly roused, 
 was of the most deadly nature, again raised his weapon, and, 
 probably nothing but death could have separated the foes; but 
 again the bay of the dog was heard, and Cesarini, answering the 
 sound by a wild yell, threw down the brand, and fled away 
 through the forest with inconceivable swiftness. He hurried on 
 through bush and dell and the boughs tore his garments and 
 mangled his flesh but stopped not his progress till he fell at 
 last on the ground, breathless and exhausted, and heard from 
 some far-off clock the second hour of morning. He had left 
 the forest a farm-house stood before him ; and the whitened 
 roofs of scattered cottages sloped to the tranquil sky. The wit- 
 ness of man the social tranquil sky and the reasoning man^- 
 operated like a charm upon the senses which recent excitement 
 had more than usually disturbed. The unhappy wretch gazed 
 at the peaceful abodes, and sighed heavily ; then, rising from 
 the earth, he crept into one of the sheds that adjoined the farm- 
 house, and throwing himself on some straw, slept sound and 
 quietly till daylight, and the voices of peasants in the shed 
 awakened him. 
 
 He rose refreshed, calm, and, for ordinary purposes, suffic- 
 iently sane to prevent suspicion of his disease. He approached 
 the startled peasants, and, representing himself as a traveller 
 who had lost his way in the night and amidst the forest, begged 
 for food and water. Though his garments were torn, they were 
 new and of good fashion; his voice was mild; his whole appear- 
 ance and address those of one of some station and the French 
 peasant is a hospitable fellow. Cesarini refreshed and rested 
 himself an hour or two at the farm, and then resumed his wander- 
 ings; he offered no money, for the rules of the asylum forbade 
 money to its inmates; he had none with him but none was 
 expected from him; and they bade him farewell as kindly as if 
 he had bought their blessings. He then began to consider 
 where he was to take refuge, and how provide for himself; the 
 feeling of liberty braced, and for a time restored, his intellect. 
 
 Fortunately, he had on his person, besides some rings of tri- 
 fling cost, a watch of no inconsiderable value, the sale of which 
 might support him, in such obscure and humble quarter as he 
 could alone venture to inhabit, for several weeks perhaps 
 months. This thought made him cheerful and elated; hewalked 
 lustily on, shunning the highroad the day was clear the sun
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 277 
 
 bright the air full of racy health. Oh, what soft raptures 
 swelled the heart of the wanderer, as he gazed around him ! 
 The Poet and the Freeman alike stirred within his shattered 
 heart ! He paused to contemplate the berries of the icy trees 
 to listen to the sharp glee of the blackbird and once when 
 he found beneath a hedge a cold, scentless group of hardy vio- 
 lets he laughed aloud in his joy. In that laughter there was 
 no madness no danger; but when, as he journeyed on, he 
 passed through a little hamlet, and saw the children at play upon 
 the ground, and heard from the open door of a cabin the sound 
 of rustic music, then, indeed, he paused abruptly ; the past 
 gathered over him: he knew that which he had been that which 
 he was now! an awful memory ! a dread revelation! And, 
 covering his face with his hands, he wept aloud. In those tears 
 were the peril and the method of madness. He woke from 
 them to think of his youth his hopes of Florence of Re- 
 venge ! Lumley, Lord Vargrave ! better, from that hour, to 
 encounter the tiger in his lair, than find thyself alone with that 
 miserable man ! 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 " It seem'd the laurel chaste and stubborn oak, 
 And all the gentle trees on earth that grew ; 
 It seem'd the land, the sea, and heaven above, 
 All breathed out fancy sweet, and sigh'd out love." 
 
 FAIRFAX'S Tasso. 
 
 AT De Montaigne's villa, Evelyn, for the first time, gathered 
 from the looks, the manners of Maltravers, that she was be- 
 loved. It was no longer possible to mistake the evidences of 
 affection. Formerly, Maltravers had availed himself of his ad- 
 vantage of years and experience, and would warn, admonish, 
 dispute, even reprove ; formerly, there had been so much of 
 seeming caprice, of cold distance, of sudden and wayward haught- 
 iness, in his bearing; but now, the whole man was changed 
 the Mentor had vanished in the Lover, he held his being on 
 her breath. Her lightest pleasure seemed to have grown his 
 law no coldness ever alternated the deep devotion of his man- 
 ner ; an anxious, a timid, a watchful softness replaced all his 
 stately self-possession. Evelyn saw that she was loved ; and 
 she then looked into her own heart. 
 
 I have said before that Evelyn was gentle, even \.Q yielding- 
 ness ; that her susceptibility made her shrink from the thought
 
 378 ALICE J OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 of pain to another ; and so thoroughly did she revere Mai- 
 travers so grateful did she feel for a love that could not but 
 flatter pride, and raise her in her self-esteem that she felt it im- 
 possible that she could reject his suit. " Then, do I love him as I 
 dreamt I could love?" she asked herself; and her heart gave 
 no intelligible reply. " Yes ! it must be so ; in his presence 
 I feel a tranquil and eloquent charm ; his praise delights me ; 
 his esteem is my most high ambition, and yet and yet " she 
 sighed, and thought of Legard, "but he loved me not!" and 
 she turned restlessly from that image. " He thinks but of the 
 world of pleasure ; Maltravers is right the spoiled children 
 of society cannot love : why should I think of him ?" 
 
 There were no guests at the villa, except Maltravers, Evelyn, 
 and Lord and Lady Doltimore. Evelyn was much captivated 
 by the graceful vivacity of Teresa, though that vivacity was not 
 what it had been before her brother's affliction ; their children, 
 some of whom were grown up, constituted an amiable and in- 
 telligent family ; and De Montaigne himself was agreeable and 
 winning, despite his sober manners, and his love of philosophi- 
 cal dispute. Evelyn often listened thoughtfully to Teresa's 
 praises of her husband to her account of the happiness she had 
 known in a marriage where there had been so great a disparity 
 of years; Evelyn began to question the truth of her early vis- 
 ions of romance. 
 
 Caroline saw the unequivocal attachment of Maltravers with 
 the same indifference with which she had anticipated the suit 
 of Legard. It was the same to her what hand delivered Evelyn 
 and herself from the designs of Vargrave, but Vargrave occu- 
 pied nearly all her thoughts. The newspapers had reported him 
 as seriously ill at one time in great danger. He was recover- 
 ing, but still unable to quit his room. He had written to her 
 once, lamenting his ill-fortune trusting soon to be at Paris ; 
 and touching, with evident pleasure, upon Legard's departure 
 for Vienna, which he had seen in the Morning Post. But he 
 was afar alone ill untended: and though Caroline's guilty 
 love had been much abated by Vargrave's icy selfishness by 
 absence and remorse still she had the heart of a woman, 
 and Vargrave was the only one that had ever touched it. She 
 felt for him, and grieved in silence ; she did not dare to utter 
 sympathy aloud, for Doltimore had already given evidence of 
 a suspicious and jealous temper. 
 
 Evelyn was also deeply affected by the account of her guar- 
 dian's illness. As I before said, the moment he ceased to be 
 her lover, her childish affection for him returned. She even
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 279 
 
 permitted herself to write to him ; and a tone of melancholy de- 
 pression which artfully pervaded his reply struck her with some- 
 thing like remorse. He told her in that letter, that he had much 
 to say to her relative to an investment, in conformity with her 
 stepfather's wishes, and he should hasten to Paris, even before 
 the doctor would sanction his removal. Vargrave forbore to 
 mention what the meditated investment was. The last public 
 accounts of the Minister had, however, been so favorable, that 
 his arrival might be almost daily expected ; and both Caroline 
 and Evelyn felt relieved. 
 
 To De Montaigne, Maltravers confided his attachment, and 
 both the Frenchman and Teresa sanctioned and encouraged it. 
 Evelyn enchanted them ; and they had passed that age when 
 they could have imagined it possible that the man they had 
 known almost as a boy was separated by years from the lively 
 feelings and extreme youth of Evelyn. They could not believe 
 that the sentiments he had inspired were colder than those that 
 animated himself. 
 
 One day, Maltravers had been absent for some hours on his 
 solitary rambles, and De Montaigne had not yet returned from 
 Paris which he visited almost daily. It was so late in the noon 
 as almost to border on evening, when Maltravers, on his return, 
 entered the grounds by a gate that separated them from an ex- 
 tensive wood. He saw Evelyn, Teresa, and two of her children, 
 walking on a kind of terrace immediately before him. He 
 joined them ; and somehow or other, it soon chanced that Te- 
 resa and himself loitered behind the rest a little distance out 
 of hearing. "Ah, Mr. Maltravers," said the former, "we miss 
 the soft skies of Italy and the beautiful hues of Como." 
 
 "And, for my part, I miss the youth that gave 'glory to the 
 grass and splendor to the flowers.' " 
 
 " Nay ; we are happier now, believe me, or at least I should 
 be, if but I must not think of my poor brother. Ah ! if his 
 guilt deprived you of one who was worthy of you, it would be 
 some comfort to his sister to think at last that the loss was re- 
 paired. And you still have scruples?" 
 
 " Who that loves truly has not ? How young how lovely 
 how worthy of lighter hearts and fairer forms than mine ! Give 
 me back the years that have passed since we last met at Como, 
 and I might hope ! " 
 
 " And this to me, who have enjoyed such happiness with one 
 older, when we married, by ten years than you are now ! " 
 
 " But you, Teresa, were born to see life through the Claude 
 glass."
 
 280 ALICE J OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 "Ah, you provoke me with these refinements you turn from 
 a happiness you have but to demand." 
 
 " Do not do not raise my hopes too high," cried Maltravers, 
 with great emotion ; " I have been schooling myself all day. 
 But if I am deceived ! " 
 
 "Trust me, you are not. See, even now she turns round to 
 look for you she loves you loves you as you deserve. This 
 difference of years that you so lament does but deepen and ele- 
 vate her attachment ! " 
 
 Teresa turned to Maltravers surprised at his silence. How 
 joyous sate his heart upon his looks no gloom on his brow no 
 doubt in his sparkling eyes ! He was mortal, and he yielded to 
 the delight of believing himself beloved. He pressed Teresa's 
 hand in silence, and quitting her abruptly, gained the side of 
 Evelyn. Madame de Montaigne comprehended all that passed 
 within him ; and as she followed, she soon contrived to detach 
 her children, and returned with them to the house on a whis- 
 pered pretence of seeing if their father had yet arrived. Evelyn 
 and Maltravers continued to walk on not aware, at first, that 
 the rest of the party were not close behind. 
 
 The sun had set ; and they were in a part of the grounds 
 which, by way of a contrast to the rest, was laid out in the Eng- 
 lish fashion ; the walk wound, serpent-like, among a profu- 
 sion of evergreens irregularly planted ; the scene was shut 
 in and bounded, except where at a distance, through an open- 
 ing of the trees, you caught the spire of a distant church, over 
 which glimmered, faint and fair, the smile of the evening 
 star. 
 
 "This reminds me of home," said Evelyn gently. 
 
 " And hereafter it will remind me of you," said Maltravers, in 
 whispered accents. He fixed his eyes on her as he spoke. 
 Never had his look been so true to his heart never had his 
 voice so undisguisedly expressed the profound and passionate 
 senViment which had sprung up within him to constitute, as he 
 then believed, the latest bliss, or the crowning misery of his life! 
 At that moment, it was a sort of instinct that told him they were 
 alone; for who has not felt in those few and memorable hours 
 of life when love long suppressed overflows the fountain, and 
 seems to pervade the whole frame and the whole spirit that 
 there is a magic around and within us that hath a keener intelli- 
 gence than intellect itself? Alone at such an hour with the one 
 we love, the whole world beside seems to vanish, and our feet 
 to have entered the soil, and our lips to have caught the air, of 
 Fairy Land.
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 281 
 
 They were alone. And why did Evelyn tremble ? Why did 
 she feel that a crisis of existence was at hand ? 
 
 "Miss Cameron Evelyn " said Maltravers, after they had 
 walked some moments in silence, "hear me and let your rea- 
 son as well as your heart reply. From the first moment we met, 
 you became dear to me. Yes, even when a child, your sweetness 
 and your fortitude foretold so well what you would be in wom- 
 anhood : even then you left upon my memory a delightful and 
 mysterious shadow too prophetic of the light that now hallows 
 and wraps your image ! We met again and the attraction that 
 had drawn me towards you years before was suddenly renewed. 
 I love you, Evelyn ! I love you better than all words can tell! 
 Your future fate, your welfare, your happiness, contain and em- 
 body all the hopes left to me in life ! But our years are different, 
 Evelyn. I have known sorrows and the disappointments and 
 the experience that have severed me from the common world 
 have robbed me of more than time itself hath done. They have 
 robbed me of that zest for the ordinary pleasures of our race 
 which may it be yours, sweet Evelyn, ever to retain. To me, 
 the time foretold by the Preacher as the lot of age has already 
 arrived when the sun and the moon are darkened, and when, 
 save in you and through you, I have no pleasure in anything. 
 Judge, if such a being you can love ! Judge, if my very con- 
 fession does not revolt and chill if it does not present to you a 
 gloomy and cheerless future were it possible that you could 
 unite your lot to mine ! Answer not from friendship or from 
 pity ; the love I feel for you can have a reply from love alone, 
 and from that reasoning which love, in its enduring power in 
 its healthful confidence in its prophetic foresight alone sup- 
 plies ! I can resign you without a murmur but I could not 
 live with you and even fancy that you had one care I could not 
 soothe, though you might have happiness I could not share. 
 And fate does not present to me any vision so dark and terri- 
 ble no, not your loss itself no, not your indifference no, not 
 your aversion, as your discovery after time should make re- 
 gret in vain, that you had mistaken fancy or friendship for af- 
 fection a sentiment for love. Evelyn, I have confided to you 
 all all this wild heart, now and evermore your own. My des- 
 tiny is with you ! " 
 
 Evelyn was silent he took her hand and her tears fell 
 warm and fast upon it. Alarmed and anxious, he drew her 
 towards him and gazed upon her face. 
 
 "You fear to wound me," he said, with pale lips and trem- 
 bling voice. " Speak on, I can bear all."
 
 22 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 " No no," said Evelyn, falteringly ; " I have no fear, but not 
 to deserve you." 
 
 "You love me, then, you love me!" cried Maltravers 
 wildly, and clasping her to his heart. 
 
 The moon rose at that instant, and the wintry sward and the 
 dark trees were bathed in the sudden light. The time the 
 light so exquisite to all even in loneliness and in sorrow 
 how divine in such companionship ! in such overflowing and 
 ineffable sense of bliss ! There and then for the first time did 
 Maltravers press upon that modest and blushing cheek the kiss 
 of Love of Hope the seal of a union he fondly hoped the 
 grave itself could not dissolve ! 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 4 Queen. Whereon elo you look ? 
 Hamlet. On him on him, look you how pale he glares ! " Hamlet. 
 
 PERHAPS to Maltravers those few minutes which ensued, as 
 they walked slowly on, compensated for all the troubles and 
 cares of years ; for natures like his feel joy even yet more 
 intensely than sorrow. It might be that the transport the 
 delirium of passionate and grateful thoughts that he poured 
 forth when at last he could summon words expressed feelings 
 the young Evelyn could not comprehend, and which less de- 
 lighted than terrified her with the new responsibility she had in- 
 curred. But love so honest so generous so intense dazzled 
 and bewildered, and carried her whole soul away. Certainly at 
 that hour she felt no regret no thought but that one in whom 
 she had so long recognized something nobler than is found in 
 the common world was thus happy and thus made happy by 
 a word a look from her ! Such a thought is woman's dearest 
 triumph, and one so thoroughly unselfish so yielding and so 
 soft could not be insensible to the rapture she had caused. 
 
 "And oh !" said Maltravers, as he clasped again and again 
 the hand that he believed he had won forever, "now, at length, 
 have I learned how beautiful is life ! For this for this I have 
 been reserved ! Heaven is merciful to me and the waking 
 world is brighter than all my dreams ! " 
 
 He ceased abruptly. At that instant they were once more 
 on the terrace where he had first joined Teresa facing the 
 wood which was divided by a slight and low palisade from 
 the spot where they stood. He ceased abruptly, for his eyes
 
 ALICE J OR, THE MYSTERIES. 283 
 
 encountered a terrible and ominous opposition a form con- 
 nected with dreary associations of fate and woe. The figure had 
 raised itself upon a pil? of firewood on the other side the fence, 
 and hence it seemed almost gigantic in its stature. It gazed 
 upon the pair. with eyes that burned with a preternatural blaze, 
 and a voice which Maltravers too well remembered shrieked 
 out, " Love love ! What ! thou love again ? Where is the 
 Dead ? Ha ! ha ! Where is the dead ? " 
 
 Evelyn, startled by the words, looked up, and clung in speech- 
 less terror to Maltravers. He remained rooted to the spot. 
 
 " Unhappy man," said he at length, and soothingly, " how came 
 you hither? Fly not, you are with friends." 
 
 " Friends ! " said the maniac, with a scornful laugh. " I know 
 thee, Ernest Maltravers, I know thee : but it is not thou who 
 has locked me up in darkness and in hell, side by side with the 
 mocking fiend ! Friends ! ah, but no friends shall catch me 
 now ! I am free I am free ! air and wave are not more free ! " 
 and the madman laughed with horrible glee. "She is fair 
 fair," he said, abruptly checking himself, and with a changed 
 voice, "but not so fair as the Dead. Faithless that thou art 
 and yet she loved thee! Woe to thee! woe Maltravers, the 
 perfidious ! Woe to thee and remorse and shame ! " 
 
 "Fear not, Evelyn, fear not," whispered Maltravers gently, 
 and placing her behind him ; "support your courage nothing 
 shall harm you." 
 
 Evelyn, though very pale and trembling from head to foot, 
 retained her senses. Maltravers advanced towards the madman. 
 But no sooner did the quick eye of the last perceive the move- 
 ment, than, with the fear which belongs to that dread disease 
 the fear of losing liberty he turned, and, with a loud cry, fled 
 into the wood. Maltravers leaped over the fence, and pursued 
 him some way in vain. The thick copses of the wood snatched 
 every trace of the fugitive from his eye. 
 
 Breathless and exhausted, Maltravers returned to the spot 
 where he had left Evelyn. As he reached it, he saw Teresa and 
 her husband approaching towards him, and Teresa's merry laugh 
 sounded clear and musical in the racy air. The sound appalled 
 him he hastened his steps to Evelyn. 
 
 " Say nothing of what we have seen to Madame de Montaigne, 
 I beseech you," said he; "I will explain why hereafter." 
 
 Evelyn, too overcome to speak, nodded her acquiescence. 
 They joined the De Montaignes, and Maltravers took the 
 Frenchman aside. 
 
 But before he could address him, De Montaigne
 
 284 ALICE J OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 " Hush ! do not alarm my wife she knows nothing but I 
 have just heard, at Paris, that that he has escaped you know 
 whom I mean ?" 
 
 " I do he is at hand send in search of him ! I have seen 
 him ! once more I have seen Castruccio Cesarini ! " 
 
 BOOK IX. 
 
 Jdal- raff ii8r) Siafyavij. SOPH. (Eiiip. Tyran. 754. 
 Woe, woe : all things are clear. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 " The privilege that statesmen ever claim, 
 Who private interest never yet pursued, 
 But still pretended 'twas for others' good. 
 * * * * 
 
 From hence on every humorous wind that veer'd 
 With shifted sails a several course you steer'd." 
 
 Absalom and Achitophel, Part II. 
 
 LORD VARGRAVE had for more than a fortnight remained at 
 
 *he inn at M , too ill to be removed with safety in a season 
 
 oO severe. Even when at last, by easv stages, he reached Lon- 
 don, he was subjected to a relapse ; ,.d his recovery was slow 
 and gradual. Hitherto unused to sickness, he bore his confine- 
 ment with extreme impatience ; and, against the commands 
 of his physician, insisted on continuing to transact his official 
 business, and consult with his political friends, in his sick room; 
 for Lumley knew well that it is most pernicious to public men to 
 be considered failing in health : turkeys are not more unfeeling 
 to a sick brother, than politicians to an ailing statesman : they 
 give out that his head is touched, and see paralysis and epilepsy 
 in every speech and every despatch. The time, too, nearly ripe 
 for his great schemes, made it doubly necessary that he should 
 exert himself, and prevent being shelved with a plausible excuse 
 of tender compassion for his infirmities. As soon, therefore, as 
 he learned that Legard had left Paris, he thought himself safe 
 for a while in that quarter, and surrendered his thoughts wholly 
 to his ambitious projects. Perhaps, too, with the susceptible 
 vanity of a middle-aged man who had his bonnes fortunes, Lum-
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 285 
 
 ley deemed, with Rousseau, that a lover pale and haggard-^- 
 just raised from the bed of suffering is more interesting to 
 friendship than attractive to love. He and Rousseau were, I 
 believe, both mistaken ; but that is a matter of opinion : they 
 both thought very coarsely of women, one, from having no 
 sentiment, and the other, from having a sentiment that was but 
 a disease. At length, just as Lumley was sufficiently recovered 
 to quit his house to appear at his office, and declare that his 
 illness had wonderfully improved his constitution, intelligence 
 from Paris, the more startling from being wholly unexpected, 
 reached him. From Caroline he learned that Maltravers had 
 proposed to Evelyn, and had been accepted. From Maltravers 
 himself he heard the confirmation of the news. The last letter 
 was short, but kind and manly. He addressed Lord Vargrave 
 as Evelyn's guardian ; slightly alluded to the scruples he had 
 entertained, till Lord Vargrave's suit was broken off ; and, feel- 
 ing the subject too delicate for a letter, expressed a desire to 
 confer with Lumley respecting Evelyn's wishes as to certain 
 arrangements in her property. 
 
 And for this it was that Lumley had toiled ! for this had he 
 visited Lisle Court ! and for this had he been stricken down 
 to the bed of pain ? Was it only to make his old rival the pur- 
 chaser, if he so pleased it, of the possessions of his own family? 
 Lumley thought at that moment less of Evelyn than of Lisle 
 Court. As he woke from the stupor and the first fit of rage 
 into which these epistles cast him, the recollection of the story 
 he had heard from Mr. Onslow flashed across him. Were his 
 suspicions true, what a secret he would possess ! How fate 
 might yet befriend him ! Not a moment was to be lost. Weak, 
 suffering as he still was, he ordered his carriage, and hastened 
 down to Mrs. Leslie. 
 
 In the interview that took place, he was careful not to alarm 
 her into discretion. He managed the conference with his 
 usual consummate dexterity. He did not appear to believe 
 that there had been any actual connection between Alice and 
 the supposed Butler. He began by simply asking whether 
 Alice had ever, in early life, been acquainted with a person of that 
 
 name, and when residing in the neighborhood of C ? The 
 
 change of countenance the surprised start of Mrs. Leslie 
 convinced him that his suspicions were true. 
 
 " And why do you ask, my lord ? " said the old lady. " Is it 
 to ascertain this point that you have done me the honor to 
 visit me ? " 
 
 " Not exactly, my dear madam," said Lumley smiling. " But
 
 286 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 I am going to C on business ; and, besides that I wished 
 
 to give an account of your health to Evelyn, whom I shall 
 shortly see in Paris, I certainly did desire to know whether it 
 would be any gratification to Lady Vargrave, for whom I have 
 the deepest regard, to renew her acquaintance with the same 
 Mr. Butler ? " 
 
 " What does your lordship know of him ? What is he ? who 
 is he ? " 
 
 " Ah, my dear lady, you turn the tables on me, I see for one 
 question you would give me fifty. But, seriously, before I an- 
 swer you, you must tell me whether Lady Vargrave does 
 know a gentleman of that name ; yet, indeed, to save trouble 
 I may as well inform you, that I know it was under that name 
 
 that she resided at C , when my poor uncle first made her 
 
 acquaintance. What I ought to ask, is this, supposing 
 Mr. Butler be still alive, and a gentleman of character and 
 fortune, would it please Lady Vargrave to meet him once 
 more?" 
 
 " I cannot tell you," said Mrs. Leslie, sinking back in her 
 chair, much embarrassed. 
 
 " Enough, I shall not stir further in the matter. Glad to see 
 you looking so well. Fine place beautiful trees. Any com- 
 mands at C , or any message for Evelyn ? " 
 
 Lumley rose to depart. 
 
 " Stay," said Mrs. Leslie, recalling all the pining, untiring 
 love that Lady Vargrave had manifested towards the lost, and 
 feeling that she ought not to sacrifice to the slightest scruples 
 the chance of happiness for her friend's future years, "stay 
 I think this question you should address to Lady Vargrave or 
 shall I ? " 
 
 " As you will perhaps /had better write. Good-day," and 
 Vargrave hurried away. 
 
 He had satisfied himself, but he had another yet to satisfy, 
 and that, from certain reasons known but to himself, without 
 bringing the third person in contact with Lady Vargrave. On 
 
 arriving at C he wrote, therefore, to Lady Vargrave as 
 
 follows : 
 
 " MY DEAR FRIEND, Do not think me impertinent or in- 
 trusive but you know me too well for that. A gentleman of 
 the name of Butler is exceedingly anxious to ascertain if you 
 
 once lived near C , in a pretty little cottage Dove, or 
 
 Dale, or Dell Cottage (some such appellation), and if you 
 remember a person of his name ? Should you care to give a
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 287 
 
 reply to these queries, send me a line addressed to London, 
 which I shall get on my way to Paris. 
 
 " Yours most truly, 
 
 " VARGRAVE." 
 
 As soon as he had concluded and despatched this letter, 
 Vargrave wrote to Mr. Winsley as follows : 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR, I am so unwell, as to be unable to call 
 on you, or even to see any one, however agreeable (nay, the 
 more agreeable the more exciting !) I hope, however, to renew 
 
 our personal acquaintance before quitting C . Meanwhile, 
 
 oblige me with a line to say if I did not understand you to 
 signify that you could, if necessary, prove that Lady Vargrave 
 once resided in this town as Mrs. Butler, a very short time 
 before she married my uncle, under the name of Cameron, in 
 Devonshire ; and had she not also at that time a little girl an 
 infant, or nearly so, who must necessarily be the young lady 
 who is my uncle's heiress, Miss Evelyn Cameron ? My reason 
 for troubling you is obvious. As Miss Cameron's guardian, I 
 have very shortly to wind up certain affairs connected with my 
 uncle's will ; and, what is more, there is some property be- 
 queathed by the late Mr. Butler, which may make it necessary 
 to prove identity. 
 
 " Truly yours, 
 
 " VARGRAVE." 
 
 The answer to the latter communication ran thus : 
 
 " MY LORD, I am very sorry to hear your lordship is so 
 unwell, and will pay my respects to-morrow. I certainly can 
 swear that the present Lady Vargrave was the Mrs. Butler who 
 
 resided at C , and taught music. And as the child with 
 
 her was of the same sex, and about the same age, as Miss 
 Cameron, there can, I should think, be no difficulty in estab- 
 lishing the identity between that young lady and the child 
 Lady Vargrave had by her first husband, Mr. Butler ; but of 
 this, of course, I cannot speak. 
 
 " I have the honor, 
 
 " Etc., etc." 
 
 The "next morning Vargrave despatched a note to Mr. 
 Winsley, saying that his health required him to return to town 
 immediately, and to town, in fact, he hastened. The day 
 after his arrival, he received, in a hurried hand strangely 
 blurred and blotted, perhaps by tears, this short letter ;
 
 288 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 " For Heaven's sake, tell me what you mean ! Yes yes, I 
 did once reside at Dale Cottage I did know one of the name 
 of Butler ! Has he discovered the name / bear? Where is 
 he ? I implore you to write, or let me see you before you 
 leave England ! ALICE VARGRAVE." 
 
 Lumley smiled triumphantly when he read, and carefully 
 put up, this letter. 
 
 " I must now amuse and put her off at all events for the 
 present." 
 
 In answer to Lady Vargrave's letter, he wrote a few lines to 
 say, that he had only heard through a third person (a lawyer) 
 of a Mr. Butler residing somewhere abroad, who had wished 
 these inquiries to be made that he believed it only related to 
 some disposition of property that, perhaps, the Mr. Butler 
 who made the inquiry was heir to the Mr. Butler she had 
 known that he could learn nothing else at present, as the pur- 
 port of her reply must be sent abroad ; the lawyer would or 
 could say nothing more that directly he received a further 
 communication it should be despatched to her that he was 
 most affectionately and most truly hers. 
 
 The rest of that morning Vargrave devoted to Lord Saxing- 
 ham and his allies ; and declaring, and believing, that he 
 should not be long absent at Paris, he took an early dinner, 
 and was about once more to commit himself to the risks of 
 travel, when, as he crossed the hall, Mr. Douce came hastily 
 upon him. 
 
 " My lord my lord I must have a word with your 1-1-lord- 
 ship, you are going to that is " (and the little man looked 
 frightened) "you intend to to go to that is ab ab-ab " 
 
 " Not abscond, Mr. Douce come into the library : I am in 
 a great hurry, but I have always time for you what's the 
 matter?" 
 
 " Why, then, my lord, I I have heard nothing m-m-more 
 from your lordship about the pur-pur " 
 
 " Purchase ? I am going to Paris, to settle all particulars 
 with Miss Cameron ; tell the lawyers so." 
 
 " May may we draw out the money to to show that 
 that we are in earnest ? Otherwise I fear that is, I suspect 
 I mean I know, that Colonel Maltravers will be off the bar- 
 gain." 
 
 " Why, Mr. Douce, really I must just see my ward first ! but 
 you shall hear from me in a day or two, and the ten thousand 
 pounds I owe you \ "
 
 ALICE j 6&, THE 
 
 " Yes, indeed, the ten ten ten my partner is very " 
 "Anxious for it, no doubt! my compliments to him God 
 bless you ! take care of yourself must be off to save the 
 packet ;" and Vargrave hurried away, muttering, " Heaven 
 sends money, and the devil sends duns ! " 
 
 Douce gasped like a fish for breath, as his eyes followed the 
 rapid steps of Vargrave ; and there was an angry scowl of dis- 
 appointment on his small features. Lumley, by this time, seated 
 in his carriage, and wrapped up in his cloak, had forgotten the 
 creditor's existence, and whispered to his aristocratic secretary, 
 as he bent his head out of the window: "I have told Lord Sax- 
 ingham to despatch you to me, if there is any the least 
 necessity for me in London. I leave you behind, Howard, 
 because your sister being at court, and your cousin with our 
 notable premier, you will find out every change in the wind 
 you understand. And I say, Howard don't think I forget 
 your kindness ! you know that no man ever served me in 
 vain ! Oh, there's that horrid little Douce behind you ! tell 
 them to drive on ! " 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 * * " Heard you that ? 
 
 What prodigy of horror is disclosing ? " LlLLS : Fatal Curiosity. 
 
 THE unhappy companion of Cesarini's flight was soon dis- 
 covered and recaptured ; but all search for Cesarini himself 
 proved ineffectual, not only in the neighborhood of St. Cloud, 
 but in the surrounding country andin Paris. The only comfort 
 was in thinking that his watch would at least preserve him for 
 some time from the horrors of want ; and that, by sale of the 
 trinket, he might be traced. The police, too, were set at work 
 the vigilant police of Paris ! Still day rolled on day, and no 
 tidings. The secret of the escape was carefully concealed from 
 Teresa ; and public cares were a sufficient excuse for the gloom 
 on De Montaigne's brow. 
 
 Evelyn heard from Maltravers, with mingled emotions of 
 compassion, grief and awe, the gloomy tale connected with the 
 history of the maniac. She wept for the fate of Florence 
 she shuddered at the curse that had fallen on Cesarini ; and per- 
 haps Maltravers grew dearer to her from the thought that there 
 was so much in the memories of the past that needed a comforter 
 and a soother. 
 
 They returned to Paris, affianced and plighted lovers ; and
 
 2()6 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 then it was that Evelyn sought carefully and resolutely to banish 
 from her mind all recollection, all regret, of the absent Legard : 
 she felt the solemnity of the trust confided in her, and she 
 resolved that no thought of hers should ever be of a nature to 
 gall the generous and tender spirit that had confided its life to 
 her core. The influence of Maltravers over her increased in 
 their new and more familiar position ; and yet still it partook 
 too much of veneration too little of passion ; but that might 
 be her innocence and youth. He, at least, was sensible of no 
 want she had chosen him from the world ; and, fastidious as 
 he deemed himself, he reposed, without a doubt, on the security of 
 her faith. None of those presentiments which had haunted him 
 when first betrothed to Florence disturbed him now. The affec- 
 tion of one so young and so guileless, seemed to bring back to him 
 all his own youth we are ever young while the young can love 
 us ! Suddenly, too, the world took, to his eyes, a brighter and 
 fairer aspect Hope, born again, reconciled him to his career, 
 and to his race ! The more he listened to Evelyn, the more he 
 watched every evidence of her docile but generous nature, the 
 more he felt assured that he had found, at last, a heart suited 
 to his own. Her beautiful serenity of temper, cheerful, yet 
 never fitful or unquiet, gladdened him with its insensible con- 
 tagion. To be with Evelyn was like basking in the sunshine of 
 some happy sky ! It was an inexpressible charm to one wearied 
 with " the hack sight and sounds" of this jaded world to 
 watch the ever fresh and sparkling thoughts and fancies which 
 came from a soul so new to life ! It enchanted one, painfully 
 fastidious in what relates to the true nobility of character, that, 
 however various the themes discussed, no low or mean thought 
 ever sullied those beautiful lips. It was not the mere innocence 
 of inexperience, but the moral incapability of guile, that charmed 
 him in the companion he had chosen on his path to Eternity ! 
 He was also delighted to notice Evelyn's readiness of resources : 
 she had that faculty, without which woman has no independence 
 from the world, no pledge that domestic retirement will not soon 
 languish into wearisome monotony the faculty of making trifles 
 contribute to occupation or amusement ; she was easily pleased, 
 and yet she so soon reconciled herself to disappointment. He 
 felt, and chid his own dulness for not feeling it before that,young 
 and surpassingly lovely as she was, she required no stimulant 
 from the heated pursuits and the hollow admiration of the 
 crowd. 
 
 " Such," thought he, "are the natures that alone can preserve 
 through years the poetry of the first passionate illusion that can
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 29! 
 
 alone render wedlock the seal that confirms affection, and not 
 the mocking ceremonial that vainly consecrates its grave !" 
 
 Maltravers, as we have seen, formally wrote to Lumley some 
 days after their return to Paris. He would have written also 
 to Lady Vargrave but Evelyn thought it best to prepare her 
 mother by a letter from herself. 
 
 Miss Cameron now wanted but a few weeks to the age of 
 eighteen, at which she was to be the sole mistress of her own 
 destiny. On arriving at that age, the marriage was to take place. 
 Valerie heard with sincere delight of the new engagement her 
 friend had formed. She eagerly sought every opportunity to 
 increase her intimacy with Evelyn, who was completely won by 
 her graceful kindness ; the result of Valerie's examination was, 
 that she did not wonder at the passionate love of Maltravers, 
 but that her deep knowledge of the human heart (that knowl- 
 edge so remarkable in the women of her country ! ) made her 
 doubt how far it was adequately returned how far Evelyn 
 deceived herself. Her first satisfaction became mingled with 
 anxiety, and she relied more for the future felicity of her friend 
 on Evelyn's purity of thought and general tenderness of heart, 
 than on the exclusiveness and ardor of her love. Alas ! few 
 at eighteen are not too young for the irrevocable step and 
 Evelyn was younger than her years! One evening, at Madame 
 de Ventadour's, Maltravers asked Evelyn if she had yet heard 
 from Lady Vargrave. Evelyn expressed her surprise that she 
 had not, and the conversation fell, as was natural, upon Lady 
 Vargrave herself. " Is she as fond of music as you are ?" asked 
 Maltravers. 
 
 " Yes, indeed, I think so and of the songs of a certain 
 person in particular ; they always had for her an indescribable 
 charm. Often have I heard her say, that to read your writings 
 was like talking to an early friend. Your name and genius 
 seemed to make her solitary connection with the great world. 
 Nay but you will not be angry I half think it was her enthu- 
 siasm, so strange and rare, that first taught me interest in 
 yourself." 
 
 " I have a double reason, then, for loving your mother," said 
 Maltravers, much pleased and flattered. " And does she not 
 like Italian music?" 
 
 " Not much ; she prefers some rather old-fashioned German 
 airs, very simple, but very touching." 
 
 " My own early passion," said Maltravers, more and more 
 interested. 
 
 "But there are, also, one or two English songs which I have
 
 igt ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 occasionally, but very seldom, heard her sing. One in especial 
 affects her so deeply, even when she plays the air, that I have 
 always attached to it a certain mysterious sanctity. I should 
 not like to sing it before a crowd ; but to-morrow, when you 
 call on me, and we are alone " 
 
 " Ah, to-morrow I will not fail to remind you." 
 
 Their conversation ceased ; yet, somehow or other, that 
 night when he retired to rest, the recollection of it haunted 
 Maltravers. He felt a vague, unaccountable curiosity respect- 
 ing this secluded and solitary mother; all concerning her early 
 fate seemed so wrapt in mystery. Cleveland, in reply to his 
 letter, had informed him that all inquiries respecting the birth 
 and first marriage of Lady Vargrave had failed. Evelyn evi- 
 dently knew but little of either, and he felt a certain delicacy 
 in pressing questions which might be ascribed to the inquisi- 
 tiveness of a vulgar family pride. Moreover, lovers have so 
 much to say to each other, that he had not yet found time to 
 talk at length to Evelyn about third persons. He slept ill that 
 night dark and boding dreams disturbed his slumber. He 
 rose late and dejected by presentiments he could not master : 
 his morning meal was scarcely over, and he had already taken 
 his hat to go to Evelyn's for comfort and sunshine, when the 
 door opened, and he was surprised by the entrance of Lord 
 Vargrave. 
 
 Lumley seated himself with a formal gravity very unusual to 
 him ; and, as if anxious to waive unnecessary explanations, be- 
 gan as follows, with a serious and impressive voice and aspect: 
 
 " Maltravers, of late years we have been estranged from each 
 other ; I do not presume to dictate to you your friendships or 
 your dislikes. Why this estrangement has happened, you alone 
 can determine. For my part, I am conscious of no offence ; 
 that which I was I am still. It is you who have changed. 
 Whether it be the difference of our political opinions, or any 
 other and more secret cause, I know not. I lament, but it is 
 now too late to attempt to remove it. If you suspect me of 
 ever seeking, or even wishing, to sow dissension between your- 
 self and my ill-fated cousin, now no more, you are mistaken. 
 I ever sought the happiness and the union of you both. And 
 yet, Maltravers, you then came between me and an early and 
 cherished dream. But I suffered in silence ; my course was at 
 least disinterested, perhaps generous : let it pass. A second 
 time you cross my path you win from me a heart I had long 
 learned to consider mine. You have no scruple of early friend- 
 ship you have no forbearance towards acknowledged and
 
 ALICE ; Oft, THE MYSTERIES. 29$ 
 
 affianced ties. You are my rival with Evelyn Cameron, and 
 your suit has prospered." 
 
 " Vargrave," said Maltravers, "you have spoken frankly; 
 and I will reply with an equal candor. A difference of tastes, 
 tempers, and opinions, led us long since into opposite paths. I 
 am one who cannot disunite public morality from private vir- 
 tue. From motives best known to you, but which I say openly 
 I hold to have been those of interest or ambition, you did not 
 change your opinions (there is no sin in that), but retaining 
 them in private, professed others in public, and played with the 
 destinies of mankind, as if they were but counters, to mark a 
 mercenary game. This led me to examine your character with 
 more searching eyes ; and I found it one I could no longer 
 trust. With respect to the Dead let the pall drop over that 
 early grave I acquit you of all blame. He who sinned has 
 suffered more than would atone the crime ! You charge me 
 with my love to Evelyn. Pardon me, but I seduced no affec- 
 tion, I have broken no tie ! Not till she was free, in heart and 
 in hand, to choose between us, did I hint at love. Let me 
 think, that a way may be found to soften one portion at least 
 of the disappointment you cannot but feel acutely." 
 
 "Stay!" said Lord Vargrave (who, plunged in a gloomy 
 revery, had scarcely seemed to hear the last few sentences of 
 his rival) ; "stay, Maltravers. Speak not of love to Evelyn ! 
 a horrible foreboding tells me that, a few hours hence, you 
 would rather pluck out your tongue by the roots, than couple 
 the words of love with the thought of that unfortunate girl ! 
 Oh, if I were vindictive, what awful triumph would await me 
 now ! What retaliation on your harsh judgment, your cold 
 contempt, your momentary and wretched victory over me ! 
 Heaven is my witness, that my only sentiment is that of terror 
 and woe ! Maltravers, in your earliest youth, did you form con- 
 nection with one whom they called Alice Darvil?" 
 
 " Alice ! merciful Heaven ! what of her ? " 
 
 " Did you never know that the Christian name of Evelyn's 
 mother is Alice ? " 
 
 " I never asked I never knew ; but it is a common name," 
 faltered Maltravers. 
 
 " Listen to me," resumed Vargrave : " with Alice Darvil you 
 lived in the neighborhood of , did you not ? " 
 
 " Go on go on ! " 
 
 " You took the name of Butler by that name Alice Darvil 
 was afterwards known in the town in which my uncle resided 
 (there are gaps in the history that I cannot of my own know
 
 294 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 ledge fill up) she taught music my uncle became enamoured 
 of her but he was vain and worldly. She removed into 
 Devonshire, and he married her there, under the name of Cam- 
 eron, by which name he hoped to conceal from the world the 
 lowness of her origin, and the humble calling she had followed. 
 Hold ! do not interrupt me. Alice had one daughter, as was 
 supposed, by a former marriage that daughter was the off- 
 spring of him whose name she bore yes, of the false Butler ! - 
 that daughter is Evelyn Cameron ! " 
 
 " Liar ! devil ! " cried Maltravers, springing to his feet, as 
 if a shot had pierced his heart. " Proofs proofs ! " 
 
 " Will these suffice ? " said Vargrave : as he drew forth the 
 letters of Winsley and Lady Vargrave. Maltravers took them, 
 but it was some moments before he could dare to read. He 
 supported himself with difficulty from falling to the ground ; 
 there was a gurgle in his throat, like the sound of the death- 
 rattle : at last he read, and dropped the letters from his hand. 
 
 " Wait me here," he said, very faintly, and moved mechani- 
 cally to the door. 
 
 *' Hold ! " said Lord Vargrave, laying his hand upon Ernest's 
 arm. " Listen to me for Evelyn's sake for her mother's. You 
 are about to seek Evelyn be it so ! I know that you possess 
 the godlike gift of self-control. You will not suffer her to 
 learn that her mother has done that which dishonors alike 
 mother and child ? You will not consummate your wrong to 
 Alice Darvil, by robbing her of the fruit of a life of penitence 
 and remorse ? You will not unveil her shame to her own 
 daughter ? Convince yourself, and master yourself while you 
 do so ! " 
 
 "Fear me not," said- Maltravers, with a terrible smile; "I 
 will not afflict my conscience with a double curse. As I have 
 sowed, so must I reap. Wait me here ! " 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 * "Misery, 
 
 That gathers force each moment as it rolls, 
 And must, at last, o'erwhelm me" LILLO : Fatal Curiosity. 
 
 1 MALTRAVERS found Evelyn alone ; she turned towards him 
 with her usual sweet smile of welcome ; but the smile vanished 
 at once, as her eyes met his changed and working countenance ; 
 cold drops stood upon the rigid and marble brow the lips
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 295 
 
 writhed as if in bodily torture the muscles of the face had 
 fallen, and there was a wildness which appalled her in the fixed 
 and feverish brightness of the eyes. 
 
 " You are ill, Ernest, dear Ernest, you are ill, your look 
 freezes me ! " 
 
 " Nay, Evelyn," said Maltravers, recovering himself by one 
 of those efforts of which men who have suffered without sympathy 
 are alone capable ; " nay, 1 am better now ; I have been ill 
 very ill but I am better ! " 
 
 "111 ! and I not to know of it ! " She attempted to take his 
 hand as she spoke. Maltravers recoiled. 
 
 " It is fire ! it burns ! avaunt ! " he cried frantically. 
 " O Heaven ! spare me, spare me ! " 
 
 Evelyn was now seriously alarmed ; she gazed on him with 
 the lenderest compassion. Was this one of those moody and 
 overwhelming paroxysms to which it had been whispered abroad 
 that he was subject ? Strange as it may seem, despite her ter- 
 ror, he was dearer to her in that hour as she believed, of gloom 
 and darkness than in all the glory of his majestic intellect, or 
 all the blandishments of his soft address. 
 
 " What has happened to you?" she said, approaching him 
 again ; " have you seen Lord Vargrave ? I know that he has 
 arrived, for his servant has been here to say so ; has he uttered 
 anything to distress you ? or has " (she added falteringly and 
 timidly) " has poor Evelyn offended you ? Speak to me, 
 only speak ! " 
 
 Maltravers turned, and his face was now calm and serene : 
 save by its extreme and almost ghastly paleness, no trace of the 
 hell within him could be discovered. 
 
 "Pardon me," said he gently, "I know not this morning 
 what I say or do ; think not of it think not of me it will pass 
 away when I hear your voice." 
 
 " Shall I sing to you the words I spoke of last night? see, I 
 have them ready I know them by heart ; but I thought you 
 might like to read them, they are so full of simple but deep 
 feeling." 
 
 Maltravers took the song from her hands, and bent over the 
 paper ; at first, the letters seemed dim and indistinct, for there 
 was a mist before his eyes ; but at last a chord of memory was 
 struck he recalled the words : they were some of those he had 
 composed for Alice in the first days of their delicious inter- 
 course links of the golden chain, in which he had sought to 
 bind the spirit of knowledge to that of love. 
 
 " And from whom," said he, in a faint voice, as he calmly put
 
 296 ALICE } OR, TH_ ..iYSTERIES. 
 
 down the verses, " from whom did your mother learn these 
 words ?" 
 
 " I know not ; some dear friend, years ago, composed and 
 gave them to her. It must have been one very dear to her, to 
 judge by the effect they still produce." 
 
 " Think you," said Maltravers, in a hollow voice " think you 
 
 IT WAS YOUR FATHER ?" 
 
 " My father ! she never speaks of him ! I have been early 
 taught to shun all allusion to his memory. My father ! it is 
 probable yes ! it may have been my father ; whom else could 
 she have loved so fondly ? " 
 
 There was a long silence ; Evelyn was the first to break it. 
 
 " I have heard from my mother, to-day, Ernest ; her letter 
 alarms me I scarce know why ! " 
 
 " Ay ! and how " 
 
 " It is hurried and incoherent almost wild : she says she has 
 learned some intelligence that has unsettled and unstrung her 
 mind ; she has requested me to inquire if any one I am ac- 
 quainted with has heard of, or met abroad, some person of the 
 name of Butler. You start ! have you known one of that 
 name ? " 
 
 " I ! did your mother never allude to that name before ? " 
 
 " Never ! and yet, once I remember " 
 
 " What ! " 
 
 "That I was reading an account in the papers of the sudden 
 death of some Mr. Butler ; and her agitation made a powerful 
 and strange impression upon me in fact, she fainted, and 
 seemed almost delirious when she recovered ; she would not 
 rest till I had completed the account, and when I came to the 
 particulars of his age, etc. (he was old, I think), she clasped her 
 hands, and wept ; but they seemed tears of joy. The name is 
 so common whom of that name have you known ? " 
 
 " It is no matter ! Is that your mother's letter ? is that her 
 handwriting ? " 
 
 " Yes ;" and Evelyn gave the letter to Maltravers. He 
 glanced over the characters ; he had once or twice seen Lady 
 Vargrave's handwriting before, and had recognized no likeness 
 between that handwriting and such early specimens of Alice's 
 art as he had witnessed so many years ago, but now, " trifles 
 light as air " had grown " confirmation strong as proof of Holy 
 Writ," he thought he detected Alice in every line of the hur- 
 ried and blotted scroll ; and when his eye rested on the words 
 "Your affectionate MOTHER, Alice /" his blood curdled in his 
 veins,
 
 ALICE J OR, THE MYSTERIES 297 
 
 " It is strange ! " said he, still struggling for self-composure ; 
 " strange that I never thought of asking her name before, 
 Alice ! her name is Alice ? " 
 
 " A sweet name, is it not ? it accords so well with her simple 
 character how you would love her ! " 
 
 As she said this, Evelyn turned to Maltravers with enthu- 
 siasm, and again she was startled by his aspect ; for again it 
 was haggard, distorted, and convulsed. 
 
 "Oh ! if you love me," she cried, "do send immediately for 
 advice ! And yet, is it illness, Ernest, or is it some grief that 
 you hide from me ? " 
 
 " It is illness, Evelyn," said Maltravers, rising ; and his knees 
 knocked together. " I am not fit even for your companionship 
 I will go home." 
 
 " And send instantly for advice ?" 
 
 " Ay ! it waits me there already." 
 
 " Thank Heaven ! and you will write to me one little word 
 to relieve me ? I am so uneasy ! " 
 
 "I will write to you." 
 
 " This evening? " 
 
 "Ay!" 
 
 "Now go I will not detain you." 
 
 He walked slowly to the door, but when he reached it he 
 turned, and catching her anxious gaze, he opened his arms ; 
 overpowered with strange fear and affectionate sympathy, she 
 burst into passionate tears ; and, surprised out of the timidity 
 and reserve wnich had hitherto characterized her pure and meek 
 attachment to him, she fell on his breast, and sobbed aloud. 
 Maltravers raised his hands, and, placing them solemnly on her 
 young head, his lips muttered as if in prayer. He paused, and 
 strained her to his heart ; but he shunned that parting kiss, 
 which, hitherto, he had so fondly sought. That embrace was 
 one of agony, and not of rapture, and yet Evelyn dreamt not 
 that he designed it for the last ! 
 
 Maltravers re-entered the room in which he had left Lord 
 Vargrave, who still awaited his return. 
 
 He walked up to Lumley and held out his hand. " You have 
 saved me from a dreadful crime from an everlasting remorse 
 I thank you ! " 
 
 Hardened and frigid as his nature was, Lumley was touched ; 
 the movement of Maltravers took him by surprise. " It has been 
 a dreadful duty, Ernest," said he, pressing the hand he held ; 
 " but to come, too, from me your rival ! "
 
 298 ALICE ; OR, 'HIE MYSTERIES. 
 
 "Proceed proceed, I pray you explain all this Yet expla- 
 nation ! what do I want to know ? Evelyn is my daughter 
 Alice's child ! For Heaven's sake, give me hope, say it is not 
 so say that she is Alice's child, but not mine ! Father, father! 
 and they call it a holy name it is a horrible one ! " 
 
 "Compose yourself, my dear friend : recollect what you have 
 escaped ! You will recover this shock ; time travel " 
 
 " Peace, man, peace ! Now then I am calm ! When Alice 
 left me she had no child. I knew not that she bore within her 
 the pledge of our ill-omened and erring love. Verily, the sins 
 of my youth have arisen against me ; and the curse has come 
 home to roost ! " 
 
 "I cannot explain to you all details." 
 
 "But why not have told me of this? Why not have warned 
 me why not have said to me, when my heart could have been 
 satisfied by so sweet a tie ' Thou hast a daughter thou art not 
 desolate?" Why reserve the knowledge of the blessing until it 
 had turned to poison ? Fiend that you are ! you have waited this 
 hour to gloat over the agony from which a word from you a 
 year, nay, a month ago a little month ago, might have saved 
 me and her!" 
 
 Maltravers, as he spoke, approached Vargrave, with eyes 
 sparkling with fierce passion ; his hand clenched, his form di- 
 lated, the veins on his forehead swelled like cords. Lumley, 
 brave as he was, recoiled. 
 
 "I knew not this secret," said he, deprecatingly, "till a few 
 days before I came hither ; and I came hither at once to disclose 
 it to you. Will you listen to me ? I knew that my uncle had 
 married a person much beneath him in rank ; but he was guarded 
 and cautious, and I knew no more, except that by a first hus- 
 band that lady had one daughter, Evelyn. A chain of acci- 
 dents suddenly acquainted me with the rest." Here Vargrave 
 pretty faitli fully repeated what he had learned from the brewer 
 
 at C , and from Mr. Onslow ; but when he came to the tacit 
 
 confirmation of all his suspicions, received from Mrs. Leslie, he 
 greatly exaggerated, and greatly distorted the account. " Judge, 
 then," concluded Lumley, "of the horror with which I heard that 
 you had declared an attachment to Evelyn, and that it was re- 
 turned. Ill as I was, I hastened hither : you know the rest, 
 are you satisfied ?" 
 
 " I will go to Alice ! I will learn from her own lips yet how 
 .can I meet her again ? How say to her, ' I have taken from 
 thee thy last hope I have broken thy child's heart?' " 
 
 ** Forgive me, but I should confess to you that, from all \ can
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 learn from Mrs. Leslie, Lady Vargrave has but one prayer one 
 hope in life that she may never again meet with her betrayer. 
 You may, indeed, in her own letter, perceive how much she is 
 terrified by the thought of your discovering her. She has, at 
 length, recovered peace of mind, and tranquillity of conscience. 
 She shrinks with dread from the prospect of ever again encoun- 
 tering one once so dear, now associated in her mind with rec- 
 ollections of guilt and sorrow. More than all this, she is sen- 
 sitively alive to the fear of shame, the dread of detection. If 
 ever her daughter were to know her sin, it would be to her as a 
 death-blow. Yet, in her nervous state of health, her ever quick 
 and uncontrollable feelings, if you were to meet her, she would 
 disguise nothing, conceal nothing. The veil would be torn 
 aside ; the menials in her own house would tell the tale, and 
 curiosity circulate, and scandal blacken, the story of her early 
 errors. No, Maltravers, at least wait awhile before you see her; 
 wait till her mind can be prepared for such an interview, till pre- 
 cautions can be taken, till you yourself are in a calmer state of 
 mind." 
 
 Maltravers fixed his piercing eyes on Lumley while he thus 
 spoke, and listened in deep attention. 
 
 "It matters not," said he, after a long pause, "whether these 
 be your real reasons for wishing to defer or prevent a meeting 
 between Alice and myself. The affliction that has come upon 
 me bursts with too clear and scorching a blaze of light, for me 
 to see any chance of escape or mitigation. Even if Evelyn were 
 the daughter of Alice by another, she would be forever sepa- 
 rated from me. The mother and the child ! there is a kind of 
 incest even in that thought ! But such an alleviation of my an- 
 guish is forbidden to my reason. No, poor Alice, I will not dis- 
 turb the repose thoti hast won at last ! Thou shall never have 
 the grief to know that our error has brought upon thy lover so 
 black a doom ! All is over ! the world never shall find me 
 again. Nothing is left for me but the desert and the grave ! " 
 
 "Speak not so, Ernest," said Lord Vargrave soothingly ; "a 
 little while and you will recover this blow : your control over 
 passion has, even in youth, inspired me with admiration and 
 surprise ; and now, in calmer years, and with such incentives to 
 self-mastery, your triumph will come sooner than you think. 
 Evelyn, too, is so young ; she has not known you long ; perhaps 
 her love, after all, is that caused by some mystic but innocent 
 working of nature, and she would rejoice to call you 'father.' 
 Happy years are yet in store for you." 
 
 Maltravers did not listen to these vain and hollow consolations.
 
 300 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 With his head drooping on his bosom, his whole frame unnerved, 
 the large tears rolling unheeded down his cheeks, he seemed the 
 very picture of the broken-hearted man, whom fate never again 
 could raise from despair. He who had, for years, so cased 
 himself in pride, on whose very front was engraved the victory 
 over passion and misfortune, whose step had trod the earth in 
 the royalty of the Conqueror ; the veriest slave that crawls bore 
 not a spirit more humbled, fallen, or subdued ! He who had 
 looked with haughty eyes on the infirmities of others, who had 
 disdained to serve his race, because of their human follies and 
 partial frailties /if, even he the Pharisee of Genius had but 
 escaped by chance, and by the hand of the man he suspected 
 and despised, from a crime at which nature herself recoils, 
 which all law, social and divine, stigmatizes as inexpiable 
 which the sternest imagination of the very heathen had invented 
 as the gloomiest catastrophe that can befall the wisdom and the 
 pride of mortals ! But one step farther, and the fabulous CEdi- 
 pus had not been more accursed ! 
 
 Such thoughts as these, unformed, confused, but strong 
 enough to bow him to the dust, passed through the mind of 
 this wretched man. He had been familiar with grief, he had 
 been dull to enjoyment : sad and bitter memories had con- 
 sumed his manhood ; but pride had been left him still ! and he 
 had dared in his secret heart to say, " lean defy Fate ! " Now 
 the bolt had fallen Pride was shattered into fragments Self- 
 abasement was his companion Shame sate upon his prostrate 
 soul. The Future had no hope left in store. Nothing was 
 left for him but to die ! 
 
 Lord Vargrave gazed at him in real pain, in sincere compas- 
 sion ; for his nature, wily, deceitful, perfidious though it was, 
 had cruelty only so far as was necessary to the unrelenting exe- 
 cution of his schemes. No pity could swerve him from a pur- 
 pose ; but he had enough of the man within him to feel pity 
 not the less, even for his own victim ! At length Maltravers 
 lifted his head, and waved his hand gently to Lord Vargrave. 
 
 " All is now explained," said he, in a feeble voice ; " our in- 
 terview is over. I must be alone ; I have to collect my reason, 
 to commune calmly and deliberately with myself ; I have to 
 write to her to invent to lie I, who believed I could never, 
 never utter, even to an enemy, what was false ? And I must 
 not soften the blow to her. I must not utter a word of love 
 love, it is incest ! I must endeavor brutally to crush out the 
 very affection I created ! She must hate me oh, teach her to 
 hate me ! Blacken my name, traduce my motives, let her be-
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 30! 
 
 lieve them levity or perfidy, what you will. So will she forget 
 me the sooner ; so will she the easier bear the sorrow which 
 the father brings upon the child. And she has not sinned ! Oh 
 Heaven, the sin was mine ! Let my punishment be a sacrifice 
 that thou wilt accept for her ! " 
 
 Lord Vargrave attempted again to console ; but this time the 
 words died upon his lips. His arts failed him. Maltravers 
 turned impatiently away, and pointed to the door. 
 
 " I will see you again," said he, " before I quit Paris : leave 
 your address below." 
 
 Vargrave was not, perhaps, unwilling to terminate a scene so 
 painful : he muttered a few incoherent words, and abruptly 
 withdrew. He heard the door locked behind him as he de- 
 parted. Ernest Maltravers was alone what a solitude ! 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Pity me not, but lend thy serious hearing 
 To what I shall unfold." Hamlet. 
 
 LETTER FROM ERNEST MALTRAVERS TO EVELYN CAMERON. 
 
 " EVELYN ! 
 
 " All that you have read of faithlessness and perfidy will 
 seem tame to you when compared with that conduct which you 
 are doomed to meet from me. We must part, and for ever. 
 We have seen each other for the last time. It is bootless even 
 to ask the cause. Believe that I am fickle, false, heartless 
 that a whim has changed me, if you will. My resolve is unal- 
 terable. We meet no more, even as friends. I do not ask you 
 either to forgive or to remember me. Look on me as one 
 wholly unworthy even of resentment ! Do not think I write 
 this in madness, or in fever, or excitement. Judge me not by 
 my seeming illness this morning. I invent no excuse, no ex- 
 tenuation for my broken faith and perjured vows. Calmly, 
 coldly, and deliberately I write ; and thus writing, I renounce 
 your love. 
 
 " This language is wanton cruelty it is fiendish insult is it 
 not, Evelyn ? Am I not a villain ? Are you not grateful for 
 your escape ? Do you not look on the past with a shudder at 
 the precipice on which you stood ? 
 
 " I have done with this subject, I turn to another. We are 
 parted, Evelyn, and for ever. Do not fancy I repeat, do not 
 fancy that there is any error, any strange infatuation on my
 
 302 ALICE J OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 mind, that there is any possibility that the sentence can be an- 
 nulled. It were almost easier to call the dead from the grave 
 than bring us again together, as we were and as we hoped to 
 be. Now that you are convinced of that truth, learn, as soon 
 as you have recovered the first shock of knowing how much 
 wickedness there is on earth learn to turn to the future for 
 happier and more suitable ties than those you could have formed 
 with me. You are very young in youth our first impressions 
 are lively but evanescent you will wonder hereafter at having 
 fancied you loved me. Another and a fairer image will re- 
 place mine. This is what I desire and pray for. As soon as I 
 learn 1 hat you love another, that you are wedded to another, f will 
 reappear in the world : till then, 1 am a wanderer and an exile. 
 Your hand alone can efface from my brow the brand of Cain ! 
 When I am gone, Lord Vargrave will probably renew his suit. 
 I would rather you married one of your own years one whom 
 you could love fondly one who would chase away every re- 
 membrance of the wretch who now forsakes you. But perhaps 
 I have mistaken Lord Vargrave's character perhaps he may 
 be worthier of you than I deemed (/ who set up for the censor 
 of other men !) perhaps he may both win and deserve your 
 affection. 
 
 " Evelyn, farewell God, who tempers the wind to the shorn 
 lamb, will watch over you ! 
 
 " ERNEST MALTRAVERS." 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 " Our acts our angels are, or good or ill, 
 The fatal shadows that walk by us still." JOHN FLETCHER. 
 
 THE next morning came ; the carriage was at the door of 
 Maltravers, to bear him away he cared not whither. Where 
 could he fly from memory? He had just despatched the letter 
 to Evelyn a letter studiously written for the object of destroy- 
 ing all the affection to which he had so fondly looked as the 
 last charm of life. He was now only waiting for Vargrave, to 
 whom he had sent, and who hastened to obey the summons. 
 
 WhenLumley arrived, he was shocked at the alteration which 
 a single night had effected in the appearance of Maltravers ; 
 but he was surprised and relieved to find him calm and self- 
 possessed. 
 
 "Vargrave," said Maltravers, "whatever our past coldness,
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 303 
 
 henceforth I owe to you an eternal gratitude ; and henceforth 
 this awful secret makes between us an indissoluble bond. If 
 I have understood you rightly, neither Alice nor other living 
 being than yourself knows that in me, Ernest Maltravers, stands 
 the guilty object of Alice's first love. Let that secret still be 
 kept ; relieve Alice's mind from the apprehension of learning 
 that the man who betrayed her yet lives : he will not live long ! 
 I leave time and method of explanation to your own judgment 
 and acuteness. Now for Evelyn." Here Maltravers stated 
 generally the tone of the letter he had written. Vargrave 
 listened tnoughtfully. 
 
 "Maltravers," said he, "it is right to try first the effect of 
 your letter. But if it fail if it only serve to inflame the imagin- 
 ation and excite the interest if Evelyn still continue to love 
 you if that love preys upon her if it should undermine health 
 and spirit if it should destroy her ?" 
 
 Maltravers groaned. Lumley proceeded, " I say this not to 
 wound you, but to provide against all circumstances. I too 
 have spent the night in revolving what is best to be done in 
 such a case ; and this is the plan I have formed. Let us, if 
 need be, telt the truth to Evelyn, robbing the truth only of its 
 shame. Nay, nay, listen. Why not say that, under a borrowed 
 name, and in the romance of early youth, you knew and loved 
 Alice (though in innocence and honor): your tender age the 
 difference of rank forbade your union. Her father, discover- 
 ing your clandestine correspondence, suddenly removed her 
 from the country, and destroyed all clue for your inquiries. 
 You lost sight of each other each was taught to believe the 
 other dead. Alice was compelled by her father to marry Mr. 
 Cameron ; and, after his death, her poverty and her love for 
 her only child induced her to accept my uncle. You have now 
 learned all have learned that Evelyn is the daughter of your 
 first love the daughter of one who adores you still, and whose 
 life your remembrance has, for so many years, embittered. 
 Evelyn herself will at once comprehend all the scruples of a 
 delicate mind ; Evelyn herself will recoil from the thought of 
 making the child the rival to the mother. She will understand 
 why you have flown from her ; she will sympathize with your 
 struggles ; she will recall the constant melancholy of Alice ; 
 she will hope that the ancient love may be renewed, and efface 
 all grief; Geneiosity and Duty alike will urge her to conquer 
 her own affection ! And hereafter, when time has restored you 
 both, father and child may meet with such sentiments as father 
 and child may own ! "
 
 304 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 Maltravers was silent for some minutes ; at length he said 
 abruptly, "And you really loved her, Vargrave? you love her 
 still ? your dearest care must be her welfare." 
 
 " It is ! indeed, it is ! " 
 
 " Then I must trust to your discretion ; I can have no other 
 confidant; Imyself am not fit to judge. My mind is darkened 
 you may be right I think so." 
 
 "One word more she may discredit my tale if unsupported. 
 Will you write one line to me, to say that I am authorized to 
 reveal the secret, and that it is known only to me? I will not 
 use it unless I should think it absolutely required." 
 
 Hastily and mechanically Maltravers wrote a few words to 
 the effect of what Lumley had suggested. "I will inform you," 
 he said to Vargrave as he gave him the paper, " of whatever 
 spot may become my asylum ; and you can communicate to me 
 all that I dread and long to hear ; but let no man know the 
 refuge of despair ! " 
 
 There was positively a tear in Vargrave's cold eye ; the only 
 tear that had glistened there for many years ; he paused irresolute, 
 then advanced, again halted, muttered to himself, and turned 
 aside. 
 
 "As for the world," Lumley resumed, after a pause, "your 
 engagement has been public some public account of its breach 
 must be invented. You have always been considered a proud 
 man ; we will say that it was low birth on the side of both mother 
 and father (the last only just discovered) that broke off the 
 alliance ! " 
 
 Vargrave was talking to the deaf, what cared Maltravers for 
 the world? He hastened from the room, threw himself into his 
 carriage, and Vargrave was left to plot, to hope, and to aspire !
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 305 
 
 BOOK X. 
 
 OiAov "Oveipov. HOMER. 
 A dream. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 " Qualis ubi in lucem coluber 
 # * Mala gramina pastus." * VlRGIL. 
 
 " Pars minima est ipsa puella sui." f OVID. 
 
 IT would be superfluous, and, perhaps, a sickening task, to 
 detail at length the mode and manner in which Vargrave coiled 
 his snares round the unfortunate girl whom his destiny had 
 marked out for his prey. He was right in foreseeing that, after 
 the first amazement caused by the letter of Maltravers, Evelyn 
 would feel resentment crushed beneath her certainty of his 
 affection ; her incredulity at his self-accusations, and her secret 
 conviction that some reverse, some misfortune he was unwilling 
 she should share, was the occasion of his farewell and flight. 
 Vargrave therefore very soon communicated to Evelyn the tale 
 he had suggested to Maltravers. He reminded her of the 
 habitual sorrow, the evidence of which was so visible in Lady 
 Vargrave of her indifference to the pleasures of the world 
 of her sensitive shrinking from all recurrence to her early fate. 
 " The secret of this," said he, "is in a youthful and most fervent 
 attachment ; your mother loved a young stranger above her in 
 rank, who (his head being full of German romance) was then 
 roaming about the country on pedestrian and adventurous excur- 
 sions, under the assumed name of Butler. By him she was most 
 ardently beloved in return. Her father, perhaps, suspected the 
 rank of her lover, and was fearful of her honor being com- 
 promised. He was a strange man, that father ! and I know not 
 his real character and motives ! but he suddenly withdrew his 
 daughter from the suit and search of her lover they saw each 
 other no more ; her lover mourned her as one dead. In process 
 of time your mother was constrained by her father to marry Mr. 
 Cameron, and was left a widow with an only child yourself : 
 she was poor very poor ! and her love and anxiety for you at 
 last induced her to listen to the addresses of my late uncle ; for 
 your sake she married again again death dissolved the tie ! 
 
 * As when a snake glides into light, having fed on pernicious pastures, 
 t The girl is the least part of himself,
 
 306 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 But still, unceasingly and faithfully, she recalled that first love, 
 the memory of which darkened and embittered all her life and 
 still she lived upon the hope to meet with the lost again. At 
 last, and most recently, it was my fate to discover that the object 
 of this unconquerable affection lived was still free in hand if 
 not in heart : You behold the lover of your mother in Ernest 
 Maltravers ! It devolved on me (an invidious a reluctant 
 duty) to inform Maltravers of the identity of Lady Vargrave 
 with the Alice of his boyish passion ! to prove to him her 
 suffering, patient, unsubdued affection ; to convince him that 
 the sole hope left to her in life was that of one day or other 
 beholding him once again. You know Mattravers his high- 
 wrought, sensitive, noble character : he recoiled in terror from 
 the thought of making his love to the daughter the last and 
 bitterest affliction to the mother he had so loved ; knowing too 
 how completely that mother had entwined herself round your 
 affections, he shuddered at the pain and self-reproach that would 
 be yours when you should discover to whom you had been the 
 rival, and whose the fond hopes and dreams that your fatal 
 beauty had destroyed. Tortured, despairing, and half beside 
 himself, he has fled from this ill-omened passion, and in solitude 
 he now seeks to subdue that passion. Touched by the woe, the 
 grief, of the Alice of his youth, it is his intention, as soon as he 
 can know you restored to happiness and content, to hasten to 
 your mother, and offer his future devotion as the fulfilment of 
 former vows. On you, and you alone, it depends to restore 
 Maltravers to the world, on you alone it depends to bless the 
 remaining years of the mother who so dearly loves you ! " 
 
 It may be easily conceived with what sensations of wonder, 
 compassion, and dismay, Evelyn listened to this tale, the progress 
 of which her exclamations her sobs often interrupted. She 
 would write instantly to her mother to Maltravers. Oh ! how 
 gladly she could relinquish his suit! How cheerfully promise 
 to rejoice in that desertion which brought happiness to the 
 mother she had so loved ! 
 
 " Nay," said Vargrave, " your mother must not know, till the 
 intelligence can be breathed by his lips, and softened by his 
 protestations of returning affection, that the mysterious object 
 of her early romance is that Maltravers whose vows have been 
 so lately offered to her own child. Would not such intelligence 
 shock all pride and destroy all hope ? How could she then con- 
 sent to the sacrifice which Maltravers is prepared to make? No! 
 not till you are another's, not (to use the words of Maltravers) till 
 you are a happy and beloved wife must your mother receive
 
 ALICE J OR, THE MYSTERIES. 307 
 
 the returning homage of Maltravers not till then can she know 
 \vhere that homage has been recently rendered not till then 
 can Maltravers feel justified in the atonement he meditates. He 
 is willing to sacrifice himself he trembles at the thought of 
 sacrificing you ! Say nothing to your mother, till, from her 
 own lips, she tells you that she has learned all." 
 
 Could Evelyn hesitate ? could Evelyn doubt? To allay the 
 fears, to fulfil the prayers of the man whose conduct appeared 
 so generous to restore him to peace and the world above all, 
 to pluck from the heart of that beloved and gentle mother the 
 rankling dart to shed happiness over her fate to reunite her 
 with the loved and lost ; what sacrifice too great for this? 
 
 Ah ! why was Legard absent? Why did she believe him ca- 
 pricious, light, and false ? Why had she shut her softest thoughts 
 from her soul ? But he the true lover was afar, and his true 
 love unknown ! and Vargrave, the watchful serpent, was at hand. 
 
 In a fatal hour, and in the transport of that enthusiasm which 
 inspires alike our more rash and our more sublime deeds 
 which makes us alike dupes and martyrs the enthusiasm that 
 tramples upon self, that forfeits all things to a high-wrought 
 zeal for others, Evelyn consented to become the wife of Var- 
 grave ! Nor was she at first sensible of the sacrifice sensible 
 of anything but the glow of a noble spirit and an approving con- 
 science. Yes, thus, and thus alone, did she obey both duties : 
 that, which she had well-nigh abandoned, to her dead benefactor 
 and that to the living mother. Afterwards came a dread reac- 
 tion ; and then, at last, that passive and sleep-like resignation, 
 which is Despair under a milder name. Yes such a lot had 
 been predestined from the first in vain had she sought to fly 
 it : Fate had overtaken her, and she must submit to the decree ! 
 
 She was most anxious that the intelligence of the new bond 
 might be transmitted instantly to Maltravers. Vargrave prom- 
 ised, but took care not to perform. He was too acute not to 
 know that, in so sudden a step, Evelyn's motives would be ap- 
 parent ; and his own suit indelicate and ungenerous. He was 
 desirous that Maltravers should learn nothing till the vows had 
 been spoken, and the indissoluble chain forged. Afraid to 
 leave Evelyn, even for a day, afraid to trust her in England to 
 an interview with her mother, he remained at Paris, and hur- 
 ried on all the requisite preparations. He sent to Douce, who 
 came in person, with the deeds necessary for the transfer of the 
 money for the purchase of Lisle Court, which was now to be 
 immediately completed. The money was to be lodged in Mr. 
 Douce's bank till the lawyers had concluded their operations ;
 
 308 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 and in a few weeks, when Evelyn had attained the allotted age, 
 Vargrave trusted to see himself lord alike of the betrothed bride, 
 and the hereditary lands, of the crushed Maltravers. He re- 
 frained from stating to Evelyn who was the present proprietor 
 of the estate to become hers ; he foresaw all the objections she 
 would form ; and, indeed, she was unable to think, to talk, of 
 such matters. One favor she had asked, and it had been granted ; 
 that she was to be left unmolested to her solitude, till the fatal 
 day. Shut up in her lonely room, condemned not to confide 
 her thoughts, to seek for sympathy even in her mother, the 
 poor girl in vain endeavored to keep up to the tenor of her first 
 enthusiasm, and reconcile herself to a step which, however, she 
 was heroine enough not to retract or to repent, even while she 
 recoiled from its contemplation. 
 
 Lady Doltimore, amazed at what had passed ; at the flight of 
 Maltravers ; the success of Lumley unable to account for it, 
 to extort explanation from Vargrave or from Evelyn, was dis- 
 tracted by the fear of some villanous deceit which she could 
 not fathom. To escape herself, she plunged yet more eagerly 
 into the gay vortex. Vargrave, suspicious, and fearful of trust- 
 ing to what she might say in her nervous and excited temper, 
 if removed from his watchful eye, deemed himself compelled to 
 hover round her. His manner, his conduct, were most guarded : 
 but Caroline herself, jealous, irritated, unsettled, evinced at 
 times a right both to familiarity and anger, which drew upon 
 her and himself the sly vigilance of slander. Meanwhile Lord 
 Doltimore, though too cold and proud openly to notice what 
 passed around him, seemed disturbed and anxious. His man- 
 ner to Vargrave was distant ; he shunned all tete-a-tetes with his 
 wife. Little, however, of this did Lumley heed a few weeks 
 more, and all would be well and safe. Vargrave did not pub- 
 lish his engagement with Evelyn : he sought carefully to con- 
 ceal it till the very day was near at hand : but it was whispered 
 abroad ; some laughed some believed. Evelyn herself was 
 seen nowhere. De Montaigne had, at first, been indignantly 
 incredulous at the report that Maltravers had broken off a con- 
 nection he had so desired, from a motive so weak and unworthy 
 as that of mere family pride. A letter from Maltravers, who 
 confided to him and Vargrave alone the secret of his retreat, 
 reluctantly convinced him that the wise are but pompous fools ! 
 He was angry and disgusted ; and still more so, when Valerie 
 and Teresa (for female friends stand by us right or wrong) 
 hinted at excuses ; or surmised that other causes lurked behind 
 t-he one alleged. But his thoughts were much drawn from thif
 
 ALICE J OR, THE MYSTERIES. 309 
 
 subject by increasing anxiety for Cesarini, whose abode and 
 fate still remained an alarming mystery. 
 
 It so happened that Lord Doltimore, who had always had a 
 taste for the Antique, and who was greatly displeased with his 
 own family-seat, because it was comfortable and modern, fell, 
 from ennui, into a habit, fashionable enough at Paris, of buying 
 curiosities and cabinets high-back chairs, and oak-carvings ; 
 and with this habit returned the desire and the affection for 
 Burleigh. Understanding from Lumley that Maltravers had 
 probably left his native land for ever, he imagined it extremely 
 probable that the latter would now consent to the sale, and he 
 begged Vargrave to forward a letter from him to that effect. 
 
 Vargrave made some excuse, for he felt that nothing could 
 be more indelicate than such an application, forwarded through 
 his hands, at such a time ; and Doltimore, who had accidentally 
 heard De Montaigne confess that he knew the address of Mal- 
 travers, quietly sent his letter to the Frenchman, and, without 
 mentioning its contents, begged him to forward it. De Mon- 
 taigne did so. Now it is very strange how slight men and slight 
 incidents bear on the great events of life. But that simple let- 
 ter was instrumental to a new revolution in the strange history 
 of Maltravers. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 " Quid frustra simulacra fugacia captas ? 
 Quod petis est nusquam."* OVID, Met. iii. 432. 
 
 To no clime dedicated to the indulgence of majestic griefs 
 or to the soft melancholy of regret not to thy glaciers, or thy 
 dark blue lakes, beautiful Switzerland, Mother of many exiles 
 nor to thy fairer earth, and gentler Heaven, sweet Italy fled 
 the agonized Maltravers. Once, in his wanderings, he had 
 chanced to pass by a landscape so steeped in sullen and deso- 
 late ^loom, that it had made a powerful and uneffaced impres- 
 sion upon his mind : it was amidst those swamps and morasses 
 that formerly surrounded the castle of Gil de Retz, the ambi- 
 tious Lord, the dreaded Necromancer, who perished at the 
 stake, after a career of such power and splendor as seemed 
 almost to justify the dark belief in his preternatural agencies.f 
 
 Here, in a lonely and wretched inn, remote from other habi- 
 tations, Maltravers fixed himself. In gentler griefs, there was 
 
 * Why, in vain, do you catch at fleeting shadows ? That which you seek is nowhere, 
 t See, for a description of the scenery, and the fate of De Retz, the high-wrought and 
 glowing romance by Mr. Ritchie, called The Magician,
 
 310 ALICE J OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 a sort of luxury in bodily discomfort : in his inexorable and un- 
 mitigated anguish, bodily discomfort was not felt. There is a 
 kind of magnetism in extreme woe, by which the body itself 
 seems laid asleep, and knows no distinction between the bed of 
 Damien and the rose-couch of the Sybarite. He left his car- 
 riage and servants at a post-house some miles distant. He came 
 to this dreary abode alone ; and in that wintry season, and that 
 most disconsolate scene, his gloomy soul found something con- 
 genial, something that did not mock him, in the frowns of the hag- 
 gard and dismal nature. Vain would it be to describe what he then 
 felt what he then endured. Suffice it that, through all, the diviner 
 strength of man was not wholly crushed ; and that daily, nightly, 
 hourly, he prayed to the Great Comforter to assist him in wrest- 
 ling against a guilty love. No man struggles so honestly, so 
 ardently as he did, utterly in vain ; for in us all, if we would 
 but cherish it, there is a spirit that must rise at last a crowned, 
 if bleeding conqueror over Fate and all the Demons ! 
 
 One day after a prolonged silence from Vargrave, whose 
 letters all breathed comfort and assurance in Evelyn's progres- 
 sive recovery of spirit and hope, his messenger returned from 
 the post-town with a letter in the hand of De Montaigne. It 
 contained, in a blank envelope (De Montaigne's silence told 
 him how much he had lost in the esteem of his friend), the 
 communication of Lord Doltimore. It ran thus : 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR: As I hear that your plans are likely to make 
 you long resident on the Continent, may I again inquire if you 
 would be induced to dispose of Burleigh ? I am willing to 
 give more than its real value, and would raise a mortgage on 
 my own property sufficient to pay off at once, the whole pur- 
 chase-money. Perhaps you may be more induced to the sale 
 from the circumstance of having an example in the head of 
 your family : Colonel Maltravers, as I learn through Lord 
 Vargrave, having resolved to dispose of Lisle Court. Waiting 
 your answer, I am, dear sir. Truly yours, 
 
 " DOLTIMORE." 
 
 " Ay," said Maltravers bitterly, crushing the letter in his 
 hand ; " let our name be blotted out from the land, and our 
 hearths pass to the stranger. How could I ever visit again the 
 place where I first saw her? " 
 
 He resolved at once he would write to England, and place 
 the matter in the hands of agents. This was but a short-lived 
 diversion to his thoughts, and their cloudy darkness soon 
 gathered round him again.
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 3tt 
 
 What I am now about to relate may appear, to a hasty criti- 
 cism, to savor of the Supernatural ; but it is easily accounted 
 for by ordinary agencies, and it is strictly to the letter of the 
 truth. 
 
 In his sleep that night, a dream appeared to Maltravers. He 
 thought he was alone in the old library at Burleigh, and gazing 
 on the portrait of his mother ; as he so gazed, he fancied that 
 a cold and awful tremor seized upon him that he in vain en- 
 deavored to withdraw his eyes from the canvas his sight was 
 chained there by an irresistible spell. Then it seemed to him 
 that the portrait gradually changed ; the features the same, but 
 the bloom vanished into a white and ghastly hue ; the colors 
 of the dress faded, their fashion grew more large and flowing, 
 but heavy and rigid, as if cut in stone the robes of the grave. 
 But on the face there was a soft and melancholy smile, that 
 took from its livid aspect the natural horror : the lips moved, 
 and, it seemed as if without a sound the released soul spoke 
 to that which the earth yet owned. 
 
 " Return," it said, " to thy native land, and thine own home. 
 Leave not the last relic of her who bore and yet watches over 
 thee to stranger hands. Thy good Angel shall meet thee at 
 thy hearth ! " 
 
 The Voice ceased. With a violent effort Maltravers broke 
 the spell that had forbidden his utterance. He called aloud, 
 and the dream vanished : he was broad awake his hair erect 
 the cold dews on his brow. The pallet, rather than bed on 
 which he lay, was opposite the window, and the wintry moon- 
 light streamed wan and spectral into the cheerless room. But 
 between himself and the light there seemed to stand a shape 
 a shadow that into which the portrait had changed in his 
 dream that which had accosted and chilled his soul. He 
 sprang forward " My mother ! even in the grave canst thou 
 bless thy wretched son ! Oh, leave me not say that thou " 
 The delusion vanished, and Maltravers fell back insensible. 
 
 It was long in vain, when, in the healthful light of day, he 
 revolved this memorable dream, that Maltravers sought to con- 
 vince himself that dreams need no ministers from heaven or hell 
 to bring the gliding falsehoods along the paths of sleep ; that 
 the effect of that dream itself, on his shattered nerves, his ex- 
 cited fancy, was the real and sole raiser of the spectre he had 
 thought to behold on waking. Long was it before his judg- 
 ment could gain the victory, and reason disown the empire of a 
 turbulent imagination ; and, even when at length reluctantly 
 convinced, the dream still haunted him, and he could not shake
 
 312 ALICE; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 it from his breast. He longed anxiously for the next night ; 
 it came, but it brought neither dreams nor sleep, and the rain 
 beat, and the winds howled, against the casement. Another 
 night, and the moon was again bright ; and he fell in a deep 
 sleep ; no visions disturbed or hallowed it. He woke ashamed 
 of his own expectation. But the event, such as it was, by giving 
 a new turn to his thoughts, had roused and relieved his spirit, 
 and Misery sate upon him with a lighter load. Perhaps, too, 
 to that still haunting recollection was mainly owing a change 
 in his former purpose. He would still sell the old hall ; but 
 he would first return and remove that holy portrait, with pious 
 hands ; he would garner up and save all that had belonged to 
 her whose death had been his birth. Ah ! never had she 
 known for what trials the infant had been reserved ! 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 # * * " The weary hours steal on, 
 And flakey darkness breaks." Richard III. 
 
 ONCE more, suddenly and unlocked for, the Lord of Bur- 
 leigh appeared at the gates of his deserted hall ; and again the 
 old housekeeper and her satellites were thrown into dismay and 
 consternation. Amidst blank and welcomeless faces, Mal- 
 travers passed into his study ; and as soon as the logs burnt 
 and the bustle was over, and he was left alone, lie took up the 
 light and passed into the adjoining library. It was then about 
 nine o'clock in the evening ; the air of the room felt damp and 
 chill, and the light but faintly struggled against the mournful 
 gloom of the dark book-lined walls and sombre tapestry. He 
 placed the candle on the table, and, drawing aside the curtain 
 that veiled the portrait, gazed with deep emotion, not unmixed 
 with awe, upon the beautiful face whose eyes seemed fixed 
 upon him with mournful sweetness. There is something mys- 
 tical about those painted ghosts of ourselves that survive our 
 very dust ! Who, gazing upon them long and wistfully, does 
 not half fancy that they seem not insensible to his gaze, as if 
 we looked our own life into them, and the eyes that followed 
 us where we moved were animated by a strar.ge~r art than the 
 mere trick of the limner's colors. 
 
 With folded arms, rapt and motionless, Maltravers con- 
 templated the form that, by the upward rays of the flickering 
 light, seemed to bend down towards the desolate son. How
 
 ALICE; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 313 
 
 had he ever loved the memory of his mother ! how often in 
 his childish years had he stolen away, and shed wild tears for 
 the loss of that dearest of earthly ties, never to be compen- 
 sated, never to be replaced ! how had he respected how 
 sympathized with the very repugnance which his father had at 
 first testified towards him, as the innocent cause of her un- 
 timely death ! He had never seen her never felt her passion- 
 ate kiss ; and yet it seemed to him, as he gazed, as if he had 
 known her for years. That strange kind of inner and spiritual 
 memory which often recalls to us places and persons we have 
 never seen before, and which Platonists would resolve to the 
 unquenched and struggling consciousness of a former life, 
 stirred within him, and seemed to whisper, "you were united 
 in the old time." " Yes ! " he said, half aloud, " we will never 
 part again. Blessed be the delusion of the dream that recalled 
 to my heart the remembrance of thee, which at least I can 
 cherish without a sin. ' My good angel shall meet me at my 
 hearth ! ' So didst thou say in the solemn vision. Ah, does 
 thy soul watch over me still? How long shall it be before the 
 barrier is broken how long before we meet, but not in 
 dreams ! " 
 
 The door opened the housekeeper looked in " I beg par- 
 don, sir, but I thought your honor would excuse the liberty, 
 though I know it is very bold to " 
 
 " What is the matter what do you want ? " 
 
 "Why, sir, poor Mrs. Elton is dying they say she cannot 
 get over the night ; and as the carriage drove by the cottage 
 window, the nurse told her that the squire was returned and 
 she has sent up the nurse to entreat to see your honor before 
 she dies. I am sure I was most loth to disturb you, sir, with 
 such a message ; and says I, the squire has only just come off 
 a journey, and " 
 
 " Who is Mrs. Elton ? " 
 
 " Don't your honor remember the poor woman that was run 
 over, and you were so good to, and brought into the house the 
 day Miss Cameron " 
 
 "I remember say I will be with her in a few minutes. 
 About to die ! " muttered Maltravers ; " she is to be envied 
 the prisoner is let loose the bark leaves the desert isle ! " 
 
 He took his hat and walked across the park, dimly lighted 
 by the stars, to the cottage of the sufferer. He reached her 
 bedside, and took her hand kindly. She seemed to rally at 
 the sight of him the nurse was dismissed they were left alone. 
 
 Before morning, the spirit had left that humble clay ; and
 
 314 ALICE; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 the mists of dawn were heavy on the grass as Maltravers re- 
 turned home. There were then on his countenance the trace? 
 of recent and strong emotion, and his step was elastic, and his 
 cheek flushed. Hope once more broke within him, but mingled 
 with doubt, and faintly combated by reason. In another houi 
 Maltravers was on his was to Brook-Green. Impatient, restless, 
 fevered, he urged on the horses he sowed the road with gold, 
 and at length the wheels stopped before the door of the village 
 inn. He descended, asked the way to the curate's house ; and 
 crossing the burial-ground, and passing under the shadow of the 
 old yew-tree, entered Aubrey's garden. The curate was at 
 home ; and the conference that ensued was of deep and breath- 
 less interest to the visitor. 
 
 It is now time to place before the reader, in due order and 
 connection, the incidents of that story, the knowledge of which, 
 at that period, broke in detached and fragmentary portions OB 
 Maltravers. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 " I canna chuse, but ever will 
 Be luving to thy father stil, 
 Whair-eir he gae, whair-eir he ryde, 
 My luve with him maun stil abycle ; 
 In well or wae, whair-eir he gae, 
 Mine heart can neir depart him frae." 
 
 LADY ANNE BOTHWELL'S Lament. 
 
 IT may be remembered, that in the earlier part of this con- 
 tinuation of the history of Maltravers it was stated that Aubrey 
 had in early life met with the common lot of a disappointed 
 affection. Eleanor Westbrook, a young woman of his own 
 humble rank, had won, and seemed to return, his love ; but of 
 that love she was not worthy. Vain, volatile, and ambitious, 
 she forsook the poor student for a more brilliant marriage. She 
 accepted the hand of a merchant, who was caught by her beauty, 
 and who had the reputation of great wealth. They settled \\t 
 London, and Aubrey lost all traces of her. She gave birth t<? 
 an only daughter : and when that child had attained her four- 
 teenth year, her husband suddenly, and seemingly without cause- 
 put an end to his existence. The cause, however, was appa- 
 rent before he was laid in his grave. He was involved fa* 
 beyond his fortune he had died to escape beggary and a gaol 
 A small annuity, not exceeding one hundred pounds, had been 
 secured on the widow. On this income she retired with he*
 
 ALICE; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 2 15 
 
 child into the country ; and chance, the vicinity of some dis- 
 tant connections, and the cheapness of the place, concurred to 
 fix her residence in the outskirts of the town of C . Char- 
 acters that in youth have been most volatile and most worldly, 
 often when bowed down and dejected by the adversity which 
 they are not fitted to encounter, become the most morbidly de- 
 vout : they ever require an excitement, and when earth denies, 
 they seek it impatiently from Heaven. 
 
 This was the case with Mrs. Westbrook ; and this new turn of 
 mind brought her naturally into contact with the principal saint 
 of the neighborhood, Mr. Richard Templeton. We have seen 
 that that gentleman was not happy in his first marriage ; death 
 had not then annulled the bond. He was of an ardent and 
 sensual temperament, and quietly, under the broad cloak of his 
 doctrines, he indulged his constitutional tendencies. Perhaps 
 in this respect he was not worse than nine men out of ten. But 
 then he professed to be better than nine hundred thousand nine 
 hundred and ninety-nine men out of a million ! To a fault of 
 temperament was added the craft of hypocrisy, and the vulgar 
 error became a dangerous vice. Upon Mary Westbrook, the 
 widow's daughter, he gazed with eyes that were far from being 
 the eyes of the spirit. Even at the age of fourteen she charmed 
 him but when, after watching her ripening beauty expand, 
 three years were added to that age, Mr. Templeton was most 
 deeply in love. Mary was indeed lovely her disposition nat- 
 urally good and gentle, but her education worse than neglected. 
 To the frivolities and meannesses of a second-rate fashion, in- 
 culcated into her till her father's death, had now succeeded the 
 quackeries, the slavish subservience, the intolerant bigotries, of 
 a transcendental superstition. In a change so abrupt and vio- 
 lent, the whole character of the poor girl was shaken : her prin- 
 ciples unsettled, vague and unformed, and naturally of mediocre 
 and even feeble intellect, she clung to the first plank held out 
 to her in "that wide sea of wax" in which she "halted." 
 Early taught to place the most implicit faith in the dictates of 
 Mr. Templeton fastening her belief round him as the vine 
 winds its tendrils round the oak yielding to his ascendancy, 
 and pleased with his fostering and almost caressing manner 
 no confessor in Papal Italy ever was more dangerous to village 
 virtue than Richard Templeton (who deemed himself the arche- 
 type of the only pure Protestantism) to the morals and heart of 
 Mary Westbrook. 
 
 Mrs. Westbrook, whose constitution had been prematurely 
 broken by long participation in the excesses of London dissi-
 
 316 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 pation, and by the reverse of fortune which still preyed upon a 
 spirit it had rather soured than humbled, died when Mary was 
 eighteen. Templeton became the sole friend, comforter, and 
 supporter of the daughter. 
 
 In an evil hour (let us trust not from premeditated villany) 
 an hour when the heart of one was softened by grief and grati- 
 tude, and the conscience of the other laid asleep by passion, 
 the virtue of Mary Westbrook was betrayed. Her sorrow and 
 remorse his own fears of detection and awakened self-reproach, 
 occasioned Templeton the most anxious and poignant regret. 
 There had been a young woman in Mrs. Westbrook's service, 
 who had left it a short time before the widow died, in conse- 
 quence of her marriage. Her husband ill-used her ; and glad 
 to escape from him and prove her gratitude to her employer's 
 daughter, of whom she had been extremely fond, she had re- 
 turned to Miss Westbrook after the funeral of the mother. The 
 name of this woman was Sarah Miles. Templeton saw that 
 Sarah more than suspected his connection with Mary it was 
 necessary to make a confidant he selected her. Miss West- 
 brook was removed to a distant part of the country, and Tem- 
 pleton visited her cautiously and rarely. Four months after- 
 wards, Mrs. Templeton died, and the husband was free to re- 
 pair his wrong. Oh ! how he then repented of what had 
 passed but four months' delay and all this sin and sorrow 
 might have been saved ! He was now racked with perplexity 
 and doubt : his unfortunate victim was advanced in her preg- 
 nancy. It was necessary, if he wished his child to be legitimate 
 still more if he wished to preserve the honor of its mother 
 that he should not hesitate long in the reparation to which duty 
 and conscience urged him. But on the other hand he, the 
 saint the oracle the immaculate example for all forms, pro- 
 prieties, and decorums, to scandalize the world by so rapid and 
 premature a hymen 
 
 " Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears 
 Had left the flushing in his galled eyes, 
 To marry " 
 
 No ! he could not brave the sneer of the gossips the tri- 
 umph of his foes the dejection of his disciples, by so rank and 
 rash a folly. But still Mary pined so, he feared for her health 
 for his own unborn offspring. There was a middle path a 
 compromise between duty and the world : he grasped at it as 
 most men similarly situated would have done they were mar- 
 ried, but privately, and under feigned names : the secret was
 
 ALICE; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 317 
 
 kept close. Sarah Miles was the only witness acquainted with 
 the real condition and names of the parties. 
 
 Reconciled to herself, the bride recovered health and spirits 
 Templeton formed the most sanguine hopes. He resolved, as 
 soon as the confinement was over, to go abroad Mary should 
 follow in a foreign land they should be publicly married they 
 would remain some years on the Continent when he returned, 
 his child's age could be put back a year. Oh, nothing could be 
 more clear and easy ! 
 
 Death shivered into atoms all the plans of Mr. Templeton 
 Mary suffered most severely in childbirth, and died a few weeks 
 afterwards. Templeton, at first, was inconsolable, but worldly 
 thoughts were great comforters. He had done all that con- 
 science could do to atone a sin, and he was freed from a most 
 embarrassing dilemma, and from a temporary banishment ut- 
 terly uncongenial and unpalatable to his habits and ideas. But 
 now he had a child a legitimate child successor to his name, 
 his wealth a first-born child the only one ever sprung from 
 him the prop and hope of advancing years ! On this child he 
 doted, with all that paternal passion which the hardest and cold- 
 est men often feel the most for their own flesh and blood for 
 fatherly love is sometimes but a transfer of self-love from one 
 fund to another. 
 
 Yet this child this darling that he longed to show to the 
 world it was absolutely necessary, for the present, that he 
 should conceal and disown. It had happened that Sarah's hus- 
 band died of his own excesses a few weeks before the birth of 
 Templeton's child, she having herself just recovered from her 
 confinement, Sarah was therefore free for ever from her hus- 
 band's vigilance and control. To her care the destined heiress 
 was committed, and her own child put out to nurse. And this 
 was the woman and this the child who had excited so much be- 
 nevolent curiosity in the breasts of the worthy clergyman and 
 
 the three* old maids of C . Alarmed at Sarah's account of 
 
 the scrutiny of the parson, and at his own rencontre with that 
 hawk-eyed pastor, Templeton lost no time in changing the abode 
 of the nurse and to her new residence had that banker bent his 
 way, with rod and angle, on that evening which witnessed his 
 adventure with Luke Darvil.f When Mr. Templeton first met 
 Alice, his own child was only about thirteen or fourteen months 
 old but little older than Alice's. If the beauty of Mrs. Leslie's 
 prottgfa first excited his coarser nature, her maternal tenderness, 
 
 * See Ernest Maltravers, Part I., Book iv. p. 135, 
 t Ibid,, Part I., Book iv., p. IQ,
 
 318 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 her anxious care for her little one, struck a congenial chord in 
 the father's heart. It connected him with her by a mute and 
 unceasing sympathy. Templeton had felt so deeply the alarm 
 and pain of illicit love he had been (as he profanely believed) 
 saved from the brink of public shame by so signal an interfer- 
 ence of grace, that he resolved no more to hazard his good name 
 and his peace of mind upon such perilous rocks. The dearest 
 desire at his heart was to have his daughter under his roof to 
 fondle, to play with her to watch her growth to win her af- 
 fection. This, at present, seemed impossible. But if he were 
 to marry marry a widow, to whom he might confide all, or a 
 portion of, the truth if that child could be passed off as hers 
 ah, that was the best plan ! And Templeton wanted a wife ! 
 Years were creeping on him, and the day would come when a 
 wife would be useful as a nurse. But Alice was supposed to 
 be a widow ; and Alice was so meek, so docile, so motherly. If 
 
 she could be induced to remove from C , either part with 
 
 her own child or call it her niece and adopt his. Such, from 
 time to time, were Templeton's thoughts, as he visited Alice, and 
 found, with every visit, fresh evidence of her tender and beau- 
 tiful disposition such the objects which, in the First Part of 
 this work, we intimated were different from those of mere ad- 
 miration for her beauty.* But again, worldly doubts and fears 
 the dislike of so unsuitable an alliance the worse than low- 
 ness of Alice's origin the dread of discovery for her early 
 error held him back, wavering and irresolute, To say the 
 truth, too, her innocence and purity of thought kept him at a 
 certain distance. He was acute enough to see that he even 
 he, the great Richard Templeton, might be refused by the faith- 
 ful Alice. 
 
 At last Darvil was dead he breathed more freely he re- 
 volved more seriously his projects; and, at this time, Sarah, 
 wooed by her first lover, wished to marry again ; his secret 
 would pass from her breast to her second husband's, and thence 
 how far would it travel ? Added to this, Sarah's conscience grew 
 uneasy the brand ought to be effaced from the memory of the 
 dead mother the legitimacy of the child proclaimed ; she be- 
 came importunate she wearied and she alarmed the pious man. 
 He therefore resolved to rid himself of the only witness to his 
 marriage, whose testimony he had cause to fear of the pres- 
 
 * " Our banker always seemed more struck by Alice's moral feelings than even by her 
 physical beauty. Her love for her child, for instance, impressed him powerfully." etc. 
 '* His feelings altogether for Alice, the designs he entertained towards her, were of a very 
 complicated nature, and it will be long, perhaps, before the reader can thoroughly compr- 
 jiencl th,em." See grneft MaftrQVfr^ fart I., Book iv., p. 140,
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 ence of the only one acquainted with his sin, and the real name 
 of the husband of Mary Westbrook. He consented to Sarah's 
 marriage with William Elton, and offered a liberal dowry on 
 the condition that she should yield to the wish of Elton himself, 
 an adventurous young man, who desired to try his fortunes in 
 the New World. His daughter he must remove elsewhere. 
 
 Wliile this was going on, Alice's child, long delicate and droop-- 
 ing, became seriously ill. Symptoms of decline appeared the 
 physician recommmended a milder air, and Devonshire was 
 suggested. Nothing could equal the generous, the fatherly 
 kindness which Templeton evinced on this most painful occa- 
 sion. He insisted on providing Alice with the means to under- 
 take the journey with ease and comfort; and poor Alice, with a 
 heart heavy with gratitude and sorrow, consented for her child's 
 sake to all he offered. 
 
 Now the banker began to perceive that all his hopes and wishes 
 were in good train. He foresaw that the child of Alice was 
 doomed ! that was one obstacle out of the way. Alice herself 
 was to be removed from the sphere of her humble calling. In 
 a distant county she might appear of better station, and under 
 another name. Conformably to these views, he suggested to her 
 that, in proportion to the seeming wealth and respectability of 
 patients, did doctors attend to their complaints. He proposed 
 that Alice should depart privately to a town many miles off 
 that there he would provide for her a carriage, and engage a 
 servant that he would do this for her as a relation and that 
 she should take that relation's name. To this, Alice, wrapt in 
 her child, and submissive to all that might be for the child's 
 benefit, passively consented. It was arranged then as proposed; 
 and under the name of Cameron, which, as at once a common 
 yet a well-sounding name, occurred to his invention, Alice de- 
 parted with her sick charge and a female attendant (who knew 
 nothing of her previous calling or story), on the road to Devon- 
 shire. Templeton himself resolved to follow her thither in a 
 few days ; and it was fixed that they should meet at Exeter. 
 
 It was on this melancholy journey that occurred that mem- 
 orable day when Alice once more beheld Maltravers ; and, as 
 she believed, uttering the vows of love to another.* The indis- 
 position of her child had delayed her some hours at the inn : 
 the poor sufferer had fallen asleep ; and Alice had stolen from 
 its couch for a little while, when her eyes rested on the father. 
 Oh, how then she longed, she burned to tell him of the new 
 sanctity, that, by a human life, had been added to their early 
 
 * See Erntit Maltravers. Part I., Book v., p. 181.
 
 3^6 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERii& 
 
 love ! And when, crushed and sick at heart, she turned away, 
 and believed herself forgotten and replaced, it was the pride of 
 the mother, rather than of the mistress, that supported her. She, 
 meek creature, felt not the injury to herself ; but his child : the 
 sufferer perhaps the dying one there, there was the wrong ! 
 No ! she would not hazard the chance of a cold Great Heaven : 
 perchance an incredulous look upon the hushed, pale face 
 above. But little time was left for thought for explanation 
 for discovery. She saw him unconscious of the ties so near, 
 and thus lost depart as a stranger from the spot ; and hence- 
 forth was gone the sweet hope of living for the future. Nothing 
 was left her but the pledge of that which had been. Mournful, 
 despondent, half broken-hearted, she resumed her journey. At 
 Exeter she was joined, as agreed, by Mr. Templeton ; and with 
 him came a fair, a blooming and healthful girl, to contrast her 
 own drooping charge. Though but a few weeks older, you 
 would have supposed the little stranger by a year the senior of 
 Alice's child : the one was so well grown, so advanced ; the 
 other so backward, so nipped in the sickly bud. 
 
 " You can repay me for all, for more than I have done ; more 
 than I ever can do for you and yours," said Templeton ; " by 
 taking this young stranger also under your care. It is the child 
 of one dear, most dear to me ; an orphan : I know not with 
 whom else to place it. Let it for the present be supposed 
 your own the elder child." 
 
 Alice could refuse nothing to her benefactor ; but her heart 
 did not open at first to the beautiful girl, whose sparkling eyes 
 and rosy cheeks mocked the languid looks and faded hues of 
 her own darling. But the sufferer seemed to hail a playmate ; 
 it smiled, it put forth its poor, thin hands it uttered its inar- 
 ticulate cry of pleasure, and Alice burst into tears, and clasped 
 them both to her heart. 
 
 Mr. Templeton took care not to rest under the same roof 
 with her he now seriously intended to make his wife ; but he 
 followed Alice to the seaside, and visited her daily. Her in- 
 fant rallied it was tenacious of the upper air it clung to life 
 so fondly : poor child, it could not foresee what a bitter thing 
 to some of us life is ! And now it was that Templeton, learn- 
 ing from Alice her adventure with her absent lover learning 
 that all hope in that quarter was gone seized the occasion, 
 and pressed his suit. Alice at that hour was overflowing with 
 gratitude ; in her child's reviving looks she read all her obliga- 
 tions to her benefactor. But still, at the word love, at the name 
 of marriage, her heart recoiled ; and the lost the faithless
 
 ALICE ; OR, 1'IIE MYSTERtES. 32 1 
 
 came back to his fatal throne. In choked and broken accents, 
 she startled the banker with the refusal the faltering, tearful, 
 but resolute refusal of his suit. 
 
 But Templeton brought new engines to work : he wooed her 
 through her child ; he painted all the brilliant prospects that 
 would open to the infant by her marriage with him. He would 
 cherish, rear, provide for it as his own. This shook her re- 
 solves ; but this did not prevail. He had recourse to a more 
 generous appeal : he told her so much of his history with Mary 
 Westbrook as commenced with his hasty and indecorous mar- 
 riage attributing the haste to love ! made her comprehend his 
 scruples in owning the child of a union the world would be cer- 
 tain to ridicule or condemn ; he expatiated on the inestimable 
 blessings she could afford him, by delivering him from all em- 
 barrassment, and restoring his daughter, though under a bor- 
 rowed name, to her father's roof. At this Alice mused, at 
 this she seemed irresolute. She had long seen how inexpressi- 
 bly dear to Templeton was the child confided to her care ; how 
 he grew pale if the slightest ailment reached her how he 
 chafed at the very wind if it visited her cheek too roughly 
 and she now said to him simply : 
 
 " Is your child, in truth, your dearest object in life ? Is it 
 with her, and her alone, that your dearest hopes are connected ? " 
 
 "It is! it is, indeed!" said the banker honestly, surprised 
 out of his gallantry: "at least," he added, recovering his self- 
 possession, '*' as much so as is compatible with my affection for 
 you." 
 
 "And only if I rnarry you, and adopt her as my own, do you 
 think that your secret may be safely kept, and all your wishes 
 with respect to her be fulfilled? " 
 
 "Only so." 
 
 " And for that reason, chiefly, nay entirely, you condescend 
 to forget what I have been, and seek my hand ? Well if that 
 were all I owe you too much ; my poor babe tells me too loudly 
 what I owe you, to draw back from anything that can give you 
 so blessed an enjoyment. Ah ! one's child ! one's own child 
 under one's own roof it is such a blessing ! But then, if I 
 marry you, it can be only to secure to you that object to be as 
 a mother to your child but wife only in name to you ! I am 
 not so lost as to despise myself. I know now, though I knew 
 it not at first, that I have been guilty ; nothing can excuse that 
 guilt, but fidelity to him ! Oh, yes ! I never never can be un- 
 faithful to my babe's father ! As for all else, dispose of me as 
 you will." And Alice, who from very innocence had uttered all
 
 322 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 this without a blush, now clasped her hands passionately, and 
 left Templeton speechless with mortification and surprise. 
 
 When he recovered himself he affected not to understand her; 
 but Alice was not satisfied, and all further conversation ceased. 
 He began slowly, and at last, and after repeated conferences 
 and urgings, to comprehend how strange and stubborn in some 
 points was the humble creature whom his proposals so highly 
 honored. Though his daughter was indeed his first object in 
 life though for her he was willing to make a mesalliance, the 
 extent of which it would be incumbent on him studiously to 
 conceal ; yet still, the beauty of Alice awoke an earthlier sen- 
 timent that he was not disposed to conquer. He was quite 
 willing to make promises, and talk generously ; but when it 
 came to an oath a solemn, a binding oath and this Alice 
 rigidly exacted he was startled, and drew back. Though 
 hypocritical, he was, as we have before said, a most sincere be- 
 liever. He might creep through a promise with unbruised con- 
 science ; but he was not one who could have dared to violate 
 an oath, and lay the load of perjury on his soul. Perhaps, after 
 all, the union never would have taken place, but Templeton 
 fell ill ; that soft and relaxing air did not agree with him ; a 
 low, but dangerous fever seized him, and the worldly man 
 trembled at the aspect of Death. It was in this illness that 
 Alice nursed him with a daughter's vigilance and care ; and 
 when at length he recovered, impressed with her zeal and kind- 
 ness softened by illness afraid of the approach of solitary 
 age and feeling more than ever his duties to his motherless 
 child, he threw himself at Alice's feet, and solemnly vowed all 
 that she required. 
 
 It was during this residence in Devonshire, and especially 
 during his illness, that Templeton made and cultivated the ac- 
 quaintance of Mr. Aubrey. The good clergyman prayed with 
 him by his sick bed ; and when Templeton's danger was at its 
 height, he sought to relieve his conscience by a confession of 
 his wrongs to Mary Westbrook. The name startled Aubrey ; 
 and when he learned that the lovely child who had so often 
 sate on his knee, and smiled in his face, was the granddaughter 
 of his first and only love, he had a new interest in her welfare, 
 a new reason to urge Templeton to reparation, a new motive to 
 desire to procure for the infant years of Eleanor's grandchild 
 the gentle care of the young mother, whose own bereavement 
 he sorrowfully foretold. Perhaps the advice and exhortations 
 of Aubrey went far towards assisting the conscience of Mr. 
 Templeton, and reconciling him to the sacrifice he made to his
 
 ALICE J OR, THE MYSTERIES. $2.$ 
 
 affection for his daughter. Be that as it may, he married 
 Alice, and Aubrey solemnized and blessed the chill and barren 
 union. 
 
 But now came a new and inexpressible affliction ; the child 
 of Alice had rallied but for a time. The dread disease had but 
 dallied with its prey ; it came on with rapid and sudden force ; 
 and within a month from the day that saw Alice the bride of 
 Templeton, the last hope was gone, and the mother was bereft 
 and childless ! 
 
 The blow that stunned Alice was not, after the first natural 
 shock of sympathy, an unwelcome event to the banker. Now 
 his child would be Alice's sole care ; now there could be no 
 gossip, no suspicion why, in life and after death, he should 
 prefer one child, supposed not his own, to the other. 
 
 He hastened to remove Alice from the scene of her affliction. 
 He dismissed the solitary attendant who had accompanied her 
 on her journey ; he bore his wife to London, and finally settled, 
 as we have seen, at a villa in its vicinity. And there, more and 
 more, day by day, centered his love upon the supposed daugh- 
 ter of Mrs. Templeton, his darling and his heiress, the beautiful 
 Evelyn Cameron. 
 
 For the first year or two, Templeton evinced some alarming 
 disposition to escape from the oath he had imposed upon him- 
 self ; but on the slightest hint there was a sternness in the 
 wife, in all else so respectful, so submissive, that repressed and 
 awed him. She even threatened and at one time was with 
 difficulty prevented carrying the threat into effect to leave his 
 roof for ever, if there were the slightest question of the sanctity 
 of his vow. Templeton trembled ; such a separation would 
 excite gossip, curiosity, scandal, a noise in the world, public 
 talk, possible discovery. Besides, Alice was necessary to Evelyn, 
 necessary to his own comfort; something to scold in health, 
 something to rely upon in illness. Gradually then, but sullenly, 
 he reconciled himself to his lot, and as years and infirmities 
 grew upon him, he was contented, at least, to have secured a 
 faithful friend and an anxious nurse. Still a marriage of this 
 sort was not blest ; Templeton's vanity was Avounded ; his 
 temper, always harsh, was soured ; he avenged his affront by a 
 thousand petty tyrannies; and, without a murmur, Alice per- 
 haps, in those years of rank and opulence, suffered more than 
 in all her roofless wanderings, with love at her heart and her in- 
 fant in her arms. 
 
 Evelyn was to be the heiress to the wealth of the banker. 
 But the title of the new peer ! if he could unite wealth and
 
 324 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 title, and set the coronet on that young brow ! This had led 
 him to seek the alliance with Lumley. And on his death-bed, 
 it was not the secret of Alice, but that of Mary Westbrook and 
 his daughter, which he had revealed to his dismayed and 
 astonished nephew, in excuse for the apparently unjust aliena- 
 tion of his property, and as the cause of the alliance he had 
 sought. 
 
 While her husband if husband he might be called lived, 
 Alice had seemed to bury in her bosom her regret deep, 
 mighty, passionate, as it was for her lost child tiie child of 
 the unforgotten lover, to whom, through such trials, and amid 
 such new ties, she had been faithful from first to last. But 
 when once more free, her heart flew back to the far and lowly 
 grave. Hence her yearly visits to Brook- Greeiv hence her 
 purchase of the cottage, hallowed by memories of the dead. 
 There, on that lawn, had she borne forth the fragile form, to 
 breathe the soft noontide air ; there, in that chamber, had she 
 watched, and hoped, and prayed, and despaired ; there, in that 
 quiet burial-ground, rested the beloved dust ! But Alice, even 
 in her holiest feelings, was not selfish : she forbore to gratify 
 the first wish of her heart till Evelyn's education was sufficiently 
 advanced to enable her to quit the neighborhood ; and then, 
 to the delight of Aubrey (who saw in Evelyn a fairer, and nobler, 
 and purer Eleanor), she came to the solitary spot, which, in all 
 the earth, was the least solitary to her ! 
 
 And now the image of the lover of her youth which, during 
 her marriage, she had sought, at least, to banish returned to 
 her, and, at times, inspired her with the only hopes that the 
 grave had not yet transferred to heaven ! In relating her tale 
 to Aubrey, or in conversing with Mrs. Leslie whose friendship 
 she still maintained she found that both concurred in thinking 
 that this obscure and wandering Butler, so skilled in an art in 
 which eminence in men is generally professional, must be of 
 mediocre, or perhaps humble, station. Ah ! now that she was 
 free and rich, if she were to meet him again, and his love was 
 not all gone, and he would believe in her strange and constant 
 truth now, his infidelity could be forgiven forgotten in the 
 benefits it might be hers to bestow ! And how, poor Alice, in 
 that remote village, was chance to throw him in your way ? She 
 knew not : but something often whispered to her, " Again you 
 shall meet those eyes again you shall hear that voice ; and 
 you shall tell him, weeping on his breast, how you loved his 
 child ! " And would he not have forgotten her ? would he 
 not have formed new ties ? could he read the loveliness of un-
 
 AlicE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 325 
 
 changeable affection in that pale and pensive face ? Alas, when 
 we love intensely, it is difficult to make us fancy that there is 
 no love in return ! 
 
 The reader is acquainted with the adventures of Mrs. Elton, 
 the sole confidant of the secret union of Templeton and Evelyn's 
 mother. By a singular fatality, it was the selfish and charac- 
 teristic recklessness of Vargrave that had, in fixing her home at 
 Burleigh, ministered to the revelation of his own villainous de- 
 ceit. On returning to England she had inquired for Mr. Tem- 
 pleton ; she had learned that he had married again, had been 
 raised to the peerage under the title of Lord Vargrave, and was 
 gathered to his fathers. She had no claim on his widow or his 
 family. But the unfortunate child who should have inherited 
 his property she could only suppose her dead. 
 
 When she first saw Evelyn, she was startled by her likeness 
 to her unfortunate mother. But the unfamiliar name of Cam- 
 eron the intelligence received from Maltravers that Evelyn's 
 mother still lived dispelled her suspicions : and though at 
 times the resemblance haunted her, she doubted and inquired 
 no more. In fact, her own infirmities grew upon her, and pain 
 usurped her thoughts. 
 
 Now it so happened, that the news of the engagement of 
 Maltravers to Miss Cameron became known to the county but 
 a little time before he arrived for news travels slow from the 
 Continent to our provinces and, of course, excited all the com- 
 ment of the villagers. Her nurse repeated the tale to Mrs. 
 Elton, who instantly remembered the name, and recalled the 
 resemblance of Miss Cameron to the unfortunate Mary West- 
 brook. 
 
 "And," said the gossiping nurse, "she was engaged, they 
 say, to a great lord, and gave him up for the squire a great 
 lord in the court, who had been staying at Parson Merton's ! 
 Lord Vargrave ! " 
 
 " Lord Vargrave ! " exclaimed Mrs. Elton, remembering the 
 title to which Mr. Templeton had been raised. 
 
 "Yes; they do say as how the late lord left Miss Cameron 
 all his money such a heap of it though she was not his 
 child over the head of his nevy, the present lord, on the un- 
 derstanding like that they were to be married when she came 
 of age. But she would not take to him after she had seen the 
 squire. And, to be sure, the squire is the finest-looking gen- 
 tleman in the county." 
 
 "Stopstop!" said Mrs. Elton feebly; "the late lord left
 
 326 AUCE ; Ok, THE MYSf Elites. 
 
 all Ins fortune to Miss Cameron ? not his child ! I guess the 
 riddle I understand it all ! my foster-child !" she murmured, 
 turning away ; "how could I have mistaken that likeness ?" 
 
 The agitation of the discovery she supposed she had made, 
 her joy at the thought that the child she had loved as her own 
 was alive and possessed of its rights, expedited the progress of 
 Mrs. Elton's disease ; and Maltravers arrived just in time to 
 learn her confession (which she naturally wished to make to 
 one who was at once her benefactor, and supposed to be 
 the destined husband of her foster-child), and to be agitated 
 with hope with joy at her solemn conviction of the truth of 
 her surmises. If Evelyn were not his daughter even if not to 
 be his bride what a weight from his soul ! He hastened to 
 Brook-Green ; and, dreading to rush at once to the presence 
 of Alice, he recalled Aubrey to his recollection. In the inter- 
 view he sought, all, or at least much, was cleared up. He saw 
 at once the premeditated and well-planned villany of Vargrave. 
 And Alice, her tale her sufferings her indomitable love ! 
 how should he meet her. 
 
 CHAPTER. V. 
 
 " Yet once more, O ye laurels ! and once more, 
 Ye myrtles ! " LYCIDAS. 
 
 WHILE Maltravers was yet agitated and excited by the dis- 
 closures of the curate, to whom, as a matter of course, he had 
 divulged his own identity with the mysterious Butler, Aubrey, 
 turning his eyes to the casement, saw the form of Lady Var- 
 grave slowly approaching towards the house. 
 
 " Will you withdraw to the inner room," said he; " she is 
 coming ; you are not yet prepared to meet her? nay, would 
 it be well ? " 
 
 " Yes, yes I am prepared we must be alone. I will await 
 her here." 
 
 "But" 
 
 "Nay, I implore you ! " 
 
 The curate, without another word, retired into the inner 
 apartment, and Maltravers, sinking in a chair, breathlessly 
 awaited the entrance of Lady Vargrave. He soon heard the 
 light step without ; the door, which opened at once on the old- 
 fashioned parlor, was gently unclosed, and Lady Vargrave was 
 in the room ! In the position he had taken, only the outline of 
 Ernest's form was seen by Alice, and the daylight came dim
 
 ALICE J OR, THE MYSTERIES. 327 
 
 through the cottage casement ; and, seeing some one seated in 
 the curate's accustomed chair, she could but believe that it was 
 Aubrey himself. 
 
 "Do not let me interrupt you," said that sweet, low voice, 
 whose music had been dumb for so many years to Maltravers 
 "but I have a letter from France, from a stranger it alarms 
 me so it is about Evelyn," and, as if to imply that she medi- 
 tated a longer visit than ordinary, Lady Vargrave removed her 
 bonnet, and placed it on the table. Surprised that the curate 
 had not answered, had not come forward to welcome her, she 
 then approached : Maltravers rose, and they stood before each 
 other face to face. And how lovely still was Alice ! lovelier 
 he thought even than of old ! And those eyes, so divinely blue, 
 so dove-like and soft, yet with some spiritual and unfathomable 
 mystery in their clear depth, were once more fixed upon him. 
 Alice seemed turned to stone ; she moved not she spoke not 
 she scarcely breathed ; she gazed spellbound, as if her senses 
 as if life itself had deserted her. 
 
 " Alice ! " murmured Maltravers, "Alice, we meet at last !" 
 
 His voice restored memory, consciousness, youth, at once to 
 her ! She uttered a loud cry of unspeakable joy, of rapture ! 
 She sprang forward reserve, fear, time, change, all forgotten 
 she threw herself into his arms, she clasped him to her heart 
 again and again ! the faithful dog that has found his master 
 expresses not his transport more uncontrollably, more wildly. 
 It was something fearful the excess of her ecstasy ! she kissed 
 his hands, his clothes ; she laughed, she wept ; and at last, as 
 words came, she laid her head on his breast, and said passion- 
 ately, " I have been true to thee ! I have been true to thee 
 or this hour would have killed me ! " Then, as if alarmed by 
 his silence, she looked up into his face, and, as his burning tears 
 fell upon her cheek, she said again and with more hurried vehe- 
 mence " I have been faithful do you not believe me ? " 
 
 " I do I do, noble, unequalled Alice ! why, why were you so 
 long lost to me ? Why now does your love so shame my own ?" 
 
 At these words Alice appeared to awaken from her first ob- 
 livion of all that had chanced since they met : she blushed 
 deeply, and drew herself gently and bashfully from his embrace. 
 "Ah!" she said, in altered and humbled accents, "you have 
 loved another ! perhaps you have no love left for me ! Is it so ? 
 is it ? No, no ; those eyes you love me you love me still ! " 
 
 And again she clung to him, as if it were heaven to believe 
 all things, and death to doubt. Then, after a pause, she drew 
 him gently with both hands towards the light, and gazed upon
 
 328 ALICE J OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 him fondly, proudly, as if to trace, line by line, and feature by 
 feature, the countenance which had been to her sweet thoughts 
 as the sunlight to the flowers: "Changed, changed," she mut- 
 tered " but still the same, still beautiful, still divine ! " She 
 stopped : a sudden thought struck her : his garments were worn 
 and soiled by travel, and that princely crest, fallen and dejected, 
 no longer towered in proud defiance above the sons of men. 
 "You are not rich," she exclaimed eagerly "say you are not 
 rich ! I am rich enough for both ; it is all yours all yours 
 I did not betray you for it ; there is no shame in it Oh, we 
 shall be so happy ! Thou art come back to thy poor Alice ! 
 thou knowest how she loved thee !" 
 
 There was in Alice's manner her wild joy, something so 
 different from her ordinary self that none who could have seen 
 her quiet, pensive, subdued would have fancied her the same 
 being. All that Society and its woes had taught were gone ; 
 and Nature once more claimed her fairest child. The very 
 years seemed to have fallen from her brow, and she looked 
 scarcely older than when she had stood with him beneath the 
 moonlight by the violet banks far away. Suddenly her color 
 faded ; the smile passed from the dimpled lips ; a sad and 
 solemn aspect succeeded to that expression of passionate joy 
 "Come," she said in a whisper, "come, follow"; and, still 
 clasping his hand, she drew him to the door. Silent and won- 
 deringly he followed her across the lawn, through the moss- 
 grown gate, and into the lonely burial-ground. She moved on 
 with a noiseless and gliding step so pale, so hushed, so breath- 
 less, that, even in the noonday, you might have half fancied 
 the fair shape was not owned by earth. She paused where the 
 yew-tree cast its gloomy shadow ; and the small and tombless 
 mound, separated from the rest, was before them. She pointed 
 to it, and falling on her knees beside it, murmured " Hush, it 
 sleeps below thy child ! " She covered her face with both her 
 hands, and her form shook convulsively. 
 
 Beside that form, and before that grave, knelt Maltravers. 
 There vanished the last remnant of his stoic pride ; and there 
 Evelyn herself forgotten there did he pray to Heaven for par- 
 don to himself, and blessings on the heart he had betrayed. 
 There solemnly did he vow, the remainder of his years, to guard 
 from all future ill the faithful and childless mother !
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 329 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 " Will Fortune never come with both hands full. 
 But write her fair words still in foulest letters ? " 
 
 Henry IV., Part II. 
 
 I PASS over those explanations that record of Alice's event- 
 ful history which Maltravers learnt from her own lips, to 
 confirm and add to the narrative of the curate, the purport of 
 which is already known to the reader. 
 
 It was many hours before Alice was sufficiently composed to 
 remember the object for which she had sought the curate. But 
 she had laid the letter which she had brought, and which ex- 
 plained all, on the table at the vicarage ; and when Maltravers, 
 having at last induced Alice, who seemed afraid to lose sight of 
 him for an instant, to retire to her room, and seek some short 
 repose, returned towards the vicarage, he met Aubrey in the 
 garden. The old man had taken the friend's acknowledged 
 license to read the letter evidently meant for his eye; and, 
 alarmed and anxious, he now eagerly sought a consultation with 
 Maltravers. The letter, written in English, as familiar to the 
 writer as her own tongue, was from Madame de Ventadour. It 
 had been evidently dictated by the kindest feelings. After 
 apologizing briefly for her interference, she stated that Lord 
 Vargrave's marriage with Miss Cameron was now a matter of 
 notoriety ; that it would take place in a few days ; that it was 
 observed with suspicion that Miss Cameron appeared nowhere ; 
 that she seemed almost a prisoner in her room ; that certain 
 expressions which had dropped from Lady Doltimore had 
 alarmed her greatly. According to these expressions, it would 
 seem that Lady Vargrave was not apprised of the approaching 
 event ; that, considering Miss Cameron's recent engagement to 
 Mr. Maltravers, suddenly (and, as Valerie thought, unaccount- 
 ably) broken off, on the arrival of Lord Vargrave ; considering 
 her extreme youth, her brilliant fortune : and, Madame de 
 Ventadour delicately hinted, considering also Lord Vargrave's 
 character for unscrupulous determination in the furtherance of 
 any object on which he was bent considering all this, Madame 
 de Ventadour had ventured to address Miss Cameron's mother, 
 and to guard her against the possibility of design or deceit. Her 
 best apology for her intrusion must be her deep interest in Miss 
 Cameron, and her long friendship for one to whom Miss Cameron 
 had been so lately betrothed. If Lady Vargrave were aware of 
 the new engagement, and had sanctioned it, of course her in-
 
 330 ALICE J OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 trusion was unseasonable and superfluous ; but, if ascribed to 
 its real motive, would not be the less forgiven. 
 
 It was easy for Maltravers to see in this letter how generous 
 and zealous had been that friendship for himself, which could 
 have induced the woman of the world to undertake so officious 
 a task. But of this he thought not, as he hurried over the lines, 
 and shuddered at Evelyn's urgent danger. 
 
 "This intelligence," said Aubrey, "must be, indeed, a surprise 
 to Lady Vargrave. For we have not heard a word from Evelyn 
 or Lord Vargrave to announce such a marriage ; and she (and 
 myself, till this day) believed that the engagement between 
 
 Evelyn and Mr. , I mean," said Aubrey, with confusion, 
 
 "I mean yourself, was still in force : Lord Vargrave's villany is 
 apparent ; we must act immediately. What is to be done ?" 
 
 "I will return to Paris to-morrow ; I will defeat his machina- 
 tions expose his falsehood ! " 
 
 "You may need a proxy for Lady Vargrave, an authority for 
 Evelyn : one whom Lord Vargrave knows to possess the secret 
 of her birth, her rights : I will go with you. We must speak to 
 Lady Vargrave ! " 
 
 Maltravers turned sharply round. "And Alice knows not 
 who I am : that I I am, or was, a few weeks ago, the suitor of 
 another ; and that other the child she has reared as her own ! 
 Unhappy Alice ! in the very hour of her joy at my return, is she 
 to writhe beneath this new affliction ! " 
 
 "Shall I break it to her?" said Aubrey, pityingly. 
 
 " No, no ; these lips must inflict the last wrong ! " 
 
 Maltravers walked away, and the curate saw him no more till 
 night. 
 
 In the interval, and late in the evening, Maltravers rejoined 
 Alice. 
 
 The fire burned clear on the hearth the curtains were drawn 
 the pleasant but simple drawing-room of the cottage smiled its 
 welcome as Maltravers entered, and Alice sprung up to greet 
 him ! It was as if the old days of the music-lesson and the 
 meerschaum had come back. 
 
 "This is yours," said Alice tenderly, as he looked round the 
 apartment. "Now now I know what a blessed thing riches 
 are ! Ah, you are looking on that picture it is of her who sup- 
 plied your daughter's place she is so beautiful, so good, you 
 will love her as a daughter. Oh, that letter that that letter 
 I forgot it till now it is at the vicarage I must go there immedi- 
 ately, and you will come too you will advise us." 
 
 " Alice, I have read the letter I know all. Alice, sit down
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 331 
 
 and hear me it is you who have to learn from me. In our 
 young days, I was accustomed to tell you stories in winter nights 
 like these stories of lave like our own of sorrows which, at 
 that time, we only knew by hearsay. I have one now" for your 
 ear, truer and sadder than they were. Two children, for they 
 were then little more children in ignorance of the world chil- 
 dren in freshness of heart children almost in years were 
 thrown together by strange vicissitudes, more than eighteen years 
 ago. They were of different sexes they loved, and they erred. 
 But the error was solely with the boy ; for what was innocence in 
 her was but passion in him. He loved her dearly ; but at that 
 age her qualities were half developed. He knew her beautiful, 
 simple, tender ; but he knew not all the virtue, the faith, and the 
 nobleness that Heaven had planted in her soul. They parted 
 they knew not each other's fate. He sought her anxiously, but 
 vain ; and sorrow and remorse long consumed him, and her 
 memory threw a shadow over his existence. But again for his 
 love had not the exalted holiness of hers (she was true !) he 
 sought to renew in others the charm he had lost with her. In 
 vain long long in vain. Alice, you know to whom the tale 
 refers. Nay, listen yet. I have heard from the old man yonder, 
 that you were witness to a scene many years ago which deceived 
 you into the belief that you beheld a rival. It was not so : that 
 lady yet lives, then, as now, a friend to me ; nothing more. I 
 grant that, at one time, my fancy allured me to her, but my 
 heart was still true to thee." 
 
 " Bless you for those words ! " murmured Alice ; and she crept 
 more closely to him. 
 
 He went on. " Circumstances, which at some calmer occasion 
 you shall hear, again nearly connected my fate by marriage to 
 another. I had then seen you at a distance, unseen by you 
 seen you apparently surrounded by respectability and opulence ; 
 and I blessed Heaven that your lot, at least, was not that of 
 penury and want." [Here Maltravers related where he had 
 caught that brief glimpse of Alice * how he had sought for her 
 again and again in vain.] " From that hour," he continued, 
 "seeing you in circumstances of which I could not have dared 
 to dream, I felt more reconciled to the past ; yet, when on the 
 verge of marriage with another beautiful, gifted, generous as 
 she was a thought a memory half acknowledged dimly 
 traced chained back my sentiments ; and admiration, esteem, 
 and gratitude, were not love ! Death a death, melancholy and 
 tragic, forbade this union ; and I went forth in the world, a pil 
 
 * See Ernest Maltra-'ers, Part I., Book v., pp. 186, 187.
 
 3J2 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTEiUfeS. 
 
 grim and a wanderer. Years rolled away, and I thought I had 
 conquered the desire for love a desire that had haunted me 
 since I lost thee. But, suddenly and recently, a being, beauti- 
 ful as yourself sweet, guileless, and'young as you were when 
 we met woke in me a new and strange sentiment. I will not 
 conceal it from you : Alice, at last I loved another ! Yet, sin- 
 gular as it may seem to you, it was a certain resemblance to 
 yourself, not in feature, but in the tones of the voice the name- 
 less grace of gesture and manner the very music of your once 
 happy laugh those traits of resemblance which I can now ac- 
 count for, and which children catch not from their parents only, 
 but from those they most see, and, loving most, most imitate, in 
 their tender years ; all these, I say, made perhaps a chief at- 
 traction, that drew me towards Alice, are you prepared for it? 
 drew me towards Evelyn Cameron. Know me in my real char- 
 acter, by my true name : I am that Maltravers to whom the hand 
 of Evelyn was a few weeks ago betrothed ! " 
 
 He paused and ventured to look up at Alice she was ex- 
 ceedingly pale, and her hands were tightly clasped together 
 but she neither wept nor spoke. The worst was over he con- 
 tinued more rapidly, and with less constrained an effort. " By 
 the art, the duplicity, the falsehood of Lord Vargrave, I was 
 taught in a sudden hour to believe that Evelyn was our daugh- 
 ter that you recoiled from the prospect of beholding once more 
 the author of so many miseries. I need not tell you, Alice, of 
 the horror that succeeded to love. I pass over the tortures I 
 endured. By a train of incidents to be related to you hereafter, 
 I was led to suspect the truth of Vargrave's tale. I came 
 hither I have learned all from Aubrey I regret no more the 
 falsehood that so racked me for the time ! I regret no more the 
 rupture of my bond with Evelyn I regret nothing that brings 
 me at last free and unshackled to thy feet, and acquaints me 
 with thy sublime faith and ineffable love. Here, then here be- 
 neath your own roof here he, at once your earliest friend and 
 foe, kneels to you for pardon and for hope ! he woos you as his 
 wife his companion to the grave ! forget all his errors, and be 
 to him, under a holier name, all that you were to him of old !" 
 
 "And you are then Evelyn's suitor? you are he whom she 
 loves? I see it all all ! " Alice rose, and, before he was even 
 aware of her purpose, or conscious of what she felt, she had 
 vanished from the room. 
 
 Long, and with the bitterest feelings, he awaited her return 
 she came not. At last he wrote a hurried note, imploring her to 
 join him again, to relieve his suspense to believe his sincerity
 
 ALICE J OR, THE MYSTERIES. 333 
 
 to accept his vows. He sent it to her own room, to which she 
 had hastened to bury her emotions. In a few minutes there 
 came to him this answer, written in pencil, blotted with tears : 
 
 " I thank you I understand your heart but forgive me I 
 cannot see you yet she is so beautiful and good she is worthy 
 of you. I shall soon be reconciled God bless you bless you 
 both ! " 
 
 The door of the vicarage was opened abruptly, and Mai travers 
 entered with a hasty but heavy tread. 
 
 " Go to her go to that angel go, I beseech you ! Tell her 
 that she wrongs me if she thinks, I can ever wed another 
 ever have an object in life, but to atone to to merit her. 
 Go plead for me." 
 
 Aubrey, who soon gathered from Maltravers what had passed, 
 departed to the cottage it was near midnight before he returned. 
 Maltravers met him in the church-yard, beside the yew-tree. 
 " Well, well what message do you bring?" 
 
 "She wishes that we should both set off for Paris to-morrow. 
 Not a day is to be lost we must save Evelyn from this snare." 
 
 " Evelyn ! Yes, Evelyn shall be saved : but the rest the 
 rest why do you turn away?" 
 
 "'You are not the poor artist the wandering adventurer 
 you are the high-born, the wealthy, the renowned Maltravers : 
 Alice has nothing to confer on you : You have won the love of 
 Evelyn Alice cannot doom the child confided to her care to 
 hopeless affection : You love Evelyn Alice cannot compare 
 herself to the young, and educated, and beautiful creature, 
 whose love is a priceless treasure : Alice prays you not to grieve 
 for her: She will soon be content and happy in your happiness.' 
 This is the message." 
 
 "And what said you? did you not tell her such words would 
 break my heart?" 
 
 " No matter what I said I mistrust myself when I advise 
 her. Her feelings are truer than all our wisdom ! " 
 
 Maltravers made no answer, and the curate saw him gliding 
 rapidly away by the starlit graves towards the village.
 
 334 ALICE ; OR, 1HE MYSTERIES. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 " Think you I can a resolution fetch 
 From flowery tenderness?" Measure for Measure. 
 
 THEY were on the road to Dover. Maltravers leant back in 
 the corner of the carriage with his hat over his brows, though 
 the morning was yet too dark for the curate to perceive more 
 than the outline of his features. Milestone after milestone 
 glided by the wheels, and neither of the travellers broke the 
 silence. It was a cold, raw morning, and the mists rose sullenly 
 from the dank hedges and comfortless fields. 
 
 Stern and self-accusing was the scrutiny of Maltravers into 
 the recesses of his conscience, and the blotted pages of the 
 Past. That pale and solitary mother, mourning over the grave 
 of her of his own child, rose again before his eyes, and seemed 
 silently to ask him for an account of the heart he had made 
 barren, and of the youth to which his love had brought the 
 joylessness of age. With the image of Alice, afar, alone, 
 whether in her wanderings, a beggar and an outcast, or in that 
 hollow prosperity, in which the very ease of the frame allowed 
 more leisure to the pinings of the heart with that image, pure, 
 sorrowing, and faithful from first to last, he compared his own 
 wild and wasted youth his resort to fancy and to passion for 
 excitement. He contrasted with her patient resignation his 
 own arrogant rebellion against the trials, the bitterness of which 
 his proud spirit had exaggerated his contempt for the pursuits 
 and aims of others the imperious indolence of his later life, 
 and his forgetfulness of the duties which Providence had fitted 
 him to discharge. His mind, once so rudely hurled from that 
 complacent pedestal, from which it had so long looked down 
 on men, and said, "I am wiser and better than you," became 
 even too acutely sensitive to its own infirmities; and that desire 
 for Virtue, which he had ever deeply entertained, made itself 
 more distinctly and loudly heard amidst the ruins and the silence 
 of his pride. 
 
 From the contemplation of the Past, he roused himself to 
 face the Future. Alice had refused his hand Alice herself 
 had ratified and blessed his union with another! Evelyn so 
 madly loved Evelyn might still be his ! No law from the 
 violation of which, even in thought, Human Nature recoils 
 appalled and horror-stricken forbade him to reclaim her hand 
 to snatch her from the grasp of Vargrave to woo again, and 
 again to win her! But did Maltravers welcome, did he embrace
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 335 
 
 that thought? Let us do him justice: he did not. He felt 
 that Alice's resolution, in the first hour of mortified affection, 
 was not to be considered final ; and even if it were so, he felt 
 yet more deeply that her love the love that had withstood so 
 many trials never could be subdued. Was he to make her 
 nobleness a curse? Was he to say, "Thou hast passed away 
 in thy generation, and I leave thee again to thy solitude, for 
 her whom thou hast cherished as a child?" He started in 
 dismay from the thought of this new and last blow upon the 
 shattered spirit ; and then fresh and equally sacred obstacles 
 between Evelyn and himself broke slowly on his view. Could 
 Templeton rise from his grave, with what resentment, with what 
 just repugnance, would he have regarded in the betrayer of 
 his wife (even though wife but in name) the suitor to his 
 child ! 
 
 These thoughts came in fast and fearful force upon Mal- 
 travers, and served to strengthen his honor and his conscience. 
 He felt that though, in law, there was no shadow of connection 
 between Evelyn and himself, yet his tie with Alice had been of 
 a nature that ought to separate him from one who had regarded 
 Alice as a mother. The load of horror, the agony of shame, 
 were indeed gone ; but still a voice whispered as before, " Evelyn 
 is lost to thee for ever ! " But so shaken had already been her 
 image in the late storms and convulsion of his soul, that this 
 thought was preferable to the thought of sacrificing Alice. If 
 that were all but Evelyn might still love him ; and justice to 
 Alice might be misery to her ! He started from his revery 
 with a vehement gesture, and groaned audibly. 
 
 The curate turned to address to him some words of inquiry 
 and surprise ; but the words were unheard, and he perceived, 
 by the advancing daylight, that the countenance of Maltravers 
 was that of a man utterly rapt and absorbed by some mastering 
 and irresistible thought. Wisely therefore he left his companion 
 in peace, and returned to his own anxious and engrossing med- 
 itations. 
 
 The travellers did not rest till they arrived at Dover. The 
 vessel started early the following morning, and Aubrey, who 
 was much fatigued, retired to rest. Maltravers glanced at the 
 clock upon the mantelpiece : it was the hour of nine. For him 
 there was no hope of sleep ; and the prospect of the slow night 
 was that of dreary suspense, and torturing self-commune. 
 
 As he turned restlessly in his seat, the waiter entered to say 
 that there was a gentleman, who had caught a glimpse of him 
 below on his arrival, who was anxious to speak with him. Before
 
 336 ALICE J OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 Maltravers could answer, the gentleman himself entered, and 
 Maltravers recognized Legard. 
 
 "I beg your pardon," said the latter, in a tone of great agita- 
 tion, " but I was most anxious to see you for a few moments. I 
 have just returned to England all places alike hateful to me ! 
 I read in the papers an an announcement which which 
 occasions me the greatest I know not what I would say, but 
 is it true ? Read the paragraph ;" and Legard placed The 
 Courier before Maltravers. 
 
 The passage was as follows : 
 
 "It is whispered that Lord Vargrave, who is now at Paris, is 
 to be married in a few days to the beautiful and wealthy Miss 
 Cameron, to whom he has been long engaged." 
 
 " Is it possible ? " exclaimed Legard, following the eyes of 
 Maltravers, as he glanced over the paragraph " were not you 
 the lover, the accepted, the happy lover of Miss Cameron ? 
 Speak, tell me, I implore you ! that it was for you, who saved 
 my life and redeemed my honor, and not for that cold schemer, 
 that I renounced all my hopes of earthly happiness, and sur- 
 rendered the dream of winning the heart and hand of the only 
 woman I ever loved ! " 
 
 A deep shade fell over the features of Maltravers. He gazed 
 earnestly and long upon the working countenance of Legard, 
 and said, after a pause : 
 
 "You, too, loved her, then. I never knew it nerer guessed 
 it: or, if once I suspected, it was but for a moment;, 
 and " 
 
 " Yes," interrupted Legard passionately, " Heaven is my 
 witness how fervently and truly I did love ! I do still love Eve- 
 lyn Cameron ! But when you confessed to me your affection 
 your hopes I felt all that I owed you; I felt that I never ought 
 to become your rival. I left Paris abruptly. What I have suf- 
 fered I will not say ; but it was some comfort to think that I had 
 acted as became one who owed you a debt never to be cancelled 
 nor repaid. I travelled from place to place, each equally hate- 
 ful and wearisome at last, I scarce know why, I returned to 
 England. I have arrived this day, and now but tell me, is it 
 true?" 
 
 " I believe it true," said Maltravers, in a hollow voice, " that 
 Evelyn is at this moment engaged to Lord Vargrave. I believe 
 it equally true, that that engagement, founded upon false im- 
 pressions, never will be fulfilled. With that hope and that belief, 
 I am on my road to Paris."
 
 ALICE J OR, THE MYSTERIES. 33J 
 
 "And she will be yours still?" said Legard, turning away 
 his face : " well, that I can bear may you be happy, sir ! " 
 
 "Stay, Legard," said Maltravers, in a voice of great feeling. 
 " Let us understand each other better : you have renounced 
 your passion to your sense of honor (Maltravers paused thought- 
 fully.) It was noble in you, it was more than just to me ; I 
 thank you and respect you. But, Legard, was there aught in the 
 manner, the bearing of Evelyn Cameron, that could lead you to 
 suppose that she would have returned your affection ? True, 
 had we started on equal terms, I am not vain enough to be blind 
 to your advantages of youth and person ; but I believed that 
 the affections of Evelyn were already mine, before we met at 
 Paris." 
 
 " It might be so," said Legard, gloomily ; " nor is it for me 
 to say, that a heart so pure and generous as Evelyn's could 
 deceive yourself or me. Yet I had fancied I &*</hoped while 
 you stood aloof, that that partiality with which she regarded you 
 was that of admiration more than love ; that you had dazzled 
 her imagination, rather than won her heart. I had hoped that I 
 should win, that I was winning, my way to her affection ! But 
 let this pass ; I drop the subject for ever only, Maltravers, only 
 do me justice. You are a proud man, and your pride has often 
 irritated and stung me, in spite of my gratitude. Be more lenient 
 to me than you have been ; think that though I have my errors 
 and my follies, I am still capable of some conquests over myself. 
 And most sincerely do I now wish that Evelyn's love may be to 
 you that blessing it would have been to me ! " 
 
 This was, indeed, a new triumph over the pride of Maltravers 
 a new humiliation. He had looked with a cold contempt on 
 this man, because he affected not to be above the herd : and this 
 man had preceded him in the very sacrifice he himself meditated. 
 
 " Legard," said Maltravers, and a faint blush overspread his 
 face, "you rebuke me justly. I acknowledge my fault, and ask 
 you to forgive it. From this night, whatever happens, I shall 
 hold it a honor to be admitted to your friendship ; from this 
 night, George Legard never shall find in me the offences of 
 arrogance and harshness." 
 
 Legard wrung the hand held out to him warmly, but made no 
 answer ; his heart was full, and he would not trust himself to 
 speak. 
 
 " You think, then," resumed Maltravers, in a more thought- 
 ful tone ; " you think that Evelyn could have loved you, had 
 my pretensions not crossed your own? And you think also 
 pardon me, dear Legard that you could have acquired the
 
 338 ALICE J OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 steadiness of character, the firmness of purpose, which one so 
 fair, so young, so inexperienced and susceptible, so surrounded 
 by a thousand temptations, would need in a guardian and 
 protector ? " 
 
 " Oh, do not judge of me by what I have been. I felt that 
 Evelyn could have reformed errors worse than mine ; that her 
 love would have elevated dispositions yet more light and com- 
 monplace. You do not know what miracles love works ! But 
 now, what is there left for me? What matters it how frivolous 
 and poor the occupations which can distract my thoughts, and 
 bring me forgetf ulness ? Forgive me ; I have no right to obtrude 
 all this egotism on you." 
 
 " Do not despond, Legard," said Maltravers kindly ; " there 
 may be better fortunes in store for you than you yet anticipate. 
 I cannot say more now ; but will you remain at Dover a few days 
 longer? Within a week you shall hear from me. I will not raise 
 hopes that it may not be mine to realize. But if it be as you 
 think it was why little, indeed, would rest with me. Nay, 
 look not on me so wistfully," added Maltravers, with a mourn- 
 ful smile ; " and let the subject close for the present. You will 
 stay at Dover?" 
 
 "I will ; but " 
 
 " No buts, Legard ; it is so settled." 
 
 BOOK XI. 
 
 f. M. ANTONIN, lib. iv. 
 Man is born to be a doer of good. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 * * * " His teeth he still did grind, 
 
 And grimly gnash, threatening revenge in vain." SPENSER. 
 
 IT is now time to return to Lord Vargrave. His most san- 
 guine hopes were realized ; all things seemed to prosper. The 
 hand of Evelyn Cameron was pledged to him the wedding- 
 day was fixed. In less than a week, she was to confer upon 
 the ruined peer a splendid dowry, that would smooth all ob- 
 stacles in the ascent of his ambition. From Mr. Douce he
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 339 
 
 Jcarned that the deeds, which were to transfer to himself the 
 baronial possessions of the head of the house of Maltravers, 
 were nearly completed ; and, on his wedding-day, he hoped to 
 be able to announce that the happy 'pair had set out for their 
 princely mansion of Lisle Court. In politics though nothing 
 could be finally settled till his return letters from Lord Sax- 
 ingham assured him that all was auspicious : the court and the 
 heads of the aristocracy daily growing more alienated from the 
 premier, and more prepared for a cabinet revolution. And Var- 
 grave, perhaps, like most needy men, overrated the advan- 
 tages he should derive from, and the servile opinions he should 
 conciliate in, his new character of landed proprietor and wealthy 
 peer. He was not insensible to the silent anguish that Evelyn 
 seemed to endure, nor to the bitter gloom that hung on the 
 brow of Lady Doltimore. But these were clouds that foretold 
 no storm light shadows that obscured not the serenity of the 
 favoring sky. He continued to seem unconscious to either ; 
 to take the coming event as a matter of course, and to Evelyn he 
 evinced so gentle, unfamiliar, respectful, and delicate an at- 
 tachment, that he left no opening either for confidence or com- 
 plaint. Poor Evelyn ! her gayety, her enchanting levity, her 
 sweet and infantine playfulness of manner, were indeed van- 
 ished. Pale, wan, passive, and smileless, she was the ghost of 
 her former self ! But days rolled on, and the evil one drew 
 near ; she recoiled, but she never dreamt of resisting. How 
 many equal victims of her age and sex does the altar witness ! 
 
 One day, at early noon, Lord Vargrave took his way to Eve- 
 lyn's. He had been to pay a political visit in the Faubourg 
 St. Germain's, and he was now slowly crossing the more quiet 
 and solitary part of the gardens of the Tuileries his hands 
 clasped behind him, after his old, unaltered habit, and his eyes 
 downcast when suddenly a man, who was seated alone be- 
 neath one of the trees, and who had for some moments watched 
 his steps with an anxious and wild aspect, rose and approached 
 him. Lord Vargrave was not conscious of the intrusion, till 
 the man laid his hand on Vargrave's arm, and exclaimed : 
 
 " It is he ! it is ! Lumley Ferrers, we meet again ! " 
 
 Lord Vargrave started and changed color, as he gazed on 
 the intruder. 
 
 " Ferrers," continued Cesarini (for it was he), and he wound 
 his arm firmly into Lord Vargrave's as he spoke ; "you have 
 not changed ; your step is light your cheek healthful ; and 
 yet I ! you can scarcely recognize me. Oh, I have suffered 
 so horribly since we parted ! Why is this why have I been
 
 340 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 so heavily visited ! and why have you gone free ? Heaven 
 is not just ! " 
 
 Castruccio was in one of his lucid intervals ; but there was 
 that in his uncertain eye, and strange, unnatural voice, which 
 showed that a breath might dissolve the avalanche. Lord Var- 
 grave looked anxiously round ; none were near ; but he knew 
 that the more public parts of the garden were thronged, and 
 through the trees he saw many forms moving in the distance. 
 He felt that the sound of his voice could summon assistance in 
 an instant, and his assurance returned to him. 
 
 " My poor friend," said he soothingly, as he quickened his 
 pace, " it grieves me to the heart to see you look ill : do not 
 think so much of what is past." 
 
 " There is no past ! " replied Cesarini gloomily. " The Past 
 is my Present ! And I have thought and thought, in darkness 
 and in chains, over all that I have endured and a light has 
 broken on me in the hours when they told me I was mad ! 
 Lumley Ferrers, it was not for my sake that you led me, devil 
 as you are, into the lowest hell ! You had some object of your 
 own to serve in separating her from Maltravers. You made me 
 your instrument. What was I to you that you should have sinned 
 for my sake ? Answer me, and truly if those lips can utter 
 truth ! " 
 
 "Cesarini," returned Vargrave, in his blandest accents, "an- 
 other time we will converse on what has been ; believe me, my 
 only object was your happiness, combined, it may be, with my 
 hatred of your rival." 
 
 " Liar ! " shouted Cesarini, grasping Vargrave's arm with the 
 strength of growing madness, while his burning eyes were fixed 
 upon his tempter's changing countenance. " You, too, loved 
 Florence you, too, sought her hand you were my real rival ! " 
 
 " Hush ! my friend, hush !" said Vargrave, seeking to shake 
 off the gripe of the maniac, and becoming seriously alarmed ; 
 " we are approaching the crowded part of the gardens, we shall 
 be observed." 
 
 "And why are men made my foes ? Why is my own sister 
 become my persecutor ? why should she give me up to the tor- 
 turer and the dungeon ? Why are serpents and fiends my com- 
 rades ? Why is there fire in my brain and heart ? and why do 
 you go free and enjoy liberty and life ? Observed ! what care 
 you for observation ? All men search for me!" 
 
 " Then why so openly expose yourself to their notice ? 
 Why" 
 
 " Hear me ! " interrupted Cesarini. " When I escaped from
 
 ALICE J OR, THE MYSTERIES. 34! 
 
 the horrible prison into which I was plunged when I scented 
 the fresh air, and bounded over the grass when I was again 
 free in limbs and spirit a sudden strain of music from a vil- 
 lage came on my ear, and I stopped short, and crouched down, 
 and held my breath to listen. It ceased ; and I thought I had 
 been with Florence, and I wept bitterly ! When I recovered, 
 memory came back to me distinct and clear ; and I heard a 
 voice say to me, 'Avenge her and thyself ! ' From that hour the 
 voice has been heard again, morning and night ! Lumley Fer- 
 rers, I hear it now ! it speaks to my heart it warms my blood 
 it nerves my hand ! On whom should vengeance fall ? 
 Speak to me ! " 
 
 Lumley strode rapidly on; they were now without the grove: 
 a gay throng was before them. "All is safe," thought the Eng- 
 lishman. He turned abruptly and haughtily on Cesarini, and 
 waved his hand: " Begone, madman ! " said he, in a loud and 
 stern voice, " begone ! vex me no more, or I give you into cus- 
 tody. Begone, I say ! " 
 
 Cesarini halted, amazed and awed for the moment; and then, 
 with a dark scowl and a low cry, threw himself on Vargrave. 
 The eye and hand of the latter were vigilant and prepared: he 
 grasped the lifted arm of the maniac, and shouted for help. 
 But the madman was now in his full fury; he hurled Vargrave 
 to the ground with a force for which the peer was not prepared 
 and Lumley might never have risen a living man from that spot, 
 if two soldiers, seated close by, had not hastened to his assist- 
 ance. Cesarini was already kneeling on his breast, and his long 
 bony fingers were fastening upon the throat of his intended vic- 
 tim. Torn from his hold, he glared fiercely on his new assail- 
 ants; and, after a fierce and momentary struggle, wrested him- 
 self from their gripe. Then, turning round to Vargrave, who 
 had with some effort risen from the ground, he shrieked out, "I 
 shall have thee yet ! " and fled through the trees and disappeared. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 " Ah ! who is nigh ? Come to me, friend or foe! 
 My parks, my walks, my manors that I had 
 Ev'n now forsake me." Henry VI., Third Part. 
 
 Lord VARGRAVE, bold as he was by nature, in vain endeav- 
 ored to banish from his mind the gloomy impression which the 
 startling interview with Cesarini had bequeathed. The face,
 
 342 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 the voice of the maniac, haunted him, as the shape of the warn- 
 ing wraith haunts the mountaineer. He returned at once to his 
 hotel, unable for some hours to collect himself sufficiently to 
 pay his customary visit to Miss Cameron. Inly resolving not to 
 hazard a second meeting with the Italian during the rest of his 
 sojourn at Paris, by venturing in the streets on foot, he ordered 
 his carriage towards evening dined at the Cafede Paris; and 
 then re-entered his carriage to proceed to Lady Doltimore's 
 house. 
 
 " I beg your pardon, my lord," said his servant, as he closed 
 the carriage door, " but I forgot to say that, a short time after 
 you returned this morning, a strange gentleman asked at the 
 porter's lodge if Mr. Ferrers was not staying at the hotel. The 
 porter said there was no Mr. Ferrers but the gentleman in- 
 sisted that he had seen Mr. Ferrers enter. I was in the lodge 
 at the moment, my lord, and I explained " 
 
 " That Mr. Ferrers and Lord Vargrave are one and the same ? 
 What sort of a looking person?" 
 
 "Thin and dark, my lord evidently a foreigner. When I 
 said that you were now Lord Vargrave, he stared a moment, 
 and said, very abruptly, that he recollected it perfectly and 
 then he laughed and walked away." 
 
 " Did he not ask to see me ? " 
 
 "No, my lord; he said he should take another opportunity. 
 He was a strange-looking gentleman and his clothes were 
 threadbare." 
 
 "Ah ! some troublesome petitioner. Perhaps a Pole in dis- 
 tress ! Remember I am never at home when he calls. Shut 
 the door. To Lady Doltimore's." 
 
 Lumley's heart beat as he threw himself back he again felt 
 the gripe of the madman at his throat. He saw, at once, that 
 Cesarini had dogged him he resolved the next morning to 
 change his hotel, and to apply to the police. It was strange 
 how sudden and keen a fear had entered the breast of this cal- 
 lous and resolute man ! 
 
 On arriving at Lady Doltimore's he found Caroline alone in 
 the drawing-room. It was a tete-a-tete that he by no means de- 
 sired. 
 
 " Lord Vargrave," said Caroline coldly, " I wished a short 
 conversation with you and finding you did not come in the 
 morning, I sent you a note an hour ago. Did you receive it? " 
 
 " No I have been from home since six o'clock it is now 
 pine." 
 
 "Well, then, Vargrave," said Caroline, with a compressed and
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 343 
 
 writhing lip, and turning very pale "I tremble to tell you that 
 I fear Doltimore suspects. He looked at me sternly this morn- 
 ing, and said, 'You seem unhappy, madam this marriage of 
 
 Lord Vargrave's distresses you ! ' ' 
 
 " I warned you how it would be your own selfishness will 
 betray and ruin you." 
 
 " Do not reproach me, man ! " said Lady Doltimore, with 
 great vehemence. "From you at least I have a right to pity 
 to forbearance to succor. I will not bear reproach from you" 
 
 " I reproach you for your own sake for the faults you com- 
 mit against yourself and I must say, Caroline, that after I had 
 generously conquered all selfish feeling, and assisted you to so 
 desirable and even brilliant a position, it is neither just nor high- 
 minded in you to evince so ungracious a reluctance to my tak- 
 ing the only step which can save me from actual ruin. But what 
 does Doltimore suspect? What ground has he for suspicion, 
 beyond that want of command of countenance which it is easy 
 to explain and which it is yet easier for a woman and a great 
 lady (here Lumley sneered) to acquire?" 
 
 " I know not it has been put into his head. Paris is so full 
 of slander. But Vargrave Lumley I tremble I shudder 
 with terror if ever Doltimore should discover " 
 
 " Pooh pooh ! Our conduct at Paris has been most guard- 
 ed most discreet. Doltimore is Self-conceit personified and 
 Self-conceit is horn-eyed. I am about to leave Paris about to 
 marry, from under your own roof ; a little prudence a little 
 self-control a smiling face, when you wish us happiness, and 
 so forth, and all is safe. Tush! think of it no more Fate has 
 cut and shuffled the cards for you the game is yours unless you 
 revoke pardon my metaphor it is a favorite one I have worn 
 it threadbare but human life is so like a rubber at whist. Where 
 is Evelyn ?" 
 
 "In her own room. Have you no pity for her?" 
 
 "She will be very happy when she is Lady Vargrave; and for 
 the rest, I shall neither be a stern nor a jealous husband. She 
 might not have given the same character to the magnificent Mal- 
 travers." 
 
 Here Evelyn entered ; and Vargrave hastened to press her 
 hand to whisper tender salutations and compliments to draw 
 the easy-chair to the fire to place the footstool to lavish the 
 petits soins that are so agreeable, when they are the small mo- 
 ralities of love. 
 
 Evelyn was more than usually pale more than usually ab- 
 stracted. There was no lustre in her eyes no life in her step;
 
 344 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 she seemed unconscious of the crisis to which she approached. 
 As the myrrh and hyssop which drugged the malefactors of old 
 into forgetfulness of their doom, so there are griefs which stu- 
 pify before their last and crowning consummation ! 
 
 Vargrave conversed lightly on the weather, the news, the last 
 book. Evelyn answered but in monosyllables ; and Caroline, 
 with a hand-screen before her face, preserved an unbroken si- 
 lence. Thus, gloomy and joyless were two of the party thus, 
 gay and animated the third, when the clock on the mantelpiece 
 struck ten ; and, as the last stroke died, and Evelyn sighed 
 heavily for it was an hour nearer to the fatal day the door 
 was suddenly thrown open, and, pushing aside the servant, two 
 gentlemen entered the room. 
 
 Caroline, the first to perceive them, started from her seat with 
 a faint exclamation of surprise. Vargrave turned abruptly, and 
 saw before him the stern countenance of Maltravers. 
 
 " My child ! my Evelyn ! " exclaimed a familiar voice ; and 
 Evelyn had already flown into the arms of Aubrey. 
 
 The sight of the curate, in company with Maltravers, explained 
 all at once to Vargrave. He saw that the mask was torn from 
 his face the prize snatched from his grasp his falsehood 
 known his plot counterworked his villany baffled ! He 
 struggled in vain for self-composure all his resources of courage 
 and craft seemed drained and exhausted. Livid, speechless, 
 almost trembling he cowered beneath the eyes of Maltravers. 
 
 Evelyn, not as yet aware of the presence of her former lover, 
 was the first to break the silence. She lifted her face in alarm 
 from the bosom of the good curate " My mother she is well 
 she lives what brings you hither?" 
 
 " Your mother is well, my child. I have come hither at her 
 earnest request, to save you from a marriage with that un- 
 worthy man ! " 
 
 Lord Vargrave smiled a ghastly smile, but made no answer. 
 
 "Lord Vargrave," said Maltravers, "you will feel at once that 
 you have no further business under this roof. Let us withdraw 
 I have much to thank you for." 
 
 "I will not stir!" exclaimed Vargrave passionately, and 
 stamping on the floor. "Miss Cameron, the guest of Lady 
 Doltimore, whose house and presence you thus rudely profane, 
 is my affianced bride affianced with her own consent. Eve- 
 lyn beloved Evelyn ! mine you are yet you alone can cancel 
 the bond. Sir, I know not what you have to say what mystery 
 in your immaculate life to disclose ; but unless Lady Doltimore, 
 whom your violence appals and terrifies, orders me to quit her
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 345 
 
 roof, it is not I it is yourself, who is the intruder ! Lady Dolti- 
 more, with your permission, I will direct your servants to con- 
 duct this gentleman to his carriage ! " 
 
 "Lady Doltimore, pardon me," said Maltravers coldly; "I 
 will not be urged to any failure of respect to you. My lord, if 
 the most abject cowardice be not added to your other vices you 
 will not make this room the theatre for our altercation. I 
 invite you, in those terms which no gentleman ever yet refused, 
 to withdraw with me." 
 
 The tone and manner of Maltravers exercised a strange con- 
 trol over Vargrave ; he endeavored in vain to keep alive the 
 passion into which he had sought to work himself his voice 
 faltered, his head sunk upon his breast. Between these two 
 personages, none interfered, around them, all present grouped 
 in breathless silence : Caroline, turning her eyes from one to 
 the other in wonder and dismay ; Evelyn, believing all a dream, 
 yet alive only to the thought that, by some merciful interposi- 
 tion of Providence, she should escape the consequences of her 
 own rashness clinging to Aubrey, with her gaze riveted on Mal- 
 travers ; and Aubrey, whose gentle character was borne down 
 and silenced by the powerful and tempestuous passions that now 
 met in collision and conflict, withheld by his abhorrence of Var- 
 grave's treachery from his natural desire to propitiate, and yet 
 appalled by the apprehension of bloodshed, that for the first time 
 crossed him. 
 
 There was a moment of dead silence, in which Vargrave 
 seemed to be nerving and collecting himself for such course as 
 might be best to pursue, when again the door opened, and the 
 name of Mr. Howard was announced. 
 
 Hurried and agitated, the young secretary, scarcely noticing 
 the rest of the party, rushed to Lord Vargrave. 
 
 "My lord ! a thousand pardons for interrupting you busi- 
 ness of such importance ! I am so fortunate to find you ! " 
 
 "What is the matter, sir?" 
 
 " These letters, my lord ; I have so much to say ! " 
 
 Any interruption, even an earthquake, at that moment must 
 have been welcome to Vargrave. He bent his head, with a po- 
 lite smile, linked his arm into his secretary's, and withdrew to 
 the recess of the furthest window. Not a minute elapsed, before 
 he turned away with a look of scornful exultation. "Mr. 
 Howard," said he, "go and refresh yourself, and come to meat 
 twelve o'clock to-night ; I shall be at home then." 
 
 " Now, sir," said Vargrave to Maltravers, " I am willing to 
 leave you in possession of the field. Miss Cameron, it will be,
 
 346 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 I fear, impossible for me to entertain any longer the bright hopes 
 I had once formed ; my cruel fate compels me to seek wealth in 
 any matrimonial engagement. I regret to inform you, that you 
 are no longer the great heiress : the whole of your capital was 
 placed in the hands of Mr. Douce for the completion of the pur- 
 chase of Lisle Court. Mr. Douce is a bankrupt ; he has fled to 
 America. This letter is an express from my lawyer ; the house 
 has closed its payments ! Perhaps we may hope to obtain six- 
 pence in the pound. I am a loser also ; the forfeit money be- 
 queathed to me is gone. I know not whether, as your trustee, 
 I am not accountable for the loss of your fortune (drawn out on 
 my responsibility); probably so. But as I have not now a shil- 
 ling in the world, I doubt whether Mr. Maltravers will advise 
 you to institute proceedings against me. Mr. Maltravers, to- 
 morrow, at nine o'clock, 1 will listen to what you have to say. 
 I wish you all good-night." He bowed seized his hat and 
 vanished. 
 
 " Evelyn'," said Aubrey, " can you require to learn more do 
 you not already feel you are released from union with a man 
 without heart and honor?" 
 
 "Yes, yes! I am so happy!" cried Evelyn, bursting into 
 tears. " This hated wealth I feel not its loss I am released 
 from all duty to my benefactor. I am free ! " 
 
 The last, tie that had yet united the guilty Caroline to Var- 
 grave was broken a woman forgives sin in her lover, but never 
 meanness. The degrading, the abject position in which she 
 had seen one whom she had served as a slave (though, as yet, 
 all his worst villanies were unknown to her), filled her with 
 shame, horror, and disgust. She rose abruptly and quitted the 
 room. They did not miss her. 
 
 Maltravers approached Evelyn ; he took her hand, and 
 pressed it to his lips and heart. 
 
 " Evelyn," said he mournfully, "you require an explanation 
 to-morrow I will give and seek it. To-night we are both too 
 unnerved for such communications. I can only now feel joy at 
 your escape, and hope that I may still minister to your future 
 happiness." 
 
 " But," said Aubrey, " can we believe this new and astounding 
 statement ? can this loss be so irremediable? may we not yet 
 take precaution, and save, at least, some wrecks of this noble 
 fortune?" 
 
 "I thank you for recalling me to the world," said Maltravers 
 eagerly. " I will see to it this instant ; and to-morrow, Evelyn, 
 after my interview with you, I will hasten to London, and
 
 ALICE J OR, THE MYSTERIES. 347 
 
 act in that capacity still left to me your guardian your 
 friend." 
 
 He turned away his face, and hurried to the door. 
 
 Evelyn clung more closely to Aubrey " But you will not leave 
 me to-night ? you can stay we can find you accommodation 
 do not leave me." 
 
 "Leave you, my child ! no we have a thousand things to 
 say to each other. I will not," he added in a whisper, turning 
 to Maltravers, "forestall your communications." 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 " Alack, 'tis he. Why, he was met even now 
 As mad as the vex'd sea. Lear. 
 
 IN the Rue de la Paix there resided an English lawyer of 
 eminence, with whom Maltravers had had previous dealings, 
 to this gentleman he now drove. He acquainted him with the 
 news he had just heard, respecting the bankruptcy of Mr. 
 Douce ; and commissioned him to leave Paris, the first moment 
 he could obtain a passport, and to proceed to London. At all 
 events, he would arrive there some hours before Maltravers ; 
 and those hours were something gained. This done, he drove 
 
 to the nearest hotel, which chanced to be the Hotel de M , 
 
 where, though he knew it not, it so happened that Lord Var- 
 grave himself lodged. As his carriage stopped without, while 
 the porter unclosed the gates, a man, who had been loitering 
 under the lamps, darted forward, and prying into the carriage 
 window, regarded Maltravers earnestly. The latter, pre-occu- 
 pied and absorbed, did not notice him ; but when the carriage 
 drove into the courtyard, it was foltowed by the stranger, who 
 was muffled in a worn and tattered cloak, and whose movements 
 were unheeded amidst the bustle of the arrival. The porter's 
 wife led the way to a second-floor, just left vacant, and the 
 waiter began to arrange the fire. Maltravers threw himself ab- 
 stractedly upon the sofa, insensible to all around him when, 
 lifting his eyes, he saw before him the countenance of Cesarini ! 
 The Italian (supposed, perhaps, by the persons of the hotel, to 
 be one of the new-comers) was leaning over the back of a chair, 
 supporting his face with his hand, and fixing his eyes with an 
 earnest and sorrowful expression upon the features of his ancient 
 rival. When he perceived that he was recognized, he approached 
 Maltravers, and said in Italian, and in alow voice, "You are the 
 nian of all others, whom, save one, I most desired, to see. \ hay?
 
 348 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 much to say to you, and my time is short. Spare me a few 
 minutes." 
 
 The tone and manner of Cesarini were so calm and rational, 
 that they changed the first impulse of Maltravers, which was that 
 of securing a maniac : while the Italian's emaciated countenance 
 his squalid garments the air of penury and want diffused over 
 his whole appearance irresistibly invited his compassion. With 
 all the more anxious and pressing thoughts that weighed upon 
 him, Maltravers could not refuse the conference thus demanded. 
 He dismissed the attendants, and motioned Cesarini to be seated. 
 
 The Italian drew near to the fire, which now blazed brightly 
 and cheerily, and, spreading his thin hands to the flame, seemed 
 to enjoy the physical luxury of the warmth. "Cold cold," he 
 said piteously, as to himself ; " Nature is a very bitter protector. 
 But frost and famine are, at least, more merciful than slavery 
 and darkness." 
 
 At this moment Ernest's servant entered to know if his master 
 would not take refreshments, for he had scarcely touched food 
 upon the road. And, as he spoke, Cesarini turned keenly and 
 wistfully round. There was no mistaking the appeal. Wine and 
 cold meat were ordered: and when the servant vanished, Cesarini 
 turned to Maltravers with a strange smile, and said : "You see 
 what the love of liberty brings men to ! They found me plenty 
 in the gaol ! But I have read of men who feasted merrily before 
 execution have not you ? and my hour is at hand. All this 
 day I have felt chained by an irresistible destiny to this house. 
 But it was not you I sought ; no matter, in the crisis of our doom 
 all its agents meet together. It is the last act of a dreary play ! " 
 
 The Italian turned again to the fire, and bent over it, mut- 
 tering to himself. 
 
 Maltravers remained silent and thoughtful. Now was the 
 moment once more to place the maniac under the kindly vigil- 
 ance of his family to snatch him from the horrors, perhaps of 
 starvation itself, to which his escape had condemned him : if he 
 could detain Cesarini till De Montaigne could arrive ! 
 
 Agreeably to this thought, he quietly drew towards him the 
 portfolio which had been laid on the table and, Cesarini's back 
 still turned to him, wrote a hasty line to De Montaigne. When 
 his servant re-entered with the wine and viands, Maltravers fol- 
 lowed him out of the room, and bade him see the note sent im- 
 mediately. On returning, he found Cesarini devouring the food 
 before him with all the voracity of famine. It was a dreadful 
 sight! the intellect ruined the mind darkened the wild, 
 fierce animal alone left !
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 349 
 
 When Cesarini had appeased his hunger, he [drew near to 
 Maltravers, and thus accosted him : 
 
 " I must lead you back to the past. I sinned against you and 
 the dead : but Heaven has avenged you, and me you can pity 
 and forgive. Maltravers, there is another more guilty than I 
 but proud, prosperous, and great. His crime Heaven has left 
 
 to the revenge of man ! 1 bound myself by an oath not to 
 
 reveal his villany. I cancel the oath now, for the knowledge 
 of it should survive his life and mine. And, mad though they 
 deem me the mad are prophets and a solemn conviction, a 
 voice not of earth, tells me that he and I are already in the 
 Shadow of Death." 
 
 Here Cesarini with a calm and precise accuracy of self-pos- 
 session, a minuteness of circumstance and detail, that, coming 
 from one whose very eyes betrayed his terrible disease, was in- 
 finitely thrilling in its effect, related the counsels, the per- 
 suasion, the stratagems of Lumley. Slowly and distinctly he 
 forced into the heart of Maltravers that sickening record of 
 cold fraud, calculating on vehement passion as its tool ; and 
 thus he concluded his narration : 
 
 " Now, wonder no longer why I have lived till this hour 
 why I have clung to freedom, through want and hunger, amidst 
 beggars, felons, and outcasts ! In that freedom was my last 
 hope the hope of revenge ! " 
 
 Maltravers returned no answer for some moments. At length 
 he said calmly: "Cesarini, there are injuries so great, that they 
 defy revenge. Let us alike, since we are alike injured, trust 
 our cause to Him who reads all hearts, and, better than we can 
 do, measures both crime and its excuses. You think that our 
 enemy has not suffered that he has gone free. We know not 
 his internal history prosperity and power are no signs of hap- 
 piness, they bring no exemption from care. Be soothed and 
 be ruled, Cesarini. Let the stone once more close over the 
 solemn grave. Turn with me to the future ; and let us rather 
 seek to be the judges of ourselves, than the executioners of 
 another." 
 
 Cesarini listened gloomily, and was about to answer, when 
 
 But here we must return to Lord Vargrave.
 
 35 ALICE J OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 * * * " My noble lord, 
 
 Your worthy friends do lack you." Macbeth. 
 
 * * * " He is about it : 
 The doors are open." Ibid. 
 
 ON quitting Lady Doltimore's house, Lumley drove to his 
 hotel. His secretary had been the bearer of other communica- 
 tions, with the nature of which he had not yet acquainted him- 
 self. But he saw by the superscriptions that they were of great 
 importance. Still, however, even in the solitude and privacy 
 of his own chamber, it was not on the instant that he could 
 divert his thoughts from the ruin of his fortunes : the loss not 
 only of Evelyn's property, but his own claims upon it (for the 
 whole capital had been placed in Douce's hands) the total 
 wreck of his grand scheme the triumph he had afforded to 
 Maltravers ! He ground his teeth in impotent rage, and groaned 
 aloud, as he traversed his room with hasty and uneven strides. 
 At last he paused and muttered, " Well, the spider toils on even 
 when its very power of weaving fresh webs is exhausted ; it lies 
 in wait it forces itself into the webs of others. Brave insect, 
 thou art my model ! While I have breath in my body, the world 
 and all its crosses Fortune and all her malignity shall not 
 prevail against me ! What man ever yet failed until he him- 
 self grew craven, and sold his soul to the arch fiend, Despair ! 
 'Tis but a girl and a fortune lost they were gallantly fought 
 for, that is some comfort. Now to what is yet left to me ! " 
 
 The first letter Lumley opened was from Lord Saxingham. 
 It filled him with dismay. The question at issue had been 
 formally, but abruptly, decided in the cabinet against Vargrave 
 and his manoeuvres. Some hasty expressions of Lord Saxing- 
 ham had been instantly caught at by the premier, and a resig- 
 nation, rather hinted at than declared, had been peremptorily 
 accepted. Lord Saxingham and Lumley's adherents in the 
 government were to a man dismissed ; and, at the time Lord 
 Saxingham wrote, the premier was with the King. 
 
 " Curse their folly ! the puppets ! the dolts ! " exclaimed 
 Lumley, crushing the letter in his hand. " The moment I leave 
 them, they run their heads against the wall. Curse them curse 
 myself curse the man who weaves ropes with sand ! Nothing 
 nothing left for me, but exile or suicide ! Stay, what is this?" 
 His eye fell on the well-known handwriting of the premier. He 
 tore the envelope, impatient to know the worst. His eyes
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 351 
 
 Sparkled as he proceeded. The letter was most courteous, 
 most complimentary, most wooing. The minister was a man 
 consummately versed in the arts that increase, as well as those 
 which purge, a party. Saxingham and his friends were im- 
 beciles incapables mostly men who had outlived their day. 
 But Lord Vargrave, in the prime of life versatile, accomplished, 
 vigorous, bitter, unscrupulous Vargrave was of another mould 
 Vargrave was to be dreaded ; and, therefore, if possible, to 
 be retained. His powers of mischief were unquestionably in- 
 creased by the universal talk of London, that he was about 
 soon to wed so wealthy a lady. The minister knew this man. 
 In terms of affected regret, he alluded to the loss the govern- 
 ment would sustain in the services of Lord Saxingham, etc. 
 he rejoiced that Lord Vargrave's absence from London had 
 prevented his being prematurely mixed up, by false scruples of 
 honor, in secessions which his judgment must condemn. He 
 treated of the question in dispute with the most delicate address ; 
 confessed the reasonableness of Lord Vargrave's former oppo- 
 sition to it ; but contended that it was now, if not wise, inevit- 
 able. He said nothing of \\\z justice of the measure he pro- 
 posed to adopt, but much on the expediency. He concluded by 
 offering to Vargrave, in the most cordial and flattering terms, 
 the very seat in the cabinet which Lord Saxingham had vacated, 
 with an apology for its inadequacy to his lordship's merits, and 
 a distinct and definite promise of the refusal of the gorgeous 
 viceroyalty of India which would be vacant next year, by the 
 return of the present governor-general. 
 
 Unprincipled as Vargrave was, it is not, perhaps, judging 
 him too mildly to say, that had he succeeded in obtaining 
 Evelyn's hand and fortune, he would have shrunk from the 
 baseness he now meditated. To step coldly into the very post 
 of which he, and he alone, had been the cause of depriving his 
 earliest patron and nearest relative to profit by the betrayal 
 of his own party to damn himself eternally in the eyes of his 
 ancient friends to pass down the stream of history as a mer- 
 cenary apostate ; from all this Vargrave must have shrunk, had 
 he seen one spot of honest ground on which to maintain his 
 footing. But now the waters of the abyss were closing over his 
 head ; he would have caught at a straw ; how much more con- 
 sent to be picked up by the vessel of an enemy ! All objection, 
 all scruple, vanished at once. And the " barbaric gold " " of 
 Ormus and of Ind " glittered before the greedy eyes of the pen- 
 niless adventurer ! Not a day was now to be lost : how fortu- 
 nate that a written proposition, from which it was impossible to
 
 352 ALICE; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 recede, had been made to him, before the failure of his matri- 
 monial projects had become known ! Too happy to quit Paris, 
 he would set off on the morrow, and conclude in person the 
 negotiation. Vargrave glanced towards the clock, it was scarcely 
 past eleven ; what revolutions are worked in moments ! Within 
 an hour he had lost a wife a noble fortune changed the poli- 
 tics of his whole life stepped into a cabinet office and was 
 already calculating how much a governor-general of India could 
 lay by in five years ! But it was only eleven o'clock he had 
 put off Mr. Howard's visit till twelve he wished so much to 
 see him, and learn all the London gossip connected with the 
 recent events. Poor Mr. Douce ! Vargrave had already for- 
 gotten his existence ! he rang his bell hastily. It was some 
 time before his servant answered. 
 
 Promptitude and readiness were virtues that Lord Vargrave 
 peremptorily demanded in a servant ; and as he paid the best 
 price for the articles less in wages than in plunder he was 
 generally sure to obtain them. 
 
 "Where the deuce have you been ? this is the third time I 
 have rung ! you ought to be in the anteroom ! " 
 
 " I beg your lordship's pardon ; but I was helping Mr. Mal- 
 travers's valet to find a key which he dropped in the court- 
 yard." 
 
 " Mr. Maltravers ! Is he at this hotel ? " 
 
 "Yes, my lord ; his rooms are just overhead." 
 
 " Humph ! Has Mr. Howard engaged a lodging here ?" 
 
 " No, my lord. He left word that he was gone to his aunt, 
 Lady Jane." 
 
 " Ah ! Lady Jane lives at Paris so she does Rue de 
 Chaussee d'Antin you know the house ? go immediately 
 go yourself don't trust to a messenger and beg Mr. How- 
 ard to return with you. I want to see him instantly." 
 
 " Yes, my lord." 
 
 The servant went. Lumley was in a mood in which solitude 
 was intolerable. He was greatly excited ; and some natural 
 compunctions at the course on which he had decided made him 
 long to escape from thought. So Maltravers was under the 
 same roof ! He had promised to give him an interview next 
 day ; but next day he wished to be on the road to London. 
 Why not have it over to-night ? But could Maltravers medi- 
 tate any hostile proceedings ? impossible ! Whatever his 
 causes of complaint, they were of too delicate and secret a na- 
 ture for seconds, bullets, and newspaper paragraphs ! Var- 
 grave might feel secure that he should not be delayed by any Bois
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. $<jj 
 
 de Boulogne assignation ; but it was necessary to his honor (!) 
 that he should not seem to shun the man he had deceived 
 and wronged. He would go up to him at once a new excite- 
 ment would distract his thoughts. Agreeably to this resolu- 
 tion, Lord Vargrave quitted his room, and was about to close 
 the outer door, when he recollected that perhaps his servant 
 miht not meet with Howard that the secretary might proba- 
 bly arrive before the time fixed it would be as well to leave 
 his door open. He accordingly stopped, and writing upon a 
 piece of paper, " Dear Howard, send up for me the moment 
 you arrive; I shall be with Mr. Maltravers au second" Var- 
 grave wafered the affiche to the door, which he then left ajar, 
 and the lamp in the landing-place fell clear and full on the paper. 
 
 It was the voice of Vargrave, in the little stone-paven ante- 
 chamber without, inquiringof theservant if Mr. Maltravers was 
 at home, which had startled and interrupted Cesarini as he was 
 about to reply to Ernest. Each recognized that sharp, clear 
 voice each glanced at the other. 
 
 "I will not see him," said Maltravers, hastily moving towards 
 the door ; " you are not fit to " 
 
 "Meet him ? no ! " said Cesarini, with a furtive and sinis- 
 ter glance, which a man versed in his disease would have un- 
 derstood, but which Maltravers did not even observe ; " I will 
 retire into your bedroom ; my eyes are heavy I could sleep." 
 
 He opened the inner door as he spoke, and had scarcely re- 
 closed it before Vargrave entered. 
 
 " Your servant said you were engaged ; but I thought you 
 might see an old friend ;" and Vargrave coolly seated himself. 
 
 Maltravers drew the bolt across the door that separated them 
 from Cesarini ; and the two men, whose characters and lives 
 were so strongly contrasted, were now alone. 
 
 " You wished an interview an explanation," said Lumley ; 
 " I shrink from neither. Let me forestall inquiry and com- 
 plaint. I deceived you knowingly and deliberately, it is quite 
 true all stratagems are fair in love and war. The prize was 
 vast ! I believed my career depended on it ; I could not resist 
 the temptation. I knew that before long you would learn that 
 Evelyn was not your daughter ; that the first communication 
 between yourself and Lady Vargrave would betray me ; but it 
 was worth trying a coup demain. You have foiled me, and con- 
 quered ; be it so ; I congratulate you. You are tolerably rich, 
 and the loss of Evelyn's fortune will not vex you as it would 
 have done me." 
 
 " Lord Vargrave, it is but poor affectation to treat thus
 
 354 Alter. ; oR, THE 
 
 lightly the dark falsehood you conceived, the awful curse you 
 inflicted upon me ! Your sight is now so painful to me it so 
 stirs the passions that I would seek to suppress, that the sooner 
 our interview is terminated the better. I have to charge you, 
 also, with a crime not, perhaps, baser than the one you so 
 calmly own, but the consequences of which were more fatal ; 
 you understand me ?" 
 
 " I do not." 
 
 " Do not tempt me ! do not lie ! " said Maltravers, still in a 
 calm voice, though his passions, naturally so strong, shook his 
 whole frame. " To your arts I owe the exile of years that 
 should have been better spent ; to those arts Cesarini owes the 
 wreck of his reason, and Florence Lascelles her early grave ! 
 Ah ! you are pale now; your tongue cleaves to your mouth ! 
 And think you these crimes will go for ever unrequited? think 
 you that there is no justice in the thunderbolts of God? " 
 
 " Sir," said Vargrave, starting to his feet ; " I know not what 
 you suspect, I care not what you believe ! But I am ac- 
 countable to man, and that account I am willing to render. 
 You threatened me in the presence of my ward ; you spoke of 
 cowardice, and hinted at danger. Whatever my faults, want 
 of courage is not one. Stand by your threats I am ready to 
 brave them ! " 
 
 "A year, perhaps a short month ago," replied Maltravers, 
 "and I would have arrogated justice to my own mortal hand ; 
 nay, this very night, had the hazard of either of our lives been 
 necessary to save Evelyn from your persecution, I would have 
 incurred all things for her sake ! But that is past : from me 
 you have nothing to fear. The proofs of your earlier guilt, 
 with its dreadful results, would alone suffice to warn me from 
 the solemn responsibility of human vengeance ! Great Heaven ! 
 what hand could dare to send a criminal so long hardened, so 
 black with crime, unatoning, unrepentant, and unprepared, 
 before the judgment seat of the ALL JUST ? Go, unhappy 
 man ! may life long be spared to you ! Awake awake from 
 this world, before your feet pass the irrevocable boundary of 
 the next ! " 
 
 " I came not here to listen to homilies, and the cant of the 
 conventicle," said Vargrave, vainly struggling for a haughtiness 
 of mien that his conscience-stricken aspect terribly belied ; 
 " not I but this wrong World is to be blamed, if deeds that 
 strict morality may not justify, but the effects of which I, no 
 prophet, could not foresee, were necessary for success in life. 
 I have been but as all other men have been who struggle against
 
 ALICE ; 6k, f HE MvstEkiES. 355 
 
 fortune, to be rich and great : ambition must make use of foul 
 ladders." 
 
 " Oh ! " said Maltravers earnestly, touched involuntarily, and 
 in spite of his abhorrence of the criminal, by the relenting that 
 this miserable attempt at self-justification seemed to denote, 
 "Oh ! be warned while it is yet time ; wrap not yourself in these 
 paltry sophistries ; look back to your past career ; see to what 
 heights you might have climbed, if with those rare gifts and 
 energies with that subtle sagacity and indomitable courage 
 your ambition had but chosen the straight, not the crooked, 
 path. Pause ! many years may yet, in the course of nature, 
 afford you time to retrace your steps to atone to thousands 
 the injuries you have inflicted on the few. I know not why I 
 thus address you : but something diviner than indignation urges 
 me ; something tells me that you are already on the brink of 
 the abyss ! " 
 
 Lord Vargrave changed color, nor did he speak for some mo- 
 ments ; then raising his head, with a faint smile, he said : " Mal- 
 travers, you are a false soothsayer. At this moment my paths, 
 crooked though they be, have led me far toward the summit of 
 my proudest hopes the straight path would have left me at the 
 foot of the mountain ! You yourself are a beacon against the 
 course you advise. Let us contrast each other. You took the 
 straight path : I the crooked. You, my superior in fortune ; 
 you, infinitely above me in genius ; you, born to command and 
 never to crouch ; how do we stand now, each in the prime of 
 life ? You, with a barren and profitless reputation ; without 
 rank, without power almost without the hope of power. I 
 but you know not my new dignity I, in the cabinet of Eng- 
 land's ministry vast fortunes opening to my gaze the proud- 
 est station not too high for my reasonable ambition ! You, 
 wedding yourself to some grand chimera of an object aimless 
 when it eludes your grasp. I, swinging, squirrel-like, from 
 scheme to scheme ; noinatter if one breaks, another is at hand! 
 Some men would have cut their throats in despair, an hour ago, 
 in losing the object of a seven years' chase Beauty and Wealtk 
 both ! I open a letter, and find success in one quarter to coun- 
 terbalance failure in another. Bah ! bah ! each to his metier, 
 Maltravers ! For you, honor, melancholy, and, if it please you, 
 repentance also ! For me, the onward, rushing life, never look- 
 ing back to the Past, never balancing the stepping-stones to the 
 Future. Let us not envy each other : if you were not Diogenes, 
 you would be Alexander. Adieu ! our interview is over. Will 
 you forget and forgive, and shake hands once more ? You draw
 
 5<> ALICE j OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 back you frown ! well, perhaps you are right. If we meet 
 again " 
 
 "It will be as strangers." 
 
 " No rash vows ! you may return to politics you may want 
 office. I am of your way of thinking now : and ha ! ha ! 
 poor Lumley Ferrers could make you a Lord of the Treasury : 
 smooth travelling, and cheap turnpikes on crooked paths, be- 
 lieve me. Farewell ! " 
 
 On entering the room into which Cesarini had retired, Mal- 
 travers found him flown. His servant said that the gentleman 
 had gone away shortly after Lord Vargrave's arrival. Ernest 
 reproached himself bitterly for neglecting to secure the door 
 that conducted to the ante-chamber ; but still it was probable 
 that Cesarini would return in the morning. 
 
 The messenger who had taken the letter to De Montaigne 
 brought back word that the latter was at his villa, but expected 
 at Paris early the next day. Maltravers hoped to see him be- 
 fore his departure : meanwhile he threw himself on his bed, 
 and, despite all the anxieties that yet oppressed him, the fatigues 
 and excitements he had undergone exhausted even the endur- 
 ance of that iron frame, and he fell into a profound slumber. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 " By eight to-morrow 
 Thou shall be made immortal." Measure for Measure. 
 
 LORD VARGRAVE returned to his apartment, to find Mr. 
 Howard, who had but just that instant arrived, warming his 
 white and well-ringed hands by the fire. He conversed with 
 him for half an hour on all the topics on which the secretary 
 could give him information, and then dismissed him once more 
 to the roof of Lady Jane. 
 
 As he slowly undressed himself, he saw on his writing-table 
 the note which Lady Doltimore had referred to, and which he 
 had not yet opened. He lazily broke the seal, ran his eye care- 
 lessly over its few blotted words of remorse and alarm, and 
 threw it down again with a contemptuous " pshaw ! " Thus 
 unequally are the sorrows of a guilty tie felt by the man of the 
 wiild and the woman of society ! 
 
 A? his servant placed before him his wine and water, Var- 
 gra\ told him to see early to the preparations for departure, 
 and l^ call him at nine o'clock.
 
 ALICE I OR, THE MYSTERIES. $$J 
 
 " Shall I shut that door, my lord ?" said the valet, pointing 
 to one that communicated with one of those large closets, or 
 artnoires, that are common appendages to French bedrooms, 
 and in which wood and sundry other matters are kept. 
 
 " No," said Lord Vargrave, petulantly ; "you servants are so 
 fond of excluding every breath of air. I should never have a 
 window open, if I did not open it myself. Leave the door as it 
 is ; and do not be later than nine to-morrow." 
 
 The servant, who slept in a kind of kennel, that communi- 
 cated with the anteroom, did as he was bid ; and Vargrave put 
 out his candle, betook himself to bed, and, after drowsily gazing 
 some minutes on the dying embers of the fire, which threw a 
 dim, ghastly light over the chamber, fell fast asleep. The 
 clock struck the first hour of morning, and in that house all 
 seemed still. 
 
 The next morning, Maltraverswas disturbed from his slumber 
 by De Montaigne, who, arriving, as was often his wont, at an 
 early hour from his rilla, had found Ernest's note of the pre- 
 vious evening. 
 
 Maltravers rose, and dressed himself ; and, while De Mon- 
 taigne was yet listening to the account which his friend gave 
 of his adventure with Cesarini, and the unhappy man's accu- 
 sation of his accomplice, Ernest's servant entered the room 
 very abruptly. 
 
 " Sir," said he, " I thought you might like to know, what is 
 to be done ? the whole hotel is in confusion Mr. Howard 
 has been sent for, and Lord Doltimore so very strange, so 
 sudden ! " 
 
 "What is the matter? speak plain." 
 
 " Lord Vargrave, sir poor Lord Vargrave " 
 
 " Lord Vargrave ! " 
 
 "Yes, sir; the master of the hotel, hearing you knew his 
 lordship, would be so glad if you would come down. Lord Var- 
 grave, sir, is dead found dead in his bed ! " 
 
 Maltravers was rooted to the spot with amaze and horror. 
 Dead ! and but last night so full of life, and schemes, and 
 hope, and ambition ! 
 
 As soon as he recovered himself, he hurried to the spot, and 
 De Montaigne followed. The latter, as they descended the 
 stairs, laid his hand on Ernest's arm, and detained him. 
 
 " Did you say that Castruccio left the apartment while Var- 
 grave was with you, and almost immediately after his narrative 
 of Vargrave's instigation to his crime ? " 
 
 " Yes."
 
 358 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 The eyes of the friends met a terrible suspicion possessed 
 both. 
 
 " No it is impossible ! " exclaimed Maltravers. " How- 
 could he obtain entrance how pass Lord Vargrave's servants? 
 No, no think of it not." 
 
 They hurried down the stairs they reached the outer door 
 of Vargrave's apartment the notice to Howard, with the name 
 of Vargrave underscored, was still on the panels De Mon- 
 taigne saw and shuddered. 
 
 They were in the room by the bedside a group were collected 
 round they gave way as the Englishman and his friend 
 approached; and the eyes of Maltravers suddenly rested on the 
 face of Lord Vargrave, which was locked, rigid, and convulsed. 
 
 There was a buzz of voices which had ceased at the entrance 
 of Maltravers it was now renewed. A surgeon had been 
 summoned the nearest surgeon a young Englishman, of no 
 great repute or name. He was making inquiries as he bent 
 over the corpse. 
 
 " Yes, sir," said Lord Vargrave's servant, " his lordship told 
 me to call him at nine o'clock. I came in at that hour, but 
 his lordship did not move nor answer me. I then looked to 
 see if he were very sound asleep, and I saw that the pillows had 
 got somehow over his face, and his head seemed to lie very 
 low ; so I moved the pillows, and I saw that his lordship was 
 dead." 
 
 "Sir," said the surgeon, turning to Maltravers, "you were a 
 friend of his lordship's, I hear. I have already sent for Mr. 
 Howard and Lord Doltimore. Shall I speak with you a 
 minute ? " 
 
 Maltravers nodded assent. The surgeon cleared the [room 
 of all but himself, De Montaigne, and Maltravers. 
 
 "Has that servant lived long with Lord Vargrave?" asked 
 the surgeon. 
 
 " I believe so yes I recollect his face why ? " 
 
 "And you think him safe and honest?" 
 
 " I don't know I know nothing of him." 
 
 " Look here, sir," and the surgeon pointed to a slight dis- 
 coloration on one side the throat of the dead man. " This may 
 be accidental purely natural his lordship may have died in 
 a fit there are no certain marks of outward violence but 
 suffocation by murder might still " 
 
 "But who beside the servant could gain admission? Was 
 the outer door closed ? " 
 
 "The servant can take oath that he shut the door before
 
 ALICE; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 359 
 
 going to bed, and that no one was with his lordship, or in the 
 rooms, when Lord Vargrave retired to rest. Entrance from 
 the windows is impossible. Mind, sir, I do not think I have 
 any right to suspect any one. His lordship had been in very 
 ill health a short time before; had had, I hear, a rush of blood 
 to the head. Certainly, if the servant be innocent, we can 
 suspect no one else. You had better send for more experienced 
 practitioners." 
 
 De Montaigne, who had hitherto said nothing, now looked 
 with a hurried glance around the room : he perceived the closet- 
 door, which was ajar, and rushed to it, as by an involuntary 
 impulse. The closet was large, but a considerable pile of wood, 
 and some lumber of odd chairs and tables, took up a great 
 part of the space. De Montaigne searched behind and amidst 
 this litter with trembling haste no trace of secreted murder 
 was visible. He returned to the bedroom with a satisfied and 
 relieved expression of countenance. He then compelled him- 
 self to approach the body, from which he had hitherto recoiled. 
 
 "Sir," said he almost harshly, as he turned to the surgeon, 
 "what idle doubts are these ! Cannot men die in their beds 
 of sudden death, no blood to stain their pillows, no loop- 
 hole for crime to pass through, but we must have science itself 
 startling us with silly terrors? As for the servant, I will answer 
 for his innocence his manner his voice attest it." The 
 surgeon drew back, abashed and humbled, and began to apolo- 
 gize to qualify, when Lord Doltimore abruptly entered. 
 
 " Good heavens ! " said he, " what is this ? What do I hear ? 
 Is it possible ? Dead ! So suddenly ! " He cast a hurried 
 glance at the body shivered, and sickened, and threw him- 
 self into a chair, as if to recover the shock. When again he 
 removed his hand from his face, he saw lying before him on 
 the table an open note. The character was familiar, his own 
 name struck his eye, it was the note which Caroline had sent 
 the day before. As no one heeded him, Lord Doltimore read 
 on, and possessed himself of the proof of his wife's guilt unseen. 
 
 The surgeon, now turning from De Montaigne, who had 
 been rating him soundly for the last few moments, addressed 
 himself to Lord Doltimore. "Your lordship," said he, "was, 
 I hear, Lord Vargrave's most intimate friend at Paris." 
 
 "I his intimate friend ! " said Doltimore, coloring highly, and 
 in a disdainful accent. " Sir, you are misinformed." 
 
 "Have you no orders to give, then, my lord?" 
 
 " None, sir. My presence here is quite useless, Good-day 
 to you, gentlemen,"
 
 360 ALICE J OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 "With whom, then, do the last duties rest?" said the surgeon, 
 turning to Maltravers and De Montaigne. "With the late 
 lord's secretary? I expect him every moment; and here he 
 is, I suppose," as Mr. Howard, pale, and evidently overcome 
 by his agitation, entered the apartment. Perhaps, of all the 
 human beings whom the ambitious spirit of that senseless clay 
 had drawn around it by the webs of interest, affection, or 
 intrigue, that young man, whom it had never been atemptation 
 to Vargrave to deceive or injure, and who missed only the 
 gracious and familiar patron, mourned most his memory, and 
 defended most his character. The grief of the poor secretary 
 was now indeed overmastering. He sobbed and wept like a 
 child. 
 
 When Maltravers retired from the chamber of death, De 
 Montaigne accompanied him ; but, soon quitting him again, as 
 Ernest bent his way to Evelyn, he quietly rejoined Mr. How- 
 ard, who readily grasped at his offers of aid in the last melan- 
 choly duties and directions. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 " If we do mee* again, why we shall smile." Julius Caesar. 
 
 THE interview with Evelyn was long and painful. It was 
 reserved for Maltravers to break to her the news of the sudden 
 death of Lord Vargrave, which shocked her unspeakably ; and 
 this, which made their first topic, removed much constraint and 
 deadened much excitement in those which followed. 
 
 Vargrave's death served also to relieve Maltravers from a 
 most anxious embarrassment. He need no longer fear that 
 Alice would be degraded in the eyes of Evelyn. Henceforth 
 the secret that identified the erring Alice Darvil with the spotless 
 Lady Vargrave was safe, known only to Mrs. Leslie and to 
 Aubrey. In the course of nature, all chance of its disclosure 
 must soon die with them ; and should Alice at last become 
 his wife, and should Cleveland suspect (which was not prob- 
 able) that Maltravers had returned to his first love, he knew 
 that he might depend on the inviolable secrecy of his earliest 
 friend. 
 
 The tale that Vargrave had told to Evelyn of his early but, 
 according to that tale, guiltless passion for Alice, he tacitly 
 confirmed ; and he allowed that the recollection of her virtues, 
 and the intelligence of her sorrows and unextinguishable affec-
 
 ALICE J OR, THE MYSTERIES. 361 
 
 tion, had made him recoil from a marriage with her supposed 
 daughter. He then proceeded to amaze his young listener with 
 the account of the mode in which he had discovered her real 
 parentage ; of which the banker had left it to Alice's discretion 
 to inform her, after she had attained the age of eighteen. And 
 then, simply, but with manly and ill-controlled emotion, he 
 touched upon the joy of Alice at beholding him again upon 
 the endurance and fervor of her love upon her revulsion of 
 feeling at learning that, in her unforgotten lover, she beheld 
 the recent suitor of her adopted child. 
 
 "And now," said Maltravers, in conclusion, " the path to 
 both of us remains the same. To Alice is our first duty. The 
 discovery I have made of your real parentage does not diminish 
 the claims which Alice has on me, does not lessen the grateful 
 affection that is due to her from yourself. Yes, Evelyn, we 
 are not the less separated for ever. But when I learned the 
 wilful falsehood which the unhappy man now hurried to his 
 last account to whom your birth was known, had imposed 
 upon me, viz., that you were the child of Alice ; and when I 
 learned, also, that you had been hurried into accepting his hand, 
 I trembled at your union with one so false and base. I came 
 hither resolved to frustrate his schemes, and to save you from 
 an alliance, the motives of which I foresaw, and to which my 
 own letter, my own desertion, had perhaps urged you. New 
 villanies on the part of this most perverted man came to my 
 ear ; but he is dead, let us spare his memory. For you 
 oh ! still let me deem myself your friend your more than 
 brother ; let me hope now, that I have planted no thorn in that 
 breast, and that your affection does not shrink from the cold 
 word of friendship." 
 
 "Of all the wonders that you have told me," answered Evelyn, 
 as soon as she could recover the power of words, "my most 
 poignant sorrow is, that I have no rightful claim to give a 
 daughter's love to her whom I shall ever idolize as my mother. 
 Oh ! now I see why I thought her affection measured and luke- 
 warm ! And have I I destroyed her joy at seeing you again? 
 But you you will hasten to console to reassure her ! She 
 loves you still, she will be happy at last ; and that that 
 thought oh ! that thought compensates for all ! " 
 
 There was so much warmth and simplicity in Evelyn's artless 
 manner, it was so evident that her love for him had not been 
 of that ardent nature which would at first have superseded 
 every other thought in the anguish of losing him for ever, that 
 the scale fell from the eyes of Maltravers, and he saw at once
 
 362 ALICE J OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 that his own love had blinded him to the true character of hers. 
 He was human ; and a sharp pang shot across his breast. He 
 remained silent for some moments ; and then resumed, com- 
 pelling himself, as he spoke, to fix his eyes steadfastly on hers. 
 
 "And now, Evelyn still may I so call you? I have a duty 
 to discharge to another. You are loved " and he smiled, but 
 the smile was sad "by a younger and more suitable lover than 
 I am. From noble and generous motives he suppressed that 
 love he left you to a rival : the rival removed, dare he venture 
 to explain to you his own conduct, and plead his own motives? 
 George Legard " Maltravers paused. The cheek on which he 
 gazed was tinged with a soft blush Evelyn's eyes were down- 
 cast there was a slight heaving beneath the robe. Maltravers 
 suppressed a sigh, and continued. He narrated his interview 
 with Legard at Dover ; and, passing lightly over what had 
 chanced at Venice, dwelt with generous eloquence on the mag- 
 nanimity with which his rival's gratitude had been displayed. 
 Evelyn's eyes sparkled, and the smile just visited the rosy lips 
 and vanished again the worst, because it was the least selfish, 
 fear of Maltravers was gone ; and no vain doubt of Evelyn's 
 too keen regret remained to chill his conscience in obeying its 
 earliest and strongest duties. 
 
 " Farewell ! " he said, as he rose to depart ; " I will at once 
 return to London, and assist in the effort to save your fortune 
 from this general wreck : LIFE calls us back to its cares and 
 business farewell, Evelyn ! Aubrey will, I trust, remain with 
 you still." 
 
 " Remain ! Can I not return then to my to her yes, let 
 me call her mother still?" 
 
 "Evelyn," said Maltravers, in a very low voice, " spare me 
 spare her that pain ! Are we yet fit to "He paused; Evelyn 
 comprehended him, and, hiding her face with her hands, burst 
 into tears. 
 
 When Maltravers left the room, he was met by Aubrey, who, 
 drawing him aside, told him that Lord Doltimore ,had just 
 informed him that it was not his intention to remain at Paris, 
 and had more than delicately hinted at a wish for the departure 
 of Miss Cameron. In this emergency, Maltravers bethought 
 himself of Madame de Ventadour. 
 
 No house in Paris was a more eligible refuge no friend more 
 zealous no protector would be more kind no adviser more 
 sincere. To her then he hastened. He briefly informed her 
 of Vargrave's sudden death ; and suggested, that for Evelyn to 
 return at once to a sequestered village in England might be a.
 
 ALICE J OR, THE MYSTERIES. 363 
 
 Severe trial to spirits already broken ; and declared truly, that 
 though his marriage with Evelyn was broken off, her welfare 
 was no less dear to him than heretofore. At his first hint, 
 Valerie, who took a cordial interest in Evelyn for her own sake, 
 ordered her carriage, and drove at once to Lady Doltimore's. 
 His lordship was out her ladyship was ill in her own room 
 could see no one not even her guest. Evelyn in vain sent up 
 to request an interview ; and at last, contenting herself with an 
 affectionate note of farewell, accompanied Aubrey to the home 
 of her new hostess. 
 
 Gratified at least to know her with one who would be sure to 
 win her affection, and soothe her spirits, Maltravers set out on 
 his solitary return to England. 
 
 Whatever suspicious circumstances might or might not have 
 attended the death of Lord Vargrave, certain it is, that no evi- 
 dence confirmed, and no popular rumor circulated, them. His 
 illness, added to the supposed shock of the loss of the fortune 
 he had anticipated with Miss Cameron aided by the simulta- 
 neous intelligence of the defeat of the party with whom it was 
 believed he had indissolubly entwined his ambition, sufficed to 
 account, satisfactorily enough, for the melancholy event. De 
 Montaigne, who had been long, though not intimately, acquainted 
 with the deceased, took upon himself all the necessary arrange- 
 ments, and superintended the funeral ; after which ceremony, 
 Howard returned to London : and in Paris, as in the Grave, all 
 things are forgotten ! But still in De Montaigne's breast there 
 dwelt a horrible fear. As soon as he had learned from Mal- 
 travers the charge the maniac brought against Vargrave, there 
 came upon him the recollection of that day when Cesarini had 
 attempted De Montaigne's life, evidently mistaking him in his 
 delirium for another and the sullen cunning and ferocious 
 character which the insanity had ever afterwards assumed. He 
 had learned from Howard that the outer door had been left ajar 
 when Lord Vargrave was with Maltravers ; the writing on the 
 panel the name of Vargrave would have struck Castruccio's 
 eye as he descended the stairs : the servant was from home the 
 apartments deserted ; he might have won his way into the bed- 
 chamber, concealed himself in the armotrc, and in the dead of 
 the night, and in the deep and helpless sleep of his victim, have 
 done the deed. What need of weapons? the suffocating pil- 
 lows would stop speech and life. What so easy as escape? to 
 pass into the anteroom to unbolt the door to descend 
 into the courtyard to give the signal to the porter in his 
 lodge, who, without seeing him, would pull the cordon, and
 
 ^54 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 give him egress unobserved? All this was so possible so 
 probable. 
 
 De Montaigne now withdrew all inquiry for the unfortunate; 
 he trembled at the thought of discovering him of verifying his 
 awful suspicions of beholding a murderer in the brother of his 
 wife ! But he was not doomed long to entertain fears for Ce- 
 sarini lie was not fated ever to change suspicion into certainty. 
 A few days after Lord Vargrave's burial, a corpse was drawn 
 from the Seine. Some tablets in the pockets, scrawled over with 
 wild, incoherent verses, gave a clue to the discovery of the dead 
 man's friends ; and, exposed at the Morgue, in that bleached 
 and altered clay, De Montaigne recognized the remains of Cas- 
 truccio Cesarini. " He died and made no sign ! " 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 "Singula quaeque locum teneant sortita."* HOR. An Poet. 
 
 MALTRAVERS and the lawyers were enabled to save from the 
 insolvent bank but a very scanty portion of that wealth in which 
 Richard Templeton had rested so much pride ! The title ex- 
 tinct, the fortune gone so does Fate laugh at our posthu- 
 mous ambition ! Meanwhile Mr. Douce, with a considerable 
 plunder, had made his way to America ; the bank owed nearly 
 half a million ; the purchase-money for Lisle Court, which Mr. 
 Douce had been so anxious to get into his clutches, had not 
 sufficed to stave off the ruin but a great part of it sufficed to 
 procure competence for himself. How inferior in wit, in acute- 
 ness, in stratagem, was Douce to Vargrave and yet Douce had 
 gulled him like a child ! Well said the shrewd small philoso- 
 pher of France, "On peut etre plus fin qu'un autre, mat's pas 
 plus fin que tous les autres." \ 
 
 To Legard, whom Maltravers had again encountered at 
 Dover, the latter related the downfall of Evelyn's fortune ; and 
 Maltravers loved him when he saw that, far from changing his 
 affection, the loss of wealth seemed rather to raise his hopes. 
 They parted ; and Legard set out for Paris. 
 
 But was Maltravers all the while forgetful of Alice ? He had 
 not been twelve hours in London before he committed to a long 
 and truthful letter all his thoughts his hopes his admiring and 
 profound gratitude. Again, and with solemn earnestness, he 
 
 * To each lot its appropriate place. 
 
 t One may be more sharp than one's neighbor, but one can't be sharper than all one's 
 neighbors. ROCHEFOUCAULD.
 
 ALICE J OR, THE MYSTERIES. 365 
 
 implored her to accept his hand, and to confirm, at the altar, the 
 tale which had been told to Evelyn. Truly he said, that the 
 shock which his first belief in Vargrave's falsehood had occa- 
 sioned his passionate determination to subdue all trace of a love 
 then associated with crime and horror followed so close by his 
 discovery of Alice's enduring faith and affection had removed 
 the image of Evelyn from the throne it had hitherto held in his 
 desires and thoughts; truly he said, that he was now convinced 
 that Evelyn would soon be consoled for his loss by another, 
 with whom she would be happier than with him ; truly and 
 solemnly he declared that if Alice rejected him still, if even 
 Alice were no more, his suit to Evelyn never could be renewed, 
 and Alice's memory would usurp the place of all living love ! 
 
 Her answer came ; it pierced him to the heart. It was so 
 humble, so grateful, so tender still. Unknown to herself, love 
 yet colored every word ; but it was love pained, galled, crushed, 
 and trampled on : it was love, proud from its very depth and 
 purity. His offer was refused. 
 
 Months passed away Maltravers yet trusted to time. The 
 curate had returned to Brook-Green, and his letters fed Ernest's 
 hopes and assured his doubts. The more leisure there was left 
 him for reflection, the fainter became those dazzling and rain- 
 bow hues in which Evelyn had been robed and surrounded, 
 and the brighter the halo that surrounded his earliest love. The 
 more he pondered on Alice's history, and the singular beauty of 
 her faithful attachment, the more he was impressed with won- 
 der and admiration the more anxious to secure to his side one 
 to whom Nature had been so bountiful in all the gifts that make 
 woman the angel and star of life. 
 
 Months passed from Paris the news that Maltravers re- 
 ceived confirmed all his expectations the suit of Legard had 
 replaced his own. It was then that Maltravers began to con- 
 sider how far the fortune of Evelyn and her destined husband 
 was such as to preclude all anxiety for their future lot. Fortune 
 is so indeterminate in its gauge and measurement. Money, the 
 most elastic of materials, falls short or exceeds, according to the 
 extent of our wants and desires. With all Legard's good qual- 
 ities, he was constitutionally careless and extravagant; and Eve- 
 lyn was too inexperienced, and too gentle, perhaps, to correct 
 his tendencies. Maltravers learned that Legard's income was 
 one that required an economy which he feared that, in spite 
 of all his reformation, Legard might not have the self-denial to 
 enforce. After some consideration, he resolved to add secretly 
 to the remains of Evelyn's fortune such a sum as might being
 
 $66 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 properly secured to herself and children lessen whatever dan- 
 ger could arise from the possible improvidence of her husband, 
 and guard against the chance of those embarrassments which are 
 among the worst disturbers of domestic peace. He was enabled 
 to effect this generosity, unknown to both of them, as if the sum 
 bestowed were collected from the wrecks of Evelyn's own wealth, 
 
 and the profits of the sale of the houses in C , which of course 
 
 had not been involved in Douce's bankruptcy. And then if Alice 
 were ever his, her jointure, which had been secured on the prop- 
 erty appertaining to the villa at Fulham, would devolve upon 
 Evelyn. Maltravers could never accept what Alice owed to an- 
 other. Poor Alice ! No ! not that modest wealth which you 
 had looked upon complacently as one day or other to be his ! 
 
 Lord Doltimore is travelling in the East, Lady Doltimore, 
 less adventurous, has fixed her residence in Rome. She has 
 grown thin, and taken to antiquities and rouge. Her spirits are 
 remarkably high not an uncommon effect of laudanum. 
 
 CHAPTER THE LAST. 
 
 * * * "Arrived at last 
 
 Unto the wished haven." SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 IN the August of that eventful year a bridal party were as- 
 sembled at the cottage of Lady Vargrave. The ceremony had 
 just been performed, and Ernest Maltravers had bestowed upon 
 George Legard the hand of Evelyn Templeton. 
 
 If upon the countenance of him who thus officiated as a 
 father to her he had once wooed as a bride, an observant eye 
 might have noted the trace of mental struggles, it was the trace 
 of struggles past : and the calm had once more settled over the 
 silent deeps. He saw from the casement the carriage that was 
 to bear away the bride to the home of another; the gay faces 
 of the village group, whose intrusion was not forbidden, and to 
 whom that solemn ceremonial was but a joyous pageant ; and 
 when he turned once more to those within the chamber he felt 
 his hand clasped in Legard's. 
 
 " You have been the preserver of my life you have been the 
 dispenser of my earthly happiness ; all now left to me to wish 
 for is, that you may receive from Heaven the blessings you have 
 given to others ! " 
 
 "Lecrard, never let her know a sorrow that you can guard her
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 367 
 
 from ; and believe that the husband of Evelyn will be dear to 
 me as a brother ! " 
 
 And as a brother blesses some younger and orphan sister be- 
 queathed and intrusted to a care that should replace a father's, 
 so Maltravers laid his hand lightly on Evelyn's golden tresses, 
 and his lips moved in prayer. He ceased he pressed his last 
 kiss upon her forehead, and placed her hand in that of her 
 young husband. There was silence and when to the ear of 
 Maltravers it was broken, it was by the wheels of the carriage 
 that bore away the wife of George Legard ! 
 
 The spell was dissolved for ever. And there stood before the 
 lonely man the idol of his early youth, the Alice, still, perhaps, 
 as fair, and once young and passionate, as Evelyn pale, changed, 
 but lovelier than of old, if heavenly patience and holy thought, 
 and the trials that purify and exalt, can shed over human fea- 
 tures something more beautiful than bloom. 
 
 The good curate alone was present, besides these two 
 survivors of the error and the love that make the rapture 
 and the misery of so many of our kind. And the old man, 
 after contemplating them a moment, stole unperceived 
 away. 
 
 "Alice," said Maltravers, and his voice trembled ; "hitherto, 
 from motives too pure and too noble for the practical affections 
 and ties of life, you have rejected the hand of the lover of your 
 youth. Here again I implore you to be mine ! Give to my 
 conscience the balm of believing that I can repair to you the 
 evils and the sorrows I have brought upon you. Nay, weep not; 
 turn not away. Each of us stands alone; each of us needs the 
 other. In your heart is locked up all my fondest associations, 
 my brightest memories. In you I see the mirror of what I was 
 when the world was new, ere I had found how Pleasure palls 
 upon us, and Ambition deceives ! And me, Alice ah, you love 
 me still ! Time and absence have but strengthened the chain 
 that binds us. By the memory of our early love by the grave 
 of our lost child that, had it lived, would have united its parents, 
 I implore you to be mine ! " 
 
 " Too generous ! " said Alice, almost sinking beneath the 
 emotions that shook that gentle spirit and fragile form. " How 
 can I suffer your compassion for it is but compassion to de- 
 ceive yourself ? You are of another station than I believed you. 
 How can you raise the child of destitution and guilt to your own 
 rank ? And shall I I who, Heaven knows ! would save you 
 from all regret bring to you now, when years have so changed 
 and broken the little charm I could ever have possessed, this
 
 368 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 blighted heart and weary spirit? oh ! no, no ! " and Alice paused 
 abruptly, and the tears rolled down her cheeks. 
 
 "Be it as you will," said Maltravers mournfully; "but, at 
 least ground your refusal upon better motives. Say that now in- 
 dependent in fortune, and attached to the habits you have formed, 
 you would not hazard your happiness in my keeping perhaps 
 you are right. To my happiness you would indeed contribute ; 
 your sweet voice might charm away many a memory and many 
 a thought of the baffled years that have intervened since we 
 parted ; your image might dissipate the solitude which is clos- 
 ing round the Future of a disappointed and anxious life. With 
 you, and with you alone, I might yet find a home, a comforter, a 
 charitable and soothing friend. This you could give to me: and 
 with a heart and a form alike faithful to a love that deserved 
 not so enduring a devotion. But I what can I bestow on you? 
 Your station is equal to my own : your fortune satisfies your 
 simple wants. 'Tis true the exchange is not equal, Alice. 
 Adieu ! " 
 
 " Cruel ! " said Alice, approaching him with timid steps. " If 
 I could I so untutored, so unworthy if I could comfort you 
 in a single care ! " 
 
 She said no more, but she had said enough ; and Maltravers, 
 clasping her to his bosom, felt once more that heart which 
 never, even in thought, had swerved from its early worship, beat- 
 ing against his own ! 
 
 He drew her gently into the open air. The ripe and mellow 
 noonday of the last month of summer glowed upon the odorous 
 flowers ; and the broad sea, that stretched beyond and afar, 
 wore upon its solemn waves a golden and happy smile. 
 
 " And ah," murmured Alice softly as she looked up from his 
 breast ; " I ask not if you have loved others since we parted 
 man's faith is so different from ours I ask only if you love me 
 now ? " 
 
 " More ! oh, immeasurably more, than in our youngest days," 
 cried Maltravers with fervent passion. " More fondly more rev- 
 erently more trustfully, than I ever loved living being ! even 
 her, in whose youth and innocence I adored the memory of thee ! 
 Here have I found that which shames and bankrupts the Ideal ! 
 Here have I found a virtue, that, coming at once from God and 
 Nature, has been wiser than all my false philosophy, and firmer 
 than all my pride ! You, cradled by misfortune, your child- 
 hood reared amidst scenes of fear and vice, which, while they 
 scared back the intellect, had no pollution for the soul, your very 
 parent your tempter and your foe, you, only not a miracle and
 
 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 369 
 
 an angel by the stain of one soft and unconscious error, you, 
 alike through the equal trials of poverty and wealth, have been 
 destined to rise above all triumphant, the example of the 
 sublime moral that teaches us with what mysterious beauty 
 and immortal holiness the Creator has endowed our human 
 nature, when hallowed by our human affections ! You alone 
 suffice to shatter into dust the haughty creeds of the Misan- 
 thrope and Pharisee ! And your fidelity to my erring self has 
 taught me ever to love, to serve, to compassionate, to respect, 
 the community of God's creatures to which noble and elevated 
 though you are you yet belong ! " 
 
 He ceased, overpowered with the rush of his own thoughts. 
 And Alice was too blest for words. But in the murmur of the 
 sunlit leaves in the breath of the summer air in the song of the 
 exulting birds and the deep and distant music of the heaven- 
 surrounded seas, there went a melodious voice that seemed as if 
 Nature echoed to his words, and blest the reunion of her children. 
 
 Maltravers once more entered upon the career so long sus- 
 pended. He entered with an energy more practical and stead- 
 fast than the fitful enthusiasm of former years. And it was notice- 
 able amongst those who knew him well, that, while the firmness 
 of his mind was not impaired, the haughtiness of his temper was 
 subdued. No longer despising Man as he is, and no longer 
 exacting from all things the ideal of a visionary standard, he was 
 more fitted to mix in the living world, and to minister usefully to 
 the great objects that refine and elevate our race. His senti- 
 ments were, perhaps, less lofty, but his actions were infinitely 
 more excellent, and his theories infinitely more wise. 
 
 Stage after stage we have proceeded with him through the 
 MYSTERIES OF LIFE. The Eleusinia are closed, and the crown- 
 ing libation poured. 
 
 And Alice ! Will the world blame us if you are left happy at 
 the last? We are daily banishing from our law-books the 
 statutes that disproportion punishment to crime. Daily we 
 preach the doctrine that we demoralize, wherever we strain 
 justice into cruelty. It is time that we should apply to the 
 Social Code the wisdom we recognize in Legislation! It is time 
 that we should do away with the punishment of death for inade- 
 quate offences, even in books ; it is time that we should allow 
 the morality of atonement, and permit to Error the right to hope, 
 as the reward of submission to its sufferings. Nor let it be 
 thought that the close to Alice's career can offer temptation to 
 the offence of its commencement. Eighteen years of sadness
 
 370 ALICE ; OR, THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 a youth consumed in silent sorrow over the grave of Joy have 
 images that throw over these pages a dark and warning shadow 
 that will haunt the young long after they turn from the tale that 
 is about to close ! If Alice had died of a broken heart if her 
 punishment had been more than she could bear then, as in 
 real life, you would have justly condemned my moral ; and the 
 human heart, in its pity for the victim, would have lost all recol- 
 lection of the error. My Tale is done. 
 
 THE END.
 
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