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shot his friend in a duel-has he committed a crime, or incurred a laugh-it is the next morning, when the irretrievable past rises before him like a spectre-then doth the churchyard 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 react, 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 Maltravers was comforted despite himself. Alice knew no remorse, though she felt agitated and ashamed; she did not comprehend that she had lost caste for ever in the eyes of her sex. 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. And they strolled together through the garden all that day, 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 his 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 molehill, to-morrow it hides a mountain.

Oh how happy they were now-that young pair!

LOVE IN A COTTAGE.

-43

How the days flew like dreams! No doubt we blame them, and women very properly; but men, at least, cannot blame them very justly. For all of us male animals have either been as happy once in our lives, or wished we were so. 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, better 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. If a jury of cherubim had tried Alice's offence, they would hardly have allowed the heart to bear witness against the soul !

44

A HOME PICTURE.

CHAPTER VIII.

"Some clouds sweep on as vultures for their prey,

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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 that time of year in the northern district of our isle, and the bright drops of a recent shower sparkled upon the buds of the lilach and laburnum that clustered round the cottage of Maltravers. The little fountain that played in the centre of a circular basin, on whose clear surface the broad-leaved waterlilly cast its fairy shadow, added to the fresh green of the lawn

"And softè as velvèt the yongè 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 admitted that view of the 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 that 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 coloured 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 thinking only of Maltravers. His image was "the broken mirror," multiplied in a thousand faithful fragments over everything fair and soft in that

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lovely microcosm before him. 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 enjoyment 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-morrow; anxious, and scheming, and desiring, and wishing this plot ripened, and that hope fulfilled, while every wave of the forgotten Time brings it near 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 revery, 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 herself in his breast. "How young you look by this light, Alice!" said he, tenderly 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!"

66 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 be 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 I 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

46

THE NEWSPAPER.

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 I 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 'he,' but I think it was a woman. Was it ?"

"The Greeks I told you about, and whose life was music, thought it was a god."

66

Ah, but you say the Greeks made love a god. Were they wicked for it?"

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But it is a love
Come, we will

"Our own God above is love," said Ernest, seriously, as our own poets have said and sung. of another nature-Divine, not human. 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 neighbouring town the provincial newspaper-it 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 the shire in 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 distinguished party of friends at his noble mansion of Lisle Court;" or that "Mr. Maltravers's 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 jail.' And as now Maltravers saw the expected paper laid beside the hissing urn, he seized it eagerly, tore the envelope, and hastened to the wellknown corner appropriated to the paternal district. The very first words that struck his eyes were these :

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