ch her heart jumped, that she was to
be the lady of the stately white mansion that, at one time, had appeared
to her as a great temple where humble worshippers of the glen and the
wood might not lay their sandals at the doorway. She had entered the
vestibule only as an alms-seeker, and trembled to think she might have
been observed throwing a side glance into the interior, where
pier-glasses might have reflected the form of the russet-clad child of
the valley and hill. The tale has been told a thousand times, and the
world is not mended by it. The young master pressed her to his bosom,
imprinted a kiss, and was away into the mazes of life in the metropolis,
whither some affairs, left unsettled by his father, carried him. Six
months passed away, and the rents of the succeeding term were collected
by Mr. Pringle, the agent of the family, in Peebles. There was no word
for poor Alice, though the small allowance was handed in by the agent,
who, ignorant of the state of matters between the young couple, informed
the mother that the master of Whitecraigs was on the eve of being
married to a young lady of some wealth in the metropolis. The statement
was heard by the daughter; and what henceforth but that of Thekla's
song:--

"The clouds are flying, the woods are sighing--
The maiden is walking the grassy shore;
And as the wave breaks with might, with might,
She singeth aloud through the darksome night;
But a tear is in her troubled eye."

Alice Scott was changed; yet, who shall tell what that change was? If
the slow and even progress of the spirit may defy the eye of the
metaphysician, who may describe its moods of disturbance? Poetry is
familiar with these things, and we have fair rhymes to tell us of the
wanderings, and the lonely musings by mountain streams, and the eye that
looks and sees not, and the wasting form, and the words that come like
the sounds from deep caves; yet, after all, they tell us but little,
and that little is but to tickle us with the resonance of spoken
sentiment, leaving the sad truth as little understood as before. True it
was, that Alice Scott did all these things, and more too: the charm of
the hills and the water banks was gone: the light spirit that carried
her along, as if borne on the winds, was quenched; the songs by which
she gladdened the ears of her mother, as she plied her portable handwork
on the green, was no more heard mingling its notes with the music of the
Lyne;