nt by adding
banishment and destitution to a wrong now irremediable. Little more was
heard of him for some time, with the exception of a floating report,
that he had borrowed, through his agent, the sum of ten thousand pounds
from a Mr. Colville, a neighbouring proprietor, and pledged to him
Whitecraigs in security. The circumstance interested greatly the
neighbouring proprietors, who shook their heads in significant augury of
the probable fate of their young neighbour in the whirlpool of
continental life. Yet the allowance to Dame Scott at the next term was
regularly paid; and if there was a tear in her eye, as she looked, first
at the money, and then at the thin, pallid creature who sat silent at
the window, it was not that she dreaded its discontinuance from the
result of the extravagance of the giver. The effect of the act of
payment of the money had, on a former occasion, been noticed by Pringle
on the conduct of Alice: it was on this occasion repeated. She rose from
her seat, looked steadfastly for a moment at the gift as it lay on the
table, placed her hand on her forehead, and flitted out of the room. The
eye of the agent followed her from the window: her step was hurried,
without an object of impulse. She might go--but whither? probably she
knew not herself; yet on she sped till she was lost among the trees on
the edge of the glen.

Thus longer time passed, but there seemed no change to Alice, save in
the continual decrease of the frame, under the pressure of a mind that
communed with the past, and only looked to the future as containing some
day that would witness the termination of her sorrows. The anglers on
the Lyne became familiar with her figure, for they had seen it on the
heights, with her garments floating in the breeze, and had come up to
her as she sat by the waterside, but they passed on. At the worst she
could be but one whose spirit was not settled enough to admit of her
according with the ways of honest maidens; and they might regret that
the beauty that still lurked amidst the ravages of the disease of the
heart, had not been turned to better account. It is thus that one part
of mankind surveys another: they form their theory of a condition whose
secret nature is only known to its possessor; draw their moral from
false premises, formed as a compliment to their own conduct and
situation, and pass on to their pleasure.

Yet there occurred an important exception to these remarks:--One day
Alice h