ave been miserable
together. By some good agency,--possibly, by the unrecognized
interposition of the long-buried Alice herself,--the threatening
calamity was averted.

But the worst of all--the hardest stroke of fate for Hepzibah to
endure, and perhaps for Clifford, too was his invincible distaste for
her appearance. Her features, never the most agreeable, and now harsh
with age and grief, and resentment against the world for his sake; her
dress, and especially her turban; the queer and quaint manners, which
had unconsciously grown upon her in solitude,--such being the poor
gentlewoman's outward characteristics, it is no great marvel, although
the mournfullest of pities, that the instinctive lover of the Beautiful
was fain to turn away his eyes. There was no help for it. It would be
the latest impulse to die within him. In his last extremity, the
expiring breath stealing faintly through Clifford's lips, he would
doubtless press Hepzibah's hand, in fervent recognition of all her
lavished love, and close his eyes,--but not so much to die, as to be
constrained to look no longer on her face! Poor Hepzibah! She took
counsel with herself what might be done, and thought of putting ribbons
on her turban; but, by the instant rush of several guardian angels, was
withheld from an experiment that could hardly have proved less than
fatal to the beloved object of her anxiety.

To be brief, besides Hepzibah's disadvantages of person, there was an
uncouthness pervading all her deeds; a clumsy something, that could but
ill adapt itself for use, and not at all for ornament. She was a grief
to Clifford, and she knew it. In this extremity, the antiquated virgin
turned to Phoebe. No grovelling jealousy was in her heart. Had it
pleased Heaven to crown the heroic fidelity of her life by making her
personally the medium of Clifford's happiness, it would have rewarded
her for all the past, by a joy with no bright tints, indeed, but deep
and true, and worth a thousand gayer ecstasies. This could not be.
She therefore turned to Phoebe, and resigned the task into the young
girl's hands. The latter took it up cheerfully, as she did everything,
but with no sense of a mission to perform, and succeeding all the
better for that same simplicity.

By the involuntary effect of a genial temperament, Phoebe soon grew to
be absolutely essential to the daily comfort, if not the daily life, of
her two forlorn companions. The grime and sordidnes