the new
sanctity, that, by a human life, had been added to their early 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 henceforth
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.

* See "Ernest Maltravers," book v., p. 221.

"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 inarticulate 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 infant 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, learning from Alice her adventure with her absent lover,
learning that all hope i