n that quarter was gone, seized the occasion,
and pressed his suit. Alice at the hour was overflowing with gratitude;
in her child's reviving looks she read all her obligations to her
benefactor. But still, at the word _love_, at the name of _marriage_,
her heart recoiled; and the lost, the faithless, came back to his fatal
throne. In choked and broken accents, she startled the banker with the
refusal--the faltering, tearful, but resolute refusal--of his suit.

But Templeton brought new engines to work: he wooed her through her
child; he painted all the brilliant prospects that would open to the
infant by her marriage with him. He would cherish, rear, provide for it
as his own. This shook her resolves; but this did not prevail. He had
recourse to a more generous appeal: he told her so much of his
history with Mary Westbrook as commenced with his hasty and indecorous
marriage,--attributing the haste to love! made her comprehend his
scruples in owning the child of a union the world would be certain to
ridicule or condemn; he expatiated on the inestimable blessings
she could afford him, by delivering him from all embarrassment, and
restoring his daughter, though under a borrowed name, to her father's
roof. At this Alice mused; at this she seemed irresolute. She had long
seen how inexpressibly dear to Templeton was the child confided to her
care; how he grew pale if the slightest ailment reached her; how he
chafed at the very wind if it visited her cheek too roughly; and she now
said to him simply,--

"Is your child, in truth, your dearest object in life? Is it with her,
and her alone, that your dearest hopes are connected?"

"It is,--it is indeed!" said the banker, honestly surprised out of his
gallantry; "at least," he added, recovering his self-possession, "as
much so as is compatible with my affection for you."

"And only if I marry you, and adopt her as my own, do you think that
your secret may be safely kept, and all your wishes with respect to her
be fulfilled?"

"Only so."

"And for that reason, chiefly, nay entirely, you condescend to forget
what I have been, and seek my hand? Well, if that were all, I owe you
too much; my poor babe tells me too loudly what I owe you to draw back
from anything that can give you so blessed an enjoyment. Ah, one's
child! one's own child, under one's own roof, it _is_ such a blessing!
But then, if I marry you, it can be only to secure to you that object;
to be as a mother to yo