Vargrave was safe, known only to
Mrs. Leslie and to Aubrey. In the course of nature, all chance of its
disclosure must soon die with them; and should Alice at last become
his wife, and should Cleveland suspect (which was not probable) that
Maltravers had returned to his first love, he knew that he might depend
on the inviolable secrecy of his earliest friend.

The tale that Vargrave had told to Evelyn of his early--but, according
to that tale, guiltless--passion for Alice, he tacitly confirmed; and
he allowed that the recollection of her virtues, and the intelligence of
her sorrows and unextinguishable affection, had made him recoil from
a marriage with her supposed daughter. He then proceeded to amaze his
young listener with the account of the mode in which he had discovered
her real parentage, of which the banker had left it to Alice's
discretion to inform her, after she had attained the age of eighteen.
And then, simply, but with manly and ill-controlled emotion, he touched
upon the joy of Alice at beholding him again, upon the endurance and
fervour of her love, upon her revulsion of feeling at learning that,
in her unforgotten lover, she beheld the recent suitor of her adopted
child.

"And now," said Maltravers, in conclusion, "the path to both of us
remains the same. To Alice is our first duty. The discovery I have made
of your real parentage does not diminish the claims which Alice has
on me, does not lessen the grateful affection that is due to her from
yourself. Yes, Evelyn, we are not the less separated forever. But when
I learned the wilful falsehood which the unhappy man, now hurried to
his last account, to whom your birth was known, had imposed upon
me,--namely, that you were the child of Alice,--and when I learned also
that you had been hurried into accepting his hand, I trembled at your
union with one so false and base. I came hither resolved to frustrate
his schemes and to save you from an alliance, the motives of which I
foresaw, and to which my own letter, my own desertion, had perhaps urged
you. New villanies on the part of this most perverted man came to my
ear: but he is dead; let us spare his memory. For you--oh, still let me
deem myself your friend,--your more than brother; let me hope now that
I have planted no thorn in that breast, and that your affection does not
shrink from the cold word of friendship."

"Of all the wonders that you have told me," answered Evelyn, as soon as
she could recov