had once wooed as a bride an observant eye might have noted the trace of
mental struggles, it was the trace of struggles past; and the calm had
once more settled over the silent deeps. He saw from the casement the
carriage that was to bear away the bride to the home of another,--the
gay faces of the village group, whose intrusion was not forbidden, and
to whom that solemn ceremonial was but a joyous pageant; and when he
turned once more to those within the chamber, he felt his hand clasped
in Legard's.

"You have been the preserver of my life, you have been the dispenser of
my earthly happiness; all now left to me to wish for is, that you may
receive from Heaven the blessings you have given to others!"

"Legard, never let her know a sorrow that you can guard her from; and
believe that the husband of Evelyn will be dear to me as a brother!"

And as a brother blesses some younger and orphan sister bequeathed and
intrusted to a care that should replace a father's, so Maltravers laid
his hand lightly on Evelyn's golden tresses, and his lips moved in
prayer. He ceased; he pressed his last kiss upon her forehead, and
placed her hand in that of her young husband. There was silence; and
when to the ear of Maltravers it was broken, it was by the wheels of the
carriage that bore away the wife of George Legard!

The spell was dissolved forever. And there stood before the lonely man
the idol of his early youth, Alice,--still, perhaps, as fair, and once
young and passionate, as Evelyn; pale, changed, but lovelier than of
old, if heavenly patience and holy thought, and the trials that purify
and exalt, can shed over human features something more beautiful than
bloom.

The good curate alone was present, besides these two survivors of the
error and the love that make the rapture and the misery of so many of
our kind; and the old man, after contemplating them a moment, stole
unperceived away.

"Alice," said Maltravers, and his voice trembled, "hitherto, from
motives too pure and too noble for the practical affections and ties of
life, you have rejected the hand of the lover of your youth. Here again
I implore you to be mine! Give to my conscience the balm of believing
that I can repair to you the evils and the sorrows I have brought upon
you. Nay, weep not; turn not away. Each of us stands alone; each of us
needs the other. In your heart is locked up all my fondest associations,
my brightest memories. In you I see the mirror of w