Heaven, it is Alice!"
murmured Maltravers. The whole place reeled before his eyes, and he
clung, overpowered and unconscious, to a neighbouring lamp-post for
support. But he recovered himself with an agonising effort, as the
thought struck upon this heart that he was about to lose sight of her
again for ever. And he rushed forward, like one frantic, in pursuit of
the carriage. But there was a vast crowd of other carriages, besides
stream upon stream of foot-passengers,--for the great and the gay
resorted to that place of worship, as a fashionable excitement in a
dull day. And after a weary and a dangerous chase, in which he had been
nearly run over three times, Maltravers halted at last, exhausted and
in despair. Every succeeding Sunday, for months, he went to the same
chapel, but in vain; in vain, too, he resorted to every public haunt of
dissipation and amusement. Alice Darvil he beheld no more!

CHAPTER XIII.

"Tell me, sir,
Have you cast up your state, rated your land,
And find it able to endure the charge?"
_The Noble Gentleman_.

By degrees, as Maltravers sobered down from the first shock of that
unexpected meeting, and from the prolonged disappointment that followed
it, he became sensible of a strange kind of happiness or contentment.
Alice was not in poverty, she was not eating the unhallowed bread of
vice, or earning the bitter wages of laborious penury. He saw her in
reputable, nay, opulent circumstances. A dark nightmare, that had often,
amidst the pleasures of youth, or the triumphs of literature, weighed
upon his breast, was removed. He breathed more freely--he could sleep
in peace. His conscience could no longer say to him, "She who slept upon
thy bosom is a wanderer upon the face of the earth--exposed to every
temptation, perishing perhaps for want." That single sight of Alice
had been like the apparition of the injured Dead conjured up at
Heraclea--whose sight could pacify the aggressor and exorcise the
spectres of remorse. He was reconciled with himself, and walked on to
the Future with a bolder step and a statelier crest. Was she married to
that staid and sober-looking personage whom he had beheld with her?
was that child the offspring of their union? He almost hoped so--it was
better to lose than to destroy her. Poor Alice! could she have dreamed,
when she sat at his feet gazing up into his eyes, that a time would come
when Maltravers would thank Heaven for the belief that she w