k and retentive. The
very tones of her voice seemed altered in the ear of Maltravers; and,
somehow or other, the time came when he was no longer sensible of the
difference in their rank.

The old woman-servant, when she had seen how it would be from the
first, and taken a pride in her own prophecy, as she ordered Alice's new
dresses, was a much better philosopher than Maltravers; though he was
already up to his ears in the moonlit abyss of Plato, and had filled a
dozen commonplace books with criticisms on Kant.

CHAPTER VI.

"Young man, I fear thy blood is rosy red,
Thy heart is soft."
D'AGUILAR'S _Fiesco_, Act iii. Sc. 1.

As education does not consist in reading and writing only, so Alice,
while still very backward in those elementary arts, forestalled some of
their maturest results in her intercourse with Maltravers. Before the
inoculation took effect, she caught knowledge in the natural way. For
the refinement of a graceful mind and a happy manner is very contagious.
And Maltravers was encouraged by her quickness in music to attempt
such instruction in other studies as conversation could afford. It is a
better school than parents and masters think for: there was a time when
all information was given orally; and probably the Athenians learned
more from hearing Aristotle than we do from reading him. It was a
delicious revival of Academe--in the walks, or beneath the rustic
porticoes of that little cottage--the romantic philosopher and the
beautiful disciple! And his talk was much like that of a sage of the
early world, with some wistful and earnest savage for a listener: of the
stars and their courses--of beasts, and birds, and fishes, and plants,
and flowers--the wide family of Nature--of the beneficence and power of
God;--of the mystic and spiritual history of Man.

Charmed by her attention and docility, Maltravers at length diverged
from lore into poetry; he would repeat to her the simplest and most
natural passages he could remember in his favourite poets; he would
himself compose verses elaborately adapted to her understanding; she
liked the last the best, and learned them the easiest. Never had young
poet a more gracious inspiration, and never did this inharmonious world
more complacently resolve itself into soft dreams, as if to humour
the novitiate of the victims it must speedily take into its joyless
priesthood. And Alice had now quietly and insensibly carved out her own
avocations--the tenor