rly spring, with its
flowers and sunshine, was like a mirror to their own youth. Alice never
accompanied Maltravers in his walks abroad, partly because she feared to
meet her father, and partly because Maltravers himself was fastidiously
averse to all publicity. But then they had all that little world of
three acres--lawn and fountain, shrubbery and terrace, to themselves,
and Alice never asked if there was any other world without. She was now
quite a scholar, as Mr. Simcox himself averred. She could read aloud
and fluently to Maltravers, and copied out his poetry in a small,
fluctuating hand, and he had no longer to chase throughout his
vocabulary for short Saxon monosyllables to make the bridge of
intercourse between their ideas. Eros and Psyche are ever united, and
Love opens all the petals of the soul. On one subject alone, Maltravers
was less eloquent than of yore. He had not succeeded as a moralist, and
he thought it hypocritical to preach what he did not practise. But Alice
was gentler and purer, and as far as she knew, sweet fool! better than
ever--she had invented a new prayer for herself; and she prayed as
regularly and as fervently as if she were doing nothing amiss. But the
code of Heaven is gentler than that of earth, and does not declare that
ignorance excuseth not the crime.

CHAPTER VIII.

"Some clouds sweep on as vultures for their prey.

* * * * *

No azure more shall robe the firmament,
Nor spangled stars be glorious."
BYRON, _Heaven and Earth_.

IT was a lovely evening in April, the weather was unusually mild and
serene for the time of year, in the northern districts of our isle, and
the bright drops of a recent shower sparkled upon the buds of the lilac
and laburnum that clustered round the cottage of Maltravers. The little
fountain that played in the centre of a circular basin, on whose clear
surface the broad-leaved water-lily cast its fairy shadow, added to the
fresh green of the lawn;

"And softe as velvet the yonge grass,"

on which the rare and early flowers were closing their heavy lids. That
twilight shower had given a racy and vigorous sweetness to the air
which stole over many a bank of violets, and slightly stirred the golden
ringlets of Alice as she sate by the side of her entranced and silent
lover. They were seated on a rustic bench just without the cottage, and
the open window behind them admitted the view of that happy room--with
its litter of books and musica