l instruments--eloquent of the POETRY of
HOME.

Maltravers was silent, for his flexile and excitable fancy was conjuring
up a thousand shapes along the transparent air, or upon those shadowy
violet banks. He was not thinking, he was imagining. His genius reposed
dreamily upon the calm, but exquisite sense of his happiness. Alice
was not absolutely in his thoughts, but unconsciously she coloured them
all--if she had left his side, the whole charm would have been broken.
But Alice, who was not a poet or a genius, _was_ thinking, and thinking
only of Maltravers.... His image was "the broken mirror" multiplied in a
thousand faithful fragments over everything fair and soft in that lovely
microcosm before her. But they were both alike in one thing--they were
not with the Future, they were sensible of the Present--the sense of the
actual life, the enjoyment of the breathing time was strong within them.
Such is the privilege of the extremes of our existence--Youth and Age.
Middle life is never with to-day, its home is in to-morrow... anxious,
and scheming, and desiring, and wishing this plot ripened, and that hope
fulfilled, while every wave of the forgotten Time brings it nearer and
nearer to the end of all things. Half our life is consumed in longing to
be nearer death.

"Alice," said Maltravers, waking at last from his reverie, and drawing
that light, childlike form nearer to him, "you enjoy this hour as much
as I do."

"Oh, much more!"

"More! and why so?"

"Because I am thinking of you, and perhaps you are not thinking of
yourself."

Maltravers smiled and stroked those beautiful ringlets, and kissed that
smooth, innocent forehead, and Alice nestled herself in his breast.

"How young you look by this light, Alice!" said he, tenderly looking
down.

"Would you love me less if I were old?" asked Alice.

"I suppose I should never have loved you in the same way if you had been
old when I first saw you."

"Yet I am sure I should have felt the same for you if you had been--oh!
ever so old!"

"What, with wrinkled cheeks, and palsied head, and a brown wig, and no
teeth, like Mr. Simcox?"

"Oh, but you could never be like that! You would always look young--your
heart would be always in your face. That clear smile--ah, you would look
beautiful to the last!"

"But Simcox, though not very lovely now, has been, I dare say, handsomer
than I am, Alice; and I shall be contented to look as well when I am as
old!"

"I sho