dly paleness,
and again by a slighter suffusion, showed plainly to her lover that
his sudden appearance was anything but indifferent to her. He bowed
profoundly--a courtesy which she returned with equal formality, but did
not venture to approach more nearly, feeling at once the delicacy of his
own situation and of hers.

Major Bridgenorth turned his cold, fixed, grey, melancholy glance,
first on the one of them and then on the other. "Some," he said gravely,
"would, in my case, have avoided this meeting; but I have confidence in
you both, although you are young, and beset with the snares incidental
to your age. There are those within who should not know that ye have
been acquainted. Wherefore, be wise, and be as strangers to each other."

Julian and Alice exchanged glances as her father turned from them, and
lifting a lamp which stood in the entrance-hall, led the way to the
interior apartment. There was little of consolation in this exchange of
looks; for the sadness of Alice's glance was mingled with fear, and that
of Julian clouded by an anxious sense of doubt. The look also was but
momentary; for Alice, springing to her father, took the light out of his
hand, and stepping before him, acted as the usher of both into the large
oaken parlour, which has been already mentioned as the apartment in
which Bridgenorth had spent the hours of dejection which followed
the death of his consort and family. It was now lighted up as for the
reception of company; and five or six persons sat in it, in the plain,
black, stiff dress, which was affected by the formal Puritans of the
time, in evidence of their contempt of the manners of the luxurious
Court of Charles the Second; amongst whom, excess of extravagance in
apparel, like excess of every other kind, was highly fashionable.

Julian at first glanced his eyes but slightly along the range of grave
and severe faces which composed this society--men sincere, perhaps, in
their pretensions to a superior purity of conduct and morals, but in
whom that high praise was somewhat chastened by an affected austerity
in dress and manners, allied to those Pharisees of old, who made broad
their phylacteries, and would be seen of man to fast, and to discharge
with rigid punctuality the observances of the law. Their dress was
almost uniformly a black cloak and doublet, cut straight and close, and
undecorated with lace or embroidery of any kind, black Flemish breeches
and hose, square-toed shoes, w