CHAPTER II.

ALICE VANE.

MR. BARTON had indeed been introduced to Alice Vane more than once by the heads of the family in which the later days of her youth had been passed. They treated her in general as their own child; they were very strongly attached to her by habit, and by the consciousness of having conferred many benefits and much love upon their desolate ward. But they did not feel under any particular obligation to press her undoubted loveliness on the attention of a wealthy, marriageable youth, so long as there was an entire row of sweet-pea-coloured girls, for whom they were more directly responsible, and who still gathered about them in an unbroken circle. And, besides, it never occurred to them that a gentleman of Mr. Barton's pretensions might possibly come to see some part of those charming qualities which made Alice the ornament as well as the delight of their own home. Liberally disposed as they were, and overflowing with kindness to their precious trust, they were not so ill-bred as to thrust their pet forward for everybody to notice and fall in love with, as they had done themselves, and it never entered into their heads that their visitor might have burdened himself with the memory of a name, which was well known to represent much less than ten thousand pounds. Politeness to him, and a thoughtful regard for the poor girl (lest she should be passed over and feel herself slighted), led them to perform the ceremony of introduction over and over again. Now, if the truth must be told, this repetition of the ceremony was by no means superfluous; for as the visits spoken of were of the most formal character, the most interesting part of the business to the young man was the going away and forgetting all about it as cleverly as he could; so that their officiousness was both kind and necessary. It so chanced, however, that Miss Vane was not accustomed to that kind of treatment, which, no doubt, the visitor intended

should be exceedingly respectful; and she was by no means satisfied that an amiable, intelligent, and, above all, young gentleman should be so civilly indifferent or so culpably bashful in her presence. Accordingly, her mind was made up for a regular attack on his lifeless politeness the very next time the ceremony should be gone through. To his great astonishment and momentary confusion on his next visit just as he was getting into shape his old bow of acknowledgment, and as soon as the benevolent lady of the house had begun the genteel little farce, the lively maiden made as though she would have stopped her friend's mouth with one hand, while she extended her other towards Mr. Barton, saying, "Oh never mind, dear Ma, Mr. Barton and I are quite old friends;" then turning, with her colour a little heightened, she added, "at least we ought to be, for we have been thoroughly introduced I'm sure, and as I know of no objection, I mean that we shall from this moment be old friends,there, Sir, how do ye do?"—The individual thus abruptly addressed would have recoiled for ever from simple rudeness; but one look into that lovely flashing eye told him that her words sprang from a frank and stainless mind. One look into those lovely eyes, and-call it what you will-he was in love, and the whole matter was as clear and satisfactory as the Q. E. D. at the bottom of a proposition in Euclid. There are some men who require a little encouragement; just a gentle push from the feeblest of hands, and then they may safely be left to the bias: they will roll, and tumble, and rush like the loosened ice-rock of the Alps. It is important for the right understanding of the coming events to form a tolerably correct picture of the mental power and character of this enchanting creature; but it is at all times difficult to convey in writing an adequate notion of even physical female beauty, and when that beauty is greatly dependent on phases of character-changeful as the early spring-there would seem to be no means of conveying a true picture but by a detail of the whole life. As this, again, would be out of place in an episodical story, we must do the best we can to reproduce in the reader's mind the same singular vague sense of wonder, or, pity, and love, with which all who knew her intimately,

and especially her dear husband, were accustomed to regard her. The account which she herself gave of her mental development was evidently correct; for her very manner of speaking, the epithets, the illustrations she made use of, and the wild words in which her recollections were couched, were in entire harmony with the kind of education she was describing. It seems that while yet scarcely more than a child, the intense passionateness of her nature had received a cruel disappointment. She had nourished a love for one who was all the while pledged to another. She had given rein to her fancy and her unbounded tenderness of heart, and in an hour of ill omen, she had laid bare the secret of her soul, only to be pitied, if not despised, by the object of her fervent passion. From that moment she had set, not a watch, but a seal on the fountain whose waters had been so bitter. The ardour of her whole nature was to be evermore repressed in one direction; but it only broke out in another more hopeful, but hardly less dangerous to her future peace. She became an impetuous and daring student, asserting her right to all knowledge, and greedily devouring alike the coarse, the dainty, and the poisonous fruits of the tree of knowledge. In each new study she was impatient till she had passed the bounds of common attainment. The beginnings of wisdom only quickened her desires and emboldened her efforts; they excited in her much of that passionate adoration with which the pilgrim hails from afar the first glimpse of the city of God; but she had scarcely patience, as she looked through the distance still to be travelled over in weariness and pain. She longed to pass within the holiest holy of that temple, at the sight of which she had so trembled and wept. To her it ever seemed as if the veiled priestess of science were beckoning her urgently to advance without heeding her steps or sparing her strength; and she went on with a stout heart through the labyrinths of mystery and doubt, in the assurance that the open and cloudless heaven of truth would soon smile all around.

On her memory all time had hung its golden web, and her own hands had wrought in the legends of glory and of shame, the splendid heraldry of illustrious men and noble deeds. The spell of the poet had been cast on her; she had delivered

herself to the ravishing spirit, and she had bowed before the mysterious invisible power as a captive-as a willing and adoring slave. The mightier spell of religion had gone down deeper still into the secret places of her nature, had seized upon her whole compass of feelings, had established a tyranny rather than its common rule of pure persuading love. Religion, as a mere sentiment, had usurped far more than its rightful influence over her, and had, as in such a fashion it always does, weakened and exhausted the spirit it had assumed to support and bless. The real value of that feeling which for a long time enthralled and fascinated her whole being would be overrated if judged merely by its purity and intensity as a yearning after the unseen and eternal-a vain stretching out of the hands of intellectual appetite, towards a dim and mysterious immortality. Its true power was tested and completely perverted by the introduction of a new human passion, even though the object of that passion was himself eminently devout, and the constant burden of his lovewhisperings was the subject of Christian revelations for the guidance and redemption of men. But the love which now established itself was a power not to be gainsayed-one that could allow no rival even in religion, if that religion were not itself a divine love in the heart. As she listened to the plaintive story of her lover's pain and hope and fond desire, it seemed indeed as if the afflatus did drop down from heaven; but pure and lofty as it was, it proved itself not only of the earth, earthy, but virtually hostile to true faith. Her life had been a perpetual fever; excitement had been her daily bread, and she needed a love far more intense than ordinary, to awaken all the springs of tender passion in herself; and when she looked upon the heaving form, the kindling countenance, the speechless ecstasy of the young clergyman, she knew that he had earned, and she suffered him to win, all her treasure of affection.

Mr. Barton's heart had been so suddenly stormed, that he had scarcely leisure to reflect, and no inclination to weigh the step to which his passion incessantly urged him. But when he did for a few moments endeavour to give substance and shape to the dreams of the future, he was peculiarly rejoiced

by the knowledge of her great mental power-he thought of the pleasure he had known in the acquisition of knowledge, and in the prospect of unfolding his hoarded wealth of wisdom to so lovely and so promising a student, the old pleasure seemed to revive and to be doubled. After his marriage, however, he soon discovered that her mind was as richly stored as his own in almost every department-that it was already as ardent as and greatly more aspiring than his own--and that its habits, however dissolute, were fixed, and could not be reduced to order and discipline even by love such as his. When first she laid open that mind which he had fondly hoped to find empty but ready, strong but plastic-he was shocked; it came on him with all the power of a surprise, and for a moment his love staggered under the disappointing discovery. He felt as if he had been deceived. But he was very unjust, nor could that cruel suspicion linger one moment after he had turned to the beaming face upturned in the wistful and docile curiosity of womanly love. He could not suspect that dear one of hypocrisy. Oh no-still he was sad, and sadder he grew for a little while, as he came upon trace after trace of the fiery trial through which this young mind had fought its way to a barren victory. Often the agonizing thought would stay in spite of him, and stare at him till he drooped and wept. He thought that a time might come when the authority of his love might so far be lessened as to let the loved one slip from her only safety-nearness to himself, striving ever as he did to keep near to God. But the thought maddened him rather than depressed him. He would repeat with unutterable unction in the depths of his soul the vows which had made her his own, and he would dare all issues, all loss, all pain, so that he might hold fast the heart which at present was all his own. He reverenced the power of love, as it made itself master of his own spirit, and he trusted to that power to save and keep safe his darling wife. He gladly dismissed the student-like dream of intellectual communion, and the lifelong interchange of sublime thoughts, that he might the more intently watch and feed the love in which he had found and from which he hoped such immeasurable gladness. It should not fade-he would not set light store by Heaven's best