deemed it necessary to enlighten Alice as to the criminality of the
connection she had formed. But here Alice was singularly dull--she
listened in meek patience to Mrs. Leslie's lecture; but it evidently
made but slight impression on her. She had not yet seen enough of the
social state to correct the first impressions of the natural: and all
she could say in answer to Mrs. Leslie was: "It may be all very true,
madam, but I have been so much better since I knew him!"

But though Alice took humbly any censure upon herself, she would not
hear a syllable insinuated against Maltravers. When, in a very natural
indignation, Mrs. Leslie denounced him as a destroyer of innocence--for
Mrs. Leslie could not learn all that extenuated his offence--Alice
started up with flashing eyes and heaving heart, and would have hurried
from the only shelter she had in the wide world--she would sooner have
died--she would sooner even have seen her child die, than done that idol
of her soul, who, in her eyes, stood alone on some pinnacle between
earth and heaven, the wrong of hearing him reviled. With difficulty
Mrs. Leslie could restrain, with still more difficulty could she pacify
and soothe her; and for the girl's petulance, which others might have
deemed insolent or ungrateful, the woman-heart of Mrs. Leslie loved her
all the better. The more she saw of Alice, and the more she
comprehended her story and her character, the more was she lost in
wonder at the romance of which this beautiful child had been the
heroine, and the more perplexed she was as to Alice's future prospects.

At length, however, when she became acquainted with Alice's musical
acquirements, which were, indeed, of no common order, a light broke in
upon her. Here was the source of her future independence. Maltravers,
it will be remembered, was a musician of consummate skill as well as
taste, and Alice's natural talent for the art had advanced her, in the