And now the image of the lover of her youth--which during her marriage
she had _sought_, at least, to banish--returned to her, and at times
inspired her with the only hopes that the grave had not yet transferred
to heaven! In relating her tale to Aubrey or in conversing with Mrs.
Leslie, whose friendship she still maintained, she found that both
concurred in thinking that this obscure and wandering Butler, so skilled
in an art in which eminence in man is generally professional, must be of
mediocre or perhaps humble station. Ah! now that she was free and rich,
if she were to meet him again, and his love was not all gone, and he
would believe in _her_ strange and constant truth; now, _his_ infidelity
could be forgiven,--forgotten in the benefits it might be hers to bestow!
And how, poor Alice, in that remote village, was chance to throw him in
your way? She knew not: but something often whispered to her, "Again you
shall meet those eyes; again you shall hear that voice; and you shall
tell him, weeping on his breast, how you loved his child!" And would he
not have forgotten her; would he not have formed new ties?--could he read
the loveliness of unchangeable affection in that pale and pensive face!
Alas, when we love intensely, it is difficult to make us fancy that there
is no love in return!

The reader is acquainted with the adventures of Mrs. Elton, the sole
confidant of the secret union of Templeton and Evelyn's mother. By a
singular fatality, it was the selfish and characteristic recklessness of
Vargrave that had, in fixing her home at Burleigh, ministered to the
revelation of his own villanous deceit. On returning to England she had
inquired for Mr. Templeton; she had learned that he had married again,
had been raised to the peerage under the title of Lord Vargrave, and was
gathered to his fathers. She had no claim on his widow or his family.
But the unfortunate child who should have inherited his property, she
could only suppose her dead.