And again she clung to him, as if it were heaven to believe all things,
and death to doubt. Then, after a pause, she drew him gently with both
her hands towards the light, and gazed upon him fondly, proudly, as if to
trace, line by line, and feature by feature, the countenance which had
been to her sweet thoughts as the sunlight to the flowers. "Changed,
changed," she muttered; "but still the same,--still beautiful, still
divine!" She stopped. A sudden thought struck her: his garments were
worn and soiled by travel, and that princely crest, fallen and dejected,
no longer towered in proud defiance above the sons of men. "You are not
rich," she exclaimed eagerly,--"say you are not rich! I am rich enough
for both; it is all yours,--all yours; I did not betray you for it; there
is no shame in it. Oh, we shall be so happy! Thou art come back to thy
poor Alice! thou knowest how she loved thee!"

There was in Alice's manner, her wild joy, something so different from
her ordinary self, that none who could have seen her--quiet, pensive,
subdued--would have fancied her the same being. All that Society and its
woes had taught were gone; and Nature once more claimed her fairest
child. The very years seemed to have fallen from her brow, and she
looked scarcely older than when she had stood with him beneath the
moonlight by the violet banks far away. Suddenly, her colour faded; the
smile passed from the dimpled lips; a sad and solemn aspect succeeded to
that expression of passionate joy. "Come," she said, in a whisper,
"come, follow;" and still clasping his hand, she drew him to the door.
Silent and wonderingly he followed her across the lawn, through the
moss-grown gate, and into the lonely burial-ground. She moved on with a
noiseless and gliding step,--so pale, so hushed, so breathless, that even
in the noonday you might have half fancied the fair shape was not owned
by earth. She paused where the yew-tree cast its gloomy shadow; and the
small and tombless mound, separated from the rest, was before them. She