Maltravers entered, and Alice sprang up to greet him! It was as if the
old days of the music-lesson and the meerschaum had come back.

"This is yours," said Alice, tenderly, as he looked round the apartment.
"Now--now I know what a blessed thing riches are! Ah, you are looking on
that picture; it is of her who supplied your daughter's place,--she is so
beautiful, so good, you will love her as a daughter. Oh, that
letter--that--that letter--I forgot it till now--it is at the vicarage--I
must go there immediately, and you will come too,--you will advise us."

"Alice, I have read the letter,--I know all. Alice, sit down and hear
me,--it is you who have to learn from me. In our young days I was
accustomed to tell you stories in winter nights like these,--stories of
love like our own, of sorrows which, at that time, we only knew by
hearsay. I have one now for your ear, truer and sadder than they were.
Two children, for they were then little more--children in ignorance of
the world, children in freshness of heart, children almost in years--were
thrown together by strange vicissitudes, more than eighteen years ago.
They were of different sexes,--they loved and they erred. But the error
was solely with the boy; for what was innocence in her was but passion in
him. He loved her dearly; but at that age her qualities were half
developed. He knew her beautiful, simple, tender; but he knew not all
the virtue, the faith, and the nobleness that Heaven had planted in her
soul. They parted,--they knew not each other's fate. He sought her
anxiously, but in vain; and sorrow and remorse long consumed him, and her
memory threw a shadow over his existence. But again--for his love had
not the exalted holiness of hers (_she_ was true!)--he sought to renew in
others the charm he had lost with her. In vain,--long, long in vain.
Alice, you know to whom the tale refers. Nay, listen yet. I have heard
from the old man yonder that you were witness to a scene many years ago