which deceived you into the belief that you beheld a rival. It was not
so: that lady yet lives,--then, as now, a friend to me; nothing more. I
grant that, at one time, my fancy allured me to her, but my heart was
still true to thee."

"Bless you for those words!" murmured Alice; and she crept more closely
to him.

He went on. "Circumstances, which at some calmer occasion you shall
hear, again nearly connected my fate by marriage to another. I had then
seen you at a distance, unseen by you,--seen you apparently surrounded by
respectability and opulence; and I blessed Heaven that your lot, at
least, was not that of penury and want." (Here Maltravers related where
he had caught that brief glimpse of Alice,*--how he had sought for her
again and again in vain.) "From that hour," he continued, "seeing you in
circumstances of which I could not have dared to dream, I felt more
reconciled to the past; yet, when on the verge of marriage with
another--beautiful, gifted, generous as she was--a thought, a memory half
acknowledged, dimly traced, chained back my sentiments; and admiration,
esteem, and gratitude were not love! Death--a death melancholy and
tragic--forbade this union; and I went forth in the world, a pilgrim and
a wanderer. Years rolled away, and I thought I had conquered the desire
for love,--a desire that had haunted me since I lost thee. But, suddenly
and recently, a being, beautiful as yourself--sweet, guileless, and young
as you were when we met--woke in me a new and a strange sentiment. I
will not conceal it from you: Alice, at last I loved another! Yet,
singular as it may seem to you, it was a certain resemblance to yourself,
not in feature, but in the tones of the voice, the nameless grace of
gesture and manner, the very music of your once happy laugh,--those
traits of resemblance which I can now account for, and which children