"How young you look by this light, Alice!" said he, tenderly looking down.
"Would you love me less if I were old?" asked Alice.
"I suppose I should never have loved you in the same way if you had been old when I first saw you."
"Yet I am sure I should have felt the same for you if you had been--oh! ever so old!"
"What, with wrinkled cheeks, and palsied head, and a brown wig, and no teeth, like Mr. Simcox?"
"Oh, but you could never be like that! You would always look young--your heart would be always in your face. That clear smile--ah, you would look beautiful to the last!"
"But Simcox, though not very lovely now, has been, I dare say, handsomer than I am, Alice; and I shall be contented to look as well when I am as old!"
"I should never know you were old, because I can see you just as I please. Sometimes, when you are thoughtful, your brows meet, and you look so stern that I tremble; but then I think of you when you last smiled, and look up again, and though you are frowning still, you seem to smile. I am sure you are different to other eyes than to mine . . . and time must kill /me/ before, in my sight, it could alter /you/."
"Sweet Alice, you talk eloquently, for you talk love."
"My heart talks to you. Ah! I wish it could say all I felt. I wish it could make poetry like you, or that words were music--I would never speak to you in anything else. I was so delighted to learn music, because when I played I seemed to be talking to you. I am sure that whoever invented music did it because he loved dearly and wanted to say so. I said '/he/,' but I think it was a woman. Was it?"
"The Greeks I told you of, and whose life was music, thought it was a god."
"Ah, but you say the Greeks made Love a god. Were they wicked for it?"
"Our own God above is Love," said Ernest, seriously, "as our own poets have said and sung. But it is a love of another nature--divine, not human. Come, we will go within, the air grows cold for you."
They entered, his arm round her waist. The room smiled upon them its quiet welcome; and Alice, whose heart had not half vented its fulness, sat down to the instrument still to "talk love" in her own way.
But it was Saturday evening. Now every Saturday, Maltravers received from the neighbouring town the provincial newspaper--it was his only medium of communication with the great world. But it was not for that communication that he always seized it with avidity, and fed on it with interest. The county in which his father resided bordered on the shire in which Ernest sojourned, and the paper included the news of that familiar district in its comprehensive columns. It therefore satisfied Ernest's conscience and soothed his filial anxieties to read from time to time that "Mr. Maltravers was entertaining a distinguished party of friends at his noble mansion of Lisle Court;" or that "Mr. Maltravers's foxhounds had met on such a day at something copse;" or that, "Mr. Maltravers, with his usual munificence, had subscribed twenty guineas to the new county gaol." . . . And as now Maltravers saw the expected paper laid beside the hissing urn, he seized it eagerly, tore the envelope, and hastened to the well-known corner appropriated to the paternal district. The very first words that struck his eye were these:
ALARMING ILLNESS OF MR. MALTRAVERS.
"We regret to state that this exemplary and distinguished gentleman was suddenly seized on Wednesday night with a severe spasmodic affection. Dr. ------ was immediately sent for, who pronounced it to be gout in the stomach. The first medical assistance from London has been summoned.
"Postscript.--We have just learned, in answer to our inquiries at Lisle Court, that the respected owner is considerably worse: but slight hopes are entertained of his recovery. Captain Maltravers, his eldest son and heir, is at Lisle Court. An express has been despatched in search of Mr. Ernest Maltravers, who, involved by his high English spirit in some dispute with the authorities of a despotic government, had suddenly disappeared from Gottingen, where his extraordinary talents had highly distinguished him. He is supposed to be staying at Paris."
The paper dropped on the floor. Ernest threw himself back on the chair, and covered his face with his hands.
Alice was beside him in a moment. He looked up, and caught her wistful and terrified gaze. "Oh, Alice!" he cried, bitterly, and almost pushing her away, "if you could but guess my remorse!" Then springing on his feet, he hurried from the room.
Presently the whole house was in commotion. The gardener, who was always in the house about supper-time, flew to the town for post-horses. The old woman was in despair about the laundress, for her first and only thought was for "master's shirts." Ernest locked himself in his room. Alice! poor Alice!
In little more than twenty minutes, the chaise was at the door: and Ernest, pale as death, came into the room where he had left Alice.
She was seated on the floor, and the fatal paper was on her lap.