to a neighbouring lamp-post for support. But
he recovered himself with an agonising effort, as the
thought struck upon this heart that he was about to
lose sight of her again for ever. And he rushed
forward, like one frantic, in pursuit of the carriage.
But there was a vast crowd of other carriages, besides
stream upon stream of foot-passengers,—for
the great and the gay resorted to that place of worship,
as a fashionable excitement in a dull day. And
after a weary and a dangerous chase, in which he had
been nearly run over three times, Maltravers halted
at last, exhausted and in despair. Every succeeding
Sunday, for months, he went to the same chapel, but
in vain; in vain, too, he resorted to every public
haunt of dissipation and amusement. Alice Darvil
he beheld no more!
“Tell
me, sir,
Have you cast up your state, rated
your land,
And find it able to endure the charge?”
The Noble Gentleman.
By degrees, as Maltravers sobered down from the first
shock of that unexpected meeting, and from the prolonged
disappointment that followed it, he became sensible
of a strange kind of happiness or contentment.
Alice was not in poverty, she was not eating the unhallowed
bread of vice, or earning the bitter wages of laborious
penury. He saw her in reputable, nay, opulent
circumstances. A dark nightmare, that had often,
amidst the pleasures of youth, or the triumphs of literature,
weighed upon his breast, was removed. He breathed
more freely—he could sleep in peace.
His conscience could no longer say to him, “She
who slept upon thy bosom is a wanderer upon the face
of the earth—exposed to every temptation,
perishing perhaps for want.” That single
sight of Alice had been like the apparition of the
injured Dead conjured up at Heraclea—whose
sight could pacify the aggressor and exorcise the
spectres of remorse. He was reconciled with himself,
and walked on to the Future with a bolder step and
a statelier crest. Was she married to that staid
and sober-looking personage whom he had beheld with
her? was that child the offspring of their union?
He almost hoped so—it was better to lose
than to destroy her. Poor Alice! could she have
dreamed, when she sat at his feet gazing up into his
eyes, that a time would come when Maltravers would
thank Heaven for the belief that she was happy with
another?
Ernest Maltravers now felt a new man: the relief
of conscience operated on the efforts of his genius.
A more buoyant and elastic spirit entered into them—they
seemed to breathe as with a second youth.
