Alice, or the Mysteries — Complete

								

shall all meet at dinner; or," she added, after a pause, "if this
be uncourteous to Lord Vargrave, suppose Evelyn and myself take his
carriage and, he accompanies you?"
"Agreed," said Mrs. Merton, quietly; "and now I will just go and see
about the strawberry-plants and slips--it was so kind in you, dear Lady
Vargrave, to think of them."
An hour had elapsed, and Evelyn was gone! She had left her maiden home,
she had wept her last farewell on her mother's bosom, the sound of the
carriage-wheels had died away; but still Lady Vargrave lingered on the
threshold, still she gazed on the spot where the last glimpse of Evelyn
had been caught. A sense of dreariness and solitude passed into her
soul: the very sunlight, the spring, the songs of the birds, made
loneliness more desolate.
Mechanically, at last, she moved away, and with slow steps and
downcast eyes passed through the favourite walk that led into the quiet
burial-ground. The gate closed upon her, and now the lawn, the gardens,
the haunts of Evelyn, were solitary as the desert itself; but the daisy
opened to the sun, and the bee murmured along the blossoms, not the less
blithely for the absence of all human life. In the bosom of Nature there
beats no heart for man!

BOOK II.


"The hour arrived--years having rolled away
When his return the Gods no more delay.
Lo! Ithaca the Fates award; and there
New trials meet the Wanderer."
HOMER: Od. lib. i, 16.

CHAPTER I.


THERE is continual spring and harvest here--

    Continual, both meeting at one time;
For both the boughs do laughing blossoms bear,

    And with fresh colours deck the wanton prime;
And eke at once the heavy trees they climb,

    Which seem to labour under their fruit's load.


SPENSER: The Garden of Adonis.



                    Vis boni
In ipsa inesset forma.*--TERENCE.


* "Even in beauty there exists the power of virtue."
BEAUTY, thou art twice blessed; thou blessest the gazer and the
possessor; often at once the effect and the cause of goodness! A sweet
disposition, a lovely soul, an affectionate nature, will speak in the
eyes, the lips, the brow, and become the cause of beauty. On the other
hand, they who have a gift that commands love, a key that opens all
hearts, are ordinarily inclined to look with happy eyes upon the
world,--to be cheerful and serene, to hope and to confide. There is more
wisdom than the vulgar dream of in our admiration of a fair face.
Evelyn Cameron was beautiful,--a beauty that came from the heart, and
went to the heart; a beauty, the very spirit of which was love! Love
smiled on her dimpled lips, it reposed on her open brow, it played in
the profuse and careless ringlets of darkest yet sunniest auburn, which
a breeze could lift from her delicate and virgin cheek; Love, in all its
tenderness, in all its kindness, its unsuspecting truth,--Love coloured
every thought, murmured in her low melodious voice, in all its symmetry