Alice, or the Mysteries — Complete

								

worth knowing is in town. Still, however, some stray guests found
their way to the rectory for a day or two, and still there were some
aristocratic old families in the neighbourhood, who never went up to
London: so that two days in the week the rector's wine flowed, the
whist-tables were set out, and the piano called into requisition.
Evelyn--the object of universal attention and admiration--was put at her
ease by her station itself; for good manners come like an instinct to
those on whom the world smiles. Insensibly she acquired self-possession
and the smoothness of society; and if her child-like playfulness broke
out from all conventional restraint, it only made more charming and
brilliant the great heiress, whose delicate and fairy cast of beauty
so well became her graceful abandon of manner, and who looked so
unequivocally ladylike to the eyes that rested on Madame Devy's blondes
and satins.
Caroline was not so gay as she had been at the cottage. Something seemed
to weigh upon her spirits: she was often moody and thoughtful. She was
the only one in the family not good-tempered; and her peevish replies
to her parents, when no visitor imposed a check on the family circle,
inconceivably pained Evelyn, and greatly contrasted the flow of spirits
which distinguished her when she found somebody worth listening to.
Still Evelyn--who, where she once liked, found it difficult to withdraw
regard--sought to overlook Caroline's blemishes, and to persuade herself
of a thousand good qualities below the surface; and her generous nature
found constant opportunity of venting itself in costly gifts, selected
from the London parcels, with which the officious Mr. Merton relieved
the monotony of the rectory. These gifts Caroline could not refuse
without paining her young friend. She took them reluctantly, for, to do
her justice, Caroline, though ambitious, was not mean.
Thus time passed in the rectory, in gay variety and constant
entertainment; and all things combined to spoil the heiress, if, indeed,
goodness ever is spoiled by kindness and prosperity. Is it to the frost
or to the sunshine that the flower opens its petals, or the fruit ripens
from the blossom?

CHAPTER III.


Rod.    How sweet these solitary places are!


......


Ped.    What strange musick

            Was that we heard afar off?


Curio.  We've told you what he is, what time we've sought him,

            His nature and his name.


BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.  The Pilgrim.
ONE day, as the ladies were seated in Mrs. Merton's morning-room,
Evelyn, who had been stationed by the window hearing the little Cecilia
go through the French verbs, and had just finished that agreeable task,
exclaimed,--
"Do tell me to whom that old house belongs, with the picturesque
gable-end and Gothic turrets, there, just peeping through the trees,--I
have always forgot to ask you."
"Oh, my dear Miss Cameron," said Mrs. Merton, "that is Burleigh; have