In the meantime at least a fortnight must pass before they could expect an answer to Lauderdale’s letter. During that time they returned to all their old habits, with the strange and melancholy difference, that Arthur, once the centre of all, was no longer there. Every day of this time increased the development of Colin’s new thoughts, until the unknown father of Alice had{293} grown, in his eyes, into a cruel and profligate tyrant, ready to drag his daughter home and plunge her into depraved society without any regard for either her happiness or her honour. Colin had, indeed, in his own mind, in strictest privacy and seclusion of thought, indited an imaginary letter, eloquent with youthful indignation, to inform this unworthy parent that his deserted daughter had found a better protector; but he was very silent about these cogitations of his, and did not share them even with Lauderdale. And there were moments when Colin felt the seriousness of the position, and thought it very hard that such a necessity should meet him in the face at the beginning of his career. Sometimes in the sudden darkening, out of the rosy clouds which hung over the Campagna, the face of the impossible woman, the ideal creature—she who could have divined the thoughts in his mind and the movements in his heart before they came into being, would glance suddenly out upon him for an instant, and then disappear, waving a shadowy farewell, and leaving in his mind a strange blank, which the sight of Alice rather increased than removed. That ineffable mate and companion was never to be his, the young man thought. True, he had never met her, nor come upon any trace of her footsteps, for Matty Frankland at her best never could have been she. But yet, as long as he was unbound by other tie or affection, this vision was the “not impossible She” to Colin as to all men; and this he had to give up—for Alice, dutiful and sweet Alice, forsaken by all friends and yet so steadfast in her gentle self-possession, whom it was not in the heart of man to be otherwise than tender of; she who had need of him, and whom his very nature bound him to protect and cherish—was not that woman. At other moments he thought of his own life, for which still so much training was necessary, and which he should have entered in the full freedom of his youth; and was profoundly aware of the incumbered and helpless trim in which he must go into the battle, obliged to take thought not of his work only, and the best means of doing it, but of those cares of living which lie so lightly on a young man alone.

There may be some of Colin’s friends who will think the less of him for this struggle in his mind; and there may be many who will think with justice that, unless he could have offered love to Alice, he had no right to offer her himself and his life—an opinion in which his historian fully agrees. But then this gift though less than the best, was a long way{294} superior to anything else which, at the present moment, was likely to be offered to the friendless girl. If he could have laid at her feet the full heart, which is the only true offering under such circumstances, the chances are that Alice, in her simplicity and gentleness, would have been sadly puzzled what to do with that passionate and ungovernable thing. What he really could offer her—affection, tenderness, protection—was clearly comprehensible to her. She had no other idea of love than was included in those attributes and phases of it. These considerations justified Colin in the step which he contemplated—or rather in the step which he did not contemplate, but felt to be necessary and incumbent upon him. It sometimes occurred to him how—if he had been prudent and taken Lauderdale’s advice, and eschewed at the beginning that close connexion with Meredith and his sister, which he had entered into with his eyes open, and with a consciousness even that it might affect his life—this embarrassing situation might never have come into being; and then he smiled to himself, with youthful superiority, contemplating what seemed so plainly the meaning of Providence, and asking himself how he, by a momentary exercise of his own will, could have overthrown that distinct celestial intention? On the whole, it was comforting to think that everything had been arranged beforehand by agencies so very clear and traceable; and with this conclusion of the argument he left off, as near contented as possible, and not indisposed to enjoy the advantages which were palpably before him; for, though they were not the eyes he had dreamed of, there was a sweetness very well worthy of close study in Alice Meredith’s eyes.

The days passed very quietly in this time of suspense. The society of the two strangers, who were more to her in her sorrow than all her kindred, supported the lonely girl more than she was aware of—more than any one could have believed. They were absent during the greater part of the day, and left her unmolested to the tears that would come, notwithstanding all her patience; and they returned to her in the evening with attention and cares to which she had never been accustomed, devoting two original and powerful minds, of an order at once higher and more homely than any which she had ever encountered, to her amusement and consolation. Alice had never known before what it was to have ordinary life and daily occurrences brightened by the thick-coming fancies, the tender play of word and thought, which now surrounded her. She{295} had heard clever talk afar off, “in society,” and been awe-stricken by the sound of it; and she had heard Arthur and his friends uttering much fine-sounding language upon subjects not generally in her way; but she was utterly unused to that action of uncommon minds upon common things which gives so much charm to the ordinary intercourse of life. All they could think of to lighten the atmosphere of the house in which she sat in her deep mourning, absorbed for hours together in those thoughts of the dead to which her needlework afforded little relief, they did with devotion, suspending their own talk and occupations to occupy themselves with her. Colin read In Memoriam to her till her heart melted and relieved itself in sweet abundant tears; and Lauderdale talked and told her many a homely history of that common course of humanity, full of sorrows sorer than her own, which fills young minds with awe. Between them they roused Alice to a higher platform, a different atmosphere, than she had known before; and she raised herself up after them with a half-bewildered sense of elevation, not understanding how it was; and so the long days which were so hard, and which nothing in the world could save from being hard, brightened towards the end, not certainly into anything that could be called pleasure, but into a sad expansion and elevation of heart, in which faintly appeared those beginnings of profound and deep happiness which are not incompatible with grief, and yet are stronger and more inspiring than joy.

While this was going on, unconsciously to any one concerned, Sora Antonia, in her white kerchief and apron, sometimes knitting, sometimes with her distaff like a buxom Fate, sat and twisted her thread and turned her spindle a little behind yet not out of reach, keeping a wary eye upon her charge. She too interposed, sometimes with her own comments upon life and things in general, and took part in the conversation; and, whether it was that Sora Antonia’s mind was really of a superior order, or that the stately Roman speech threw a refining colour upon her narratives, it is certain that the interpellations of the Italian peasant fell without any sensible derogation into the strain of lofty yet familiar talk which was meant to wean Alice from her special grief. Sora Antonia told them of the other Forestieri who had lived like themselves in the Savelli palace; who had come for health and yet had died, leaving the saddest mourners—helpless widows and little children, heart-broken fathers and mothers, perhaps the least consolable of all. Life was such, she said solemnly, bowing her{296} stately head. She herself, of a hardy race, and strong, as the Signori saw, had not she buried her children, for whom she would have gladly died? But the good God had not permitted her to die. Alice cried silently as she heard all this; she kissed Sora Antonia, who, for her part, had outlived her tears, and with a natural impulse turned to Colin, who was young, and in whose heart, as in her own, there must live a natural protest against this awful necessity of separation and misery; and thus it came to be Colin’s turn to interpose, and he came on the field once more with In memoriam, and with other poems which were sweet to hear, and soothed her even when she only partially entered into their meaning. A woman has an advantage under such circumstances. By means of her sympathy and gratitude, and the still deeper feeling which grew unconsciously in her heart towards him who read, she came to believe that she too understood and appreciated what was to him so clear and so touching. A kind of spiritual magnetism worked upon Alice, and, to all visible appearance, expanded and enlarged her mind. It was not that her intellect itself grew, or that she understood all the beautiful imaginations, all the tender philosophies thus unfolded to her; but she was united in a singular union of affectionate companionship with those who did understand, and even to herself she appeared able to see, if not with her own eyes, at least with theirs, the new beauties and solemnities of which she had not dreamt before.

This strange process went on day by day without any one being aware of it; and even Lauderdale had almost forgotten that their guardianship of Alice was only for the moment, and that the state of affairs altogether was provisionary and could not possibly continue, when an answer reached him to his letter. He was alone when he received it, and all that evening said nothing on the subject until Alice had retired with her watchful attendant; then, without a word of comment, he put it into Colin’s hand. It was written in a stilted hand, like that of one unaccustomed to writing, and was not quite irreproachable even in its spelling. This was what Lauderdale’s correspondent said:—

“Sir,—Your letter has had such a bad effect upon the health of my dear husband, that I beg you won’t trouble him with any more such communications. If it’s meant to get money, that’s vain—for neither him nor me knows anything about the friends Arthur may have picked up. If he had stayed at home he would have received every attention. As for his ungrateful{297} sister, I won’t have anything to say to her. Mr. Meredith is very ill, and, for anything I know, may never rise from a bed of sickness, where he has been thrown by hearing this news so sudden; but I take upon me to let her know as he will have nothing to say to one that could behave so badly as she has done. I am always for making friends, but she knows she cannot expect much kindness from me after all that has happened. She has money enough to live on, and she can do as she pleases. Considering what her ingratitude has brought her dear father to, and that I may be left alone to manage everything before many days are past, you will please to consider that here is an end of it, and not write any more begging letters to me.

“Julia Meredith.”

This communication Colin read with a beating heart. It was so different from what he expected, and left him so free to carry out the dawning resolution which he had imagined himself executing in the face of tyrannical resistance, that he felt at first like a man who has been straining hard at a rope and is suddenly thrown down by the instantaneous stoppage of the pressure on the other side. When he had picked himself up, the facts of the case rushed on him distinct and unmistakeable. The time had now come when the lost and friendless maiden stood in the path of the true knight. Was he to leave her there to fight her way in the hard world by herself, without defence or protection, because, sweet and fair and pure as she was, she was not the lady of his dreams? He made up his mind at once with a thrill of generous warmth; but at the same time felt himself saying for ever and ever farewell to that ideal lady who henceforward, in earth or heaven, could never be his. All this passed through his mind while he was looking at the letter which already his rapid eye had read and his mind comprehended. “So there is an end of your hopes,” said Colin. “Now we are the only friends she has in the world—as I have always thought.”

“Softly,” said Lauderdale. “Callants like you aye run away with the half of an idea. This is an ignorant woman’s letter, that is glad to get rid of her. The father will mend, and then he’ll take her out of our hands.”

“He shall do nothing of the kind,” said Colin, hotly. “You speak as if she was a piece of furniture; I look upon her as a sacred charge. We are responsible to Meredith for his siste{298}r’s comfort and—happiness,” said the young man, who during this conversation preferred not to meet his companion’s eye.

“Ay!” said Lauderdale drily, “that’s an awfu’ charge for the like of you and me. It’s more that I ever calculated on, Colin. To see her safe home, and in the hands of her friends——&............