"Alice," said Maltravers, one evening after a long pause of thought and abstraction on his side, while she was unconsciously practising her last lesson on the piano--"Alice,--no, don't turn round--sit where you are, but listen to me. We cannot live always in this way." Alice was instantly disobedient--she did turn round, and those great blue eyes were fixed on his own with such anxiety and alarm, that he had no resource but to get up and look round for the meerschaum. But Alice, who divined by an instinct his lightest wish, brought it to him, while he was yet hunting, amidst the further corners of the room, in places where it was certain not to be. There it was, already filled with the fragrant Salonica glittering with the gilt pastile, which, not too healthfully, adulterates the seductive weed with odours that pacify the repugnant censure of the fastidious--for Maltravers was an epicurean even in his worst habits;--there it was, I say, in that pretty hand which he had to touch as he took it; and while he lit the weed he had again to blush and shrink beneath those great blue eyes. "Thank you, Alice," he said; "thank you. Do sit down there--out of the draught. I am going to open the window, the night is so lovely." He opened the casement overgrown with creepers, and the moonlight lay fair and breathless upon the smooth lawn. The calm and holiness of the night soothed and elevated his thoughts; he had cut himself off from the eyes of Alice, and he proceeded with a firm, though gentle voice: