Natural and commonplace sophistries! /L'homme se pique!/ as old Montaigne said; Man is his own sharper! The conscience is the most elastic material in the world. To-day you cannot stretch it over a mole-hill, to-morrow it hides a mountain. O how happy they were now--that young pair! How the days flew like dreams! Time went on, winter passed away, and the early spring, with its flowers and sunshine, was like a mirror to their own youth. Alice never accompanied Maltravers in his walks abroad, partly because she feared to meet her father, and partly because Maltravers himself was fastidiously averse to all publicity. But then they had all that little world of three acres--lawn and fountain, shrubbery and terrace, to themselves, and Alice never asked if there was any other world without. She was now quite a scholar, as Mr. Simcox himself averred. She could read aloud and fluently to Maltravers, and copied out his poetry in a small, fluctuating hand, and he had no longer to chase throughout his vocabulary for short Saxon monosyllables to make the bridge of intercourse between their ideas. Eros and Psyche are ever united, and Love opens all the petals of the soul. On one subject alone, Maltravers was less eloquent than of yore. He had not succeeded as a moralist, and he thought it hypocritical to preach what he did not practise. But Alice was gentler and purer, and as far as she knew, sweet fool! better than ever--she had invented a new prayer for herself; and she prayed as regularly and as fervently as if she were doing nothing amiss. But the code of Heaven is gentler than that of earth, and does not declare that ignorance excuseth not the crime. CHAPTER VIII. "Some clouds sweep on as vultures for their prey. * * * * * No azure more shall robe the firmament, Nor spangled stars be glorious." BYRON, /Heaven and Earth/. IT was a lovely evening in April, the weather was unusually mild and serene for the time of year, in the northern districts of our isle, and the bright drops of a recent shower sparkled upon the buds of the lilac and laburnum that clustered round the cottage of Maltravers. The little fountain that played in the centre of a circular basin, on whose clear surface the broad-leaved water-lily cast its fairy shadow, added to the fresh green of the lawn; "And softe as velvet the yonge grass," on which the rare and early flowers were closing their heavy lids. That twilight shower had given a racy and vigorous sweetness to the air which stole over many a bank of violets, and slightly stirred the golden ringlets of Alice as she sate by the side of her entranced and silent lover. They were seated on a rustic bench just without the cottage, and the open window behind them admitted the view of that happy room--with its litter of books and musical instruments--eloquent of the POETRY of HOME.