With these words--'Oh! Robin! Robin!'--the history, as set down in my Mistress's handwriting, suddenly comes to an end. The words are fitting, because her whole heart was full of Robin, and though at this time it seemed to the poor creature a sin still to nourish affection for her old sweetheart, I am sure--nay, I have it on her own confession--that there was never an hour in the waking day when Robin was not in her mind, though between herself and her former lover stood the dreadful figure of her husband. I suppose that, although she began this work with the design to complete it, she had not the courage, even when years had passed away and much earthly happiness had been her reward, to write down the passages which follow. Wherefore (and for another reason--namely, a confession which must be made by myself before I die) I have taken upon myself to finish that part of Alice Eykin's history which relates to the Monmouth rising and its unhappy consequences. You have read how (thanks to my inexperience and ignorance of conspiracies, and belief in men's promises) we were reduced to the lowest point of disgrace and poverty. Alice did not tell, because till afterwards she did not know, that on Sir Christopher's death his estate was declared confiscated, and presently bestowed upon Benjamin by favour of Lord Jeffreys; so that he whose ambition it was to become Lord Chancellor was already (which he had not expected) the Lord of the Manor of Bradford Orcas. But of this hereafter. I have called her my Mistress. Truly, all my life she hath been to me more than was ever Laura to Petrarch, or even Beatrice to the great Florentine. The ancients represented every virtue by a Goddess, a Grace, or a Nymph. Nay, the Arts were also feminine (yet subject to the informing influence of the other sex, as the Muses had Apollo for their director and chief). To my mind every generous sentiment, every worthy thought, all things that are gracious, all things that lift my soul above the common herd, belong not to me, but to my Mistress. In my youth it was she who encouraged me to the practice of those arts by which the soul is borne heavenwards--I mean the arts of poetry and of music: it was she who listened patiently when I would still be prating of myself, and encouraged the ambitions which had already seized my soul. So that if I turned a set of verses smoothly, it was to Alice that I gave them, and for her that I wrote them. When we played heavenly music together, the thoughts inspired by the strain were like the Italian painter's vision of the angels which attend the Virgin--I mean that, sweet and holy as the angels are, they fall far short of the holiness and sweetness of her whom they honour. So, whatever my thoughts or my ambitions, amidst them all I saw continually the face of Alice, always filled with candour and with sweetness. That quality which enables a woman to think always about others, and never about