'Fair daughter!' he said to Ellen, 'this visit to my niece affords us both infinite pleasure: we have sought it many a day; but I scarcely think that Alice will be able to recognise thee; for thou art grown up from childhood to such form and feature that I should not, but for the likeness to thy father present, have discovered thee to be his daughter.' Then, turning to the father, he added-- 'I am proud to see thee, De Freston, maintaining thy years with becoming verdure. Time has laid his hand upon me, and the cares of state have borne me down.' 'I hope the years of peace yet reserved for your reverence may make amends for all your state anxieties.' 'I thank thee, De Freston, but let me send for Alice at once.' The Bishop rang a small bell; a female made her appearance, and was ordered to inform her mistress that Lord De Freston and his daughter had arrived. CHAPTER XIII. THE RECEPTION. Alice De Clinton had been made acquainted with the arrival of Lord De Freston and his daughter, even before they had made their appearance in the presence of the Bishop. She was engaged in her own private apartment, working a cross for the altar of the chapel of Goldwell Hall, when her maid informed her of the arrival of the expected guests. She scarcely raised her head from the embroidery to receive the tidings. She ordered her maid to hand her some threads, and pursued her work. It was neither her custom nor her inclination to do otherwise. She had actually received the Bishop's message before she condescended to lay aside her work. None, however, of those she called her friends were more highly esteemed than Lord De Freston and Ellen. She rose in due time, with perfect composure, from the embroidery of the cross, and leaving the work as if she intended to pursue it again after a pause, came very slowly, and with great state, into the presence-chamber of the Bishop. Alice was handsome. She had a remarkably fine face and figure, but her beauty was of that nature which the eye can look upon with wonder, without feeling any degree of affection. She was like some of the finely-chiselled figures of the ancients, admirable to look upon, but cold indeed to touch. Nay more, when she approached the party assembled in the palace hall, so pale, so stately, so immoveably placid, fixed, settled, cool and composed was the smooth, white face of the maiden, that, she looked more like beauty in the winding-sheet of death, than a creature of life, whose veins contained a circulating fluid, warm from the heart. She approached to meet her guest; not a smile passed over her features. Her high and lofty brow, with its wintry air, formed a strange contrast to the sunny brow of the happy Ellen. The frozen expression of one face contrasted with the glow on the features of the other. That eye, too, so large, so glassy, and so stern, was strangely opposed to the beaming vivacity of Ellen's.