So far, at first, from her obtaining the desired interview with Charles, his minions had seized upon Alice as a hostage for the escaped prisoners, and thrown her into strict confinement. Here she lingered during the sixteen years of which our narrative takes no account. We have said that that length of time may pass, figuratively speaking, to many, as rapidly as the short turning of a leaf in our volume. But to her, who was thus imprisoned, how wearily must it have waned! Separated from those to whom she deemed her presence so necessary—with no means of communicating to them the fatal termination of her projected journey of hope, how interminable must it have appeared. Then it was, for the first time in her distresses, that the noble spirit of Alice Heath sank. Prevented from acting for those whom she loved, successive days presented to her, no object in life, and scarce the faint hope of escape from her imprisonment at any future period. At length, however, at the time we again recur to her, she had succeeded in gaining the ear of one who stood high in the favor of the king. Through his influence she had been released, and was this day to have an audience with Charles in behalf of her proscribed relatives. As Alice rode through London, the lofty houses, the stately streets, the walks crowded with busy citizens of every description, passing and repassing with faces of careful importance or eager bustle, combined to form a picture of wealth, bustle and splendor to which she had long been a stranger. Whitehall at last received her, and she passed under one of the beautiful gates of tesselated brick-work. Noon-day was long past when Alice entered the palace, and the usual hour of the king’s levee—if any thing could be termed usual where there was much irregularity—was over. The hall and stair-cases were filled with lackeys and footmen in the most expensive liveries, and the interior apartments with gentlemen and pages of the household of Charles, elegantly arrayed. Alice was conducted to an ante-chamber. Here, in waiting, were many of those individuals who live upon the wants of the noble, administering to the pleasures of luxurious indolence, and stimulating the desires of kingly extravagance by devising new modes and fresh motives of expenditure. There was the visionary philosopher, come to solicit base metals in order that he might transmute them into gold. There was the sea-captain, come to implore an expedition to be fitted out, if not exactly to discover new worlds, at least to colonize and settle uncivilized ones. Mechanics and artisans of every trade—the poet—the musician—the dancer—all had collected here under promise of an audience with their monarch, many of them day by day disappointed, but still returned anew.