Left alone with her guest Alice examined him shyly, with the curiosity of a woman and the bashfulness of a country girl. General Garnet was what young ladies call a fine, military-looking man. He certainly had a fine, martial figure and bearing, or that which is our ideal of it—a tall and elegantly proportioned figure, a calm, majestic carriage, yet withal suggestive of great reposing strength and fire. His voice was perfect harmony itself. His manner was dignified and imposing, or graceful, earnest, and seductive. Yet, sometimes, one in a sudden, vague astonishment, would feel that he was a man who could unite the utmost inflexibility, and even cruelty of purpose, with the most graceful and gracious urbanity of manner. With all his marvelous powers of fascination he was a man to darken, chill, repel a bright-spirited, warm-souled, pure-hearted girl like Alice. Yet she did the honors of her father’s house to her father’s guest until that guest merged into the lover, and then Alice felt and betrayed the utmost soul-sickened repugnance to him and his suit. It was now that the object of Colonel Chester in inviting this distinguished visitor to Mount Calm became evident—that of bestowing the hand of his daughter and heiress upon him. After a conversation with General Garnet he sent for Alice, and, without any preface at all, bade her make up her mind to a speedy marriage with the husband he had chosen for her, his distinguished and dear friend, General Garnet. Alice passed from the room, mechanically pressing her hands to her temples, trying to awake as from a heart-sickening dream. And so she passed to her now frequent post of duty, her declining mother’s darkened room and sick-bed. The senses, or the intuitions, or the instincts of those on the confines of the unseen world are sometimes preternaturally acute. There was that in the falling footstep, in the very form and bearing, of Alice, as she glided through the shadows of that dark room, that revealed to the mother the existence of some heavy cloud teeming with sorrow, that was ready to burst upon the devoted head of her child. She called Alice to her bedside, took her hand in her gentle grasp, looked with wondering sadness into her eyes—her eyes set in the stare of blank stupor—and murmured tenderly: “What is the matter, Alice? Tell your mother?” Her mother’s loving voice and touch unsealed the spellbound founts of tears and speech. “Oh, mother! mother! I am ruined! ruined!” she wildly gasped, and, sinking down upon the floor, dropped her head upon the bed with hysterical sobs and gasps, and inarticulate wailings. Her mother laid her gentle hand upon her child’s burning and throbbing head, and raised her tender eyes in silent prayer for her, while this storm raged, and until it passed, and Alice, exhausted, but calm, was able to rise, sit by her side, and while she held her hand, tell her what had happened.