there was not one that could compete in beauty, wit, or grace, with Alice, his bright daughter. Too keen a player with the passions and the characters of men--too wise a judge of that most wondrous compound, that strange mass of inconsistencies, of evil and of good, of honor and deceit, the human heart--too close a calculator of effects and causes, was William, to divulge his purpose, or to hint his wishes, even to the obedient ear of Alice. He cared not--he--whether she loved, or feigned to love, so that his object was effected. Commanding ever his wildest passions, using them but as instruments and tools to bend or break men to his purposes, he never dreamed or recked of their ungovernable force upon the minds of others. It was but a few days after the arrival of his guest, that he discovered how he gazed after, and with signs of evident and earnest admiration, on the young damsel, to whose intimacy he had been studiously admitted as an especial and much-honored friend of his host: and her father, to fan this flame on Harold’s part, it needed little art from so consummate an intriguer as the duke; while as to Alice, young as she was, and thoughtless, delighted with attention, and attracted by the fine form and high repute of the young stranger, and yet more by the raciness and trifling singularities of his foreign though high-bred deportment--a fond, paternal smile, and an approving glance, as she toyed with her young admirer, sufficed to give full scope to her vivacious inclinations. Daily the Norman’s game became more intricate, daily more certain; when suddenly, just as the Saxon--flattered and half-enamored as he was, began to feel that he had no excuse for lingering longer at a distance from his country and his sovereign--began to speak of a return before the setting-in of winter, an accident occurred, which, with his wonted readiness of wit, William turned instantly to good account.