“To relieve you, madam, and for no other reason, will I speak on this subject,” he said; “otherwise, I should leave the doors and windows of St. Ruth open, as a melancholy monument of rebellion, and seek my future compensation from the Crown, when the confiscated estates of the leaders of this accursed innovation on the rights of princes shall come to the hammer. But you, Miss Alice, are entitled to every consideration that a lady can expect from a gentleman. Be pleased, therefore, to write to my agent, and request him to seal up my papers, and transmit them to the office of his majesty's Secretary of State. They breathe no treason, madam, and are entitled to official protection. The house, and most of the furniture, as you know, are the property of my landlord, who, in due time, will doubtless take charge of his own interest. I kiss your hand, Miss Alice, and I hope we shall yet meet at St. James's--depend on it, madam, that the royal Charlotte shall yet honor your merits; I know she cannot but estimate your loyalty.” “Here I was born, in humble obscurity--here I have lived, and here I hope to die in quiet,” returned the meek Alice; “if I have known any pleasure, in late years, beyond that which every Christian can find in our daily duties, it has been, my sweet friends, in your accidental society.--Such companions, in this remote corner of the kingdom, has been a boon too precious to be enjoyed without alloy, it seems; and I have now to exchange the past pleasure for present pain. Adieu! my young friend; let your trust be in Him, to whose eyes both prince and peasant, the European and the American, are alike, and we shall meet again, though it be neither in the island of Britain nor on your own wide continent.” “That,” said Colonel Howard, advancing, and taking her hand with kindness, “that is the only disloyal sentiment I have ever heard fall from the lips of Miss Alice Dunscombe! Is it to be supposed that Heaven has established orders among men, and that it does not respect the works of its own formation! But adieu; no doubt, if time was allowed us for suitable explanations, we should find but little or no difference of opinion on this subject.”