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It has misled my father-it has endangered you. At all risks, I resolved that you should know this, and blame me not if I have taken a bold and imprudent step in desiring this solitary interview,, since you are aware how little poor Deborah is to be trusted."

"Can you fear misconstruction from me, Alice?" replied Peveril, warmly; "from me, whom you have thus highly favoured-thus deeply obliged?"

"Cease your protestations, Julian," answered the maiden," they do but make me the more sensible that I have acted over boldly. But I did for the best. I could not see you, whom I have known so long-you, who say you regard me with partiality

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"Say that I regard you with partiality?" interrupted Peveril in his turn. "Ah, Alice, what a cold and doubtful phrase you have used to express the most devoted, the most sincere affection!”

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"Well, then," said Alice, sadly, "we will not quarrel about words; but do not again interrupt me,-I could not, I say, see you, who, I believe, regard me with sincere though vain and fruitless attachment, rush blindfold into a snare, deceived and seduced by those very feelings towards me.” "I understand you not, Alice," said Peveril; nor can I see any danger to which I am at present exposed. The sentiments which your father has expressed towards me, are of a nature irreconcilable with hostile purposes. If he is not offended with the bold wishes I may have formed, and his whole behaviour shows the contrary, I know not a man on earth from whom I have the least cause to apprehend any danger or ill will."

My father," said Alice, " means well by his country, and well by you; yet I sometimes fear he may rather injure than serve his good cause; and still more do I dread, that in attempting to engage

you as an auxiliary, he forgets those ties which ought to bind you, and I am sure which will bind you, to a different line of conduct from his own.".

"You lead me into still deeper darkness, Alice," answered Peveril. "That your father's especial line of politics differs widely from mine, I know well; but how many instances have occurred, even during the bloody scenes of civil warfare, of good and worthy men laying the prejudice of party affections aside, and regarding each other with respect, and even with friendly attachment, without being false to principle on either side?”

"It may be so,' ," said Alice; "but such is not the league which my father desires to form with you, and that to which he hopes your misplaced partiality towards his daughter may afford a motive for your forming with him."

"And what is it," said Peveril, "which I would refuse, with such a prospect before me?"

"Treachery and dishonour!" replied Alice; "whatever would render you unworthy of the poor boon at which you aim-ay, were it more worthless than I confess it to be."

"Would your father," said Peveril, as he unwillingly received the impression which Alice designed to convey, would he, whose views of duty are so strict and severe-would he wish to involve me in aught, to which such harsh epithets as treachery and dishonour can be applied with the slightest shadow of truth?"

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"Do not mistake me, Julian," replied the maiden; my father is incapable of requesting aught of you that is not to his thinking just and honourable; nay, he conceives that he only claims from you a debt, which is due as a creature to the Creator, and as a man to your fellow-men.'

"So guarded, where can be the danger of our intercourse?" replied Julian. "If he be resolved

to require, and I determined to accede to, nothing save what flows from conviction, what have I to fear, Alice? and how is my intercourse with your father dangerous? Believe not so; his speech has already made impression on me in some particulars, and he listened with candour and patience to the objections which I made occasionally. You do Master Bridgenorth less than justice in confounding him with the unreasonable bigots in policy and religion, who can listen to no argument but what favours their own prepossessions."

"Julian," replied Alice, "it is you who misjudge my father's powers, and his purpose with respect to you, and who overrate your own powers of resistance. I am but a girl, but I have been taught by circumstances to think for myself, and to consider the character of those who are around me. My father's views in ecclesiastical and civil policy, are as dear to him as the life which he cherishes only to advance them. They have been, with little alteration, his companions through life. They brought him at one period into prosperity, and when they suited not the times, he suffered for having held them. They have become not only a part, but the very dearest part of his existence.

If he

shows them not to you at first, in the inflexible strength which they have acquired over his mind, do not believe that they are the less powerful. He who desires to make converts, must begin by degrees. But that he should sacrifice to an inexperienced young man, whose ruling motive he will term a childish passion, any part of those treasured principles which he has maintained through good repute and bad repute-O, do not dream of such an impossibility! If you meet at all, you must be the wax, he the seal-you must receive—he must bestow an absolute impression.'

"That," said Peveril, "were unreasonable. I

will frankly avow to you, Alice, that I am not a sworn bigot to the opinions entertained by my father, much as I respect his person. I would that our Cavaliers or whatsoever they are pleased to call themselves, would have some more charity towards those who differ from them in Church and State. But to hope that I would surrender the principles in which I have lived, were to suppose me capable of deserting my benefactress, and breaking the heart of my parents."

"Even so I judged of you, and therefore, I asked this interview, to conjure you that you will break off all intercourse with our family-return to your parents-or, what will be much safer, visit the continent once more, and abide till God send better days to England, for these are black with many a

storm."

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"And can you bid me go, Alice?" said the young man, taking her unresisting hand; "can you bid me go, and yet own an interest in my fate?Can you bid me, for fear of dangers, which, as a man, as a gentleman, and a loyal one, I am bound to show my face to, meanly abandon my parents, my friends, my country-suffer the existence of evils which I might aid to prevent, forego the prospects of doing such little good as might be in my power-fall from an active and honourable station, into the condition of a fugitive and time-server-Can you bid me do all this, Alice? Can you bid me do all this, and, in the same breath, bid farewell for ever to you and happiness?-It is impossible-I can not surrender at once my love and my honour."

"There is no remedy," said Alice, but she could not suppress a sigh while she said so- "there is no remedy-none whatever. What we might have been to each other, placed in more favourable circumstances, it avails not to think of now; and, cir

cumstanced as we are, with open war about to break out betwixt our parents and friends, we can be but well-wishers-cold and distant well-wishers, who must part on this spot, and at this hour, never to meet again."

"No, by Heaven!" said Peveril, animated at the same time by his own feelings, and by the sight of the emotions which his companion in vain endeavoured to suppress," No, by Heaven!" he exclaimed, " we part not-Alice, we part not. If I am to leave my native land, you shall be my companion in my exile. What have you to lose?Whom have you to abandon?-Your father?-The good old cause, as it is termed, is dearer to him than a thousand daughters, and setting him aside, what tie is there between you and this barren islebetween my Alice and any spot of the British dominions, where her Julian does not sit by her?"

"Oh, Julian," answered the maiden, "why make duty more painful by visionary projects, which you ought not to name, or I to listen to?—Your parents father-it can not be!"

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"Fear not for my parents, Alice," replied Julian, and pressing close to his companion's side, he ventured to throw his arm around her; "they love me, and they will soon learn to love in Alice, the only being on earth who could have rendered their son happy. And for your own father, when State and Church intrigues allow him to bestow a thought upon you, will he not think that your happiness, your security is better cared for when you are my wife, than were you to continue under the mercenary charge of yonder foolish woman? What could his pride desire better for you, than the establishment which will one day be mine? Come then, Alice, and since you condemn me to banishmentsince you deny me a share in those stirring achievements which are about to agitate England-come! VOL. II.

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