But regrets were useless; his first duty was to the living; he must hasten to find Alice.  But how, where?  It occurred to him that the village lawyer was probably administrator of the estate, and could tell him where Alice was.  He went, therefore, to the lawyer’s office.  It was shut, and a placard informed him that Mr. Blank was attending court at the county-seat.  The lawyer’s housekeeper said that “Alice was to Boston, with some relation or other,—­a Mr. Monroe, she believed his name was, but couldn’t say for sartin.  The Square could tell; but he—­wouldn’t be back for three or four days.”

Leaving his card, with a request that Mr. Blank would communicate to him Alice’s address, Greenleaf hired a conveyance to the railway.  He could not remain in Innisfield an hour; it was a tomb, and the air stifled him.  On his way, he had ample opportunity to consider what a slender clue he had to find the girl; for he thought of the long column of Monroes in the “Directory”; and, besides, he did not feel sure that the housekeeper had correctly remembered the name, even.

We leave the repentant lover to follow on the track of Alice, assured that he will receive sufficient punishment for his folly in the remorse and anxiety he must feel.

It is quite time that our neglected heroine should appear upon the stage.  Gentle Alice, orphaned, deserted, lonely; it is not from any distrust as to her talents, her manners, or her figure, that she has been made to wait so long for the callboy.  The curtain rises.  A fair-haired girl of medium height, light of frame, with a face in whose sad beauty is blended the least perceptible trace of womanly resolution.  She has borne the heaviest sorrow; for when she followed her father to the grave she buried the last object of her love.  The long, inexcusable silence of Greenleaf had been explained to her; she now believed him faithless, and had (not without a pang) striven to uproot his memory from her heart.  Courageous, but with more than the delicacy of her sex, strong only in innocence and great-heartedness, mature in character and feeling, but with fresh and tender sensibility, she appeals to all manly and womanly sympathy.

When the last ties that bound her to her native village were broken, she accepted the hearty invitation of her cousin, Walter Monroe, and went with him to Boston.  The house at once became a home to her.  Mrs. Monroe received her as though she had been a daughter.  Such a pretty, motherless child,—­so loving, so sincere!  How could the kind woman repress the impulse to fold her to her bosom?  Not even her anxiety to retain undivided possession of her son’s heart restrained her.  So Alice lived, quiet, affectionate, but undemonstrative, as was natural after the trials she had passed.  Insensibly she became “the angel in the house”; mother and son felt drawn to her by an irresistible attraction.  By every delicate kindness, by attention to every wish and whim, by glances full of admiration and tenderness, both showed the power which her beauty and goodness exerted.  And, truly, she was worthy of the homage.  The younger men who saw her were set aflame at once, or sighed afar in despair; while the elderly felt an unaccountable desire to pat her golden head, pinch her softly-rounded cheek, and call her such pet-names as their fatherly character and gray hair allowed.