“I shall always be happy to see you, Mr. Woodward, but upon that condition.”

After he had token his leave, her parents, anxious to hear the result, came up to the drawing-room, where they found her in a kind of a reverie, from which their appearance startled her.

“Well, Alley,” said her mother, smiling, “is everything concluded between you?”

“Yes, mamma,” replied Alice, “everything is concluded, and finally, too.”

“Did he name the day?” said her father, smiling gravely.

Alice stared at him; then recollecting herself, she replied—­

“I thought I told you both that this was a man I could never think of marrying.  I don’t understand him; he is either very candid or very hypocritical; and I feel it painful, and, besides, unnecessary in me to take the trouble of balancing the character of a person who loses ground in my opinion on every occasion I see him.  Of course, I have discarded him, and I know very well that his mother will cast fire and sword between us as she did before; but to do Mr. Woodward justice, he proposes to stand aloof from her resentments, and wishes to visit us as usual.”

“Then it’s all over between you and him?” said her mother.

“It is; and I never gave you reason to anticipate any other result, mamma.”

“No, indeed,” said her father, “you never did, Alice; but still I think it is generous in him to separate himself from the resentments of that woman, and as a friend we will be always glad to see him.”

“I know not how it is,” replied Alice; “but I felt that the expression of his eye, during our last interview, oppressed me excessively; it was never off me.  There was a killing—­a malignant influence in it, that thrilled through me with pain; but, perhaps, I can account for that.  As it is, he has asked leave to visit us as usual, and to stand, with respect to me, in the light of a friend only.  So far as I am concerned, papa, I could not refuse him a common privilege of civility; but, to tell you both the truth, I shall always meet him not only with reluctance, but with something almost amounting to fear.”

Woodward, now that he had learned his fate, and was aware that his brother stood between him and his expectations, experienced a feeling of vengeance against him and Alice, which he neither could, nor attempted to, restrain.  The rage of his mother, too, when she heard that the latter had rejected him, and avowed her attachment to Charles, went beyond all bounds.  Her son, however, who possessed a greater restraint upon his feelings, and was master of more profound hypocrisy and cunning, requested her to conceal the attachment of Alice to his brother, as a matter not to be disclosed on any account.