“Will you forgive me, brother?” she said, laying her hand upon his shoulder as she stood by his side, and bent her face down until her fair cheek almost touched his own.

“Rather let me say, will you forgive me, sister?” was his reply, as he kissed her affectionately—­“for the unkind repulse I gave you, when to say what you did must have caused you a most painful sacrifice of feeling?”

“Painful indeed it was, brother.  But it is past now and all forgiven.”

“Since then, Alice,” he said, after a pause, “I have taken a solemn oath, administered by an Alderman, not to touch any kind of intoxicating drink for six months.”

“O, I am so glad, John!” the sister said, a joyful smile lighting up her beautiful young face.  “But why did you say six months?  Why not for life?”

“Because, Alice, I do not wish to bind myself down to a kind of perpetual slavery.  I wish to be free, and act right in freedom from a true principle of right.  Six months of entire abstinence from all kinds of liquor will destroy that appetite for it which has caused me, of late, to seek it far too often.  And then I will, as a free man, remain free.”

“I shall now be so happy again, John!” Alice said, fully satisfied with her brother’s reason.

“So you have not been happy then of late?”

“O, no, brother.  Far from it.”

“And has the fact of my using wine so freely been the cause of your unhappiness?”

“Solely.”

“Its effects upon me have not been so visible as often to attract your attention, Alice?”

“O, yes, they have.  Scarcely a day has gone by for three or four months past, that I could not see that your mind was obscured, and often your actions sensibly affected.”

“I did not dream that it was so, Alice.’

“Are you not sensible, that at Mr. Weston’s, last night you were by no means yourself?”

“Yes, Alice, I am sensible of that, and deeply has it mortified me.  I was suffering acutely from the recollection of the exposure which I made of myself on that occasion, especially before Helen, when you alluded to the subject.  That was the reason that I could not bear your allusion to it.  But tell me, Alice, did you perceive that my situation attracted Helen’s attention particularly?”

“Yes.  She noticed, evidently, that you were not as you ought to have been.”

“How did it affect her, Alice?” asked the young man.

“She seemed much pained, and, I thought, mortified.”

“Mortified?”

“Yes.”

A pause of some moments ensued, when Barclay asked, in a tone of interest,

“Do you think it has prejudiced her against me?”

“It has evidently pained her very much, but I do not think that it has created in her mind any prejudice against you.”

“From what do you infer this, Alice?”

“From the fact, that, while we were alone in her chamber, on my going up stairs to put on my bonnet and shawl, she said to me, and her eyes were moist as well as my own, ’Alice, you ought to speak to your brother, and caution him against this free indulgence in wine; it may grow on him, unawares.  If he were as near to me as he is to you, I should not feel that my conscience was clear unless I warned him of his danger.’”