g and grateful prayer, contributed to
the restoration of her mind and nerves. Imperfect as this young woman's
notions of abstract right and wrong still were, she was yet sensible
to the claims of a father (no matter how criminal) upon his child: for
feelings with her were so good and true, that they supplied in a great
measure the place of principles. She knew that she could not have lived
under the same roof with her dreadful parent; but she still felt
an uneasy remorse at thinking he had been driven from that roof in
destitution and want. She hastened to dress herself and seek an audience
with her protector; and the latter found with admiration and pleasure
that he had anticipated her own instantaneous and involuntary design
in the settlement made upon Darvil. He then communicated to Alice the
compact he had already formed with her father, and she wept and kissed
his hand when she heard, and secretly resolved that she would work hard
to be enabled to increase the sum allowed. Oh, if her labours could
serve to retrieve a parent from the necessity of darker resources for
support! Alas! when crime has become a custom, it is like gaming or
drinking--the excitement is wanting; and had Luke Darvil been suddenly
made inheritor of the wealth of a Rothschild, he would either still have
been a villain in one way or the other; or _ennui_ would have awakened
conscience, and he would have died of the change of habit.

Our banker always seemed more struck by Alice's moral feelings than even
by her physical beauty. Her love for her child, for instance, impressed
him powerfully, and he always gazed upon her with softer eyes when
he saw her caressing or nursing the little fatherless creature, whose
health was now delicate and precarious. It is difficult to say whether
he was absolutely in love with Alice; the phrase is too strong, perhaps,
to be applied to a man past fifty, who had gone through emotions and
trials enough to wear away freshness from his heart. His feelings
altogether for Alice, the designs he entertained towards her, were of a
very complicated nature; and it will be long, perhaps, before the reader
can thoroughly comprehend them. He conducted Alice home that day; but
he said little by the way, perhaps because his female relation, for
appearance' sake, accompanied them also. He, however, briefly cautioned
Alice on no account to communicate to any one that it was her father
who had been her visitor; and she still shuddere