no fear debasing reverence,
yet no familiarity diminishing respect. But Love, whose pride is in
serving, seemed to make at once soft and hallowed the offices mutually
rendered; and Nature, never counteracted in her dictates, wrought,
without a visible effort, the proper channels into which those offices
should flow; and that Charity which not only covers sins, but lifts the
veil from virtues, whose beauty might otherwise have lain concealed,
linked them closer and closer, and threw over that link the sanctity of
itself. For it was Algernon's sweetest pleasure to make her young hands
the ministers of good to others, and to drink at such times from the
rich glow of her angel countenance the purified selfishness of his
reward. And when after the divine joy of blessing, which, perhaps, the
youngest taste yet more vividly than their sires, she threw her arms
around his neck and thanked him with glad tears for the luxury he had
bestowed upon her, how could they, in that gushing overflow of heart,
help loving each other the more, or feeling that in that love there was
something which justified the excess?

Nor have we drawn with too exaggerating a pencil, nor, though Isabel's
mind was older than her years, extended that prematureness to her heart.
For, where we set the example of benevolence, and see that the example
is in nought corrupted, the milk of human kindness will flow not the
less readily from the youngest breast, and out of the mouths of babes
will come the wisdom of charity and love!

Ever since Mordaunt's arrival in town, he had sought out Wolfe's abode,
for the purpose of ministering to the poverty under which he rightly
conjectured that the republican laboured. But the habitation of one,
needy, distressed, seldom living long in one place, and far less
notorious of late than he had formerly been, was not easy to discover;
nor was it till after long and vain search that he ascertained the
retreat of his singular acquaintance. The day in which he effected this
object we shall have hereafter occasion to specify. Meanwhile we return
to Mr. Crauford.

CHAPTER LXXXII.

Plot on thy little hour, and skein on skein
Weave the vain mesh, in which thy subtle soul
Broods on its venom! Lo! behind, before,
Around thee, like an armament of cloud,
The black Fate labours onward--ANONYMOUS.

The dusk of a winter's evening gathered over a room in Crauford's house
in town, only relieved from the closing darkness