She wept plentifully, but her tears were not all of bitterness.

She sat passively still, and without reply, while he explained to her, with many an interjection, the circumstances which had placed discord between their families; for hitherto, all that she had known was, that Master Peveril, belonging to the household of the great Countess or Lady of Man, must observe some precautions in visiting a relative of the unhappy Colonel Christian.

But, when Julian concluded his tale with the warmest protestations of eternal love, "My poor father!" she burst forth, "and was this to be the end of all thy precautions ?--This, that the son of him that disgraced and banished thee, should hold such language to your daughter ?" "You err, Alice, you err," cried Julian eagerly.

"That I hold this language--that the son of Peveril addresses thus the daughter of your father--that he thus kneels to you for forgiveness of injuries which passed when we were both infants, shows the will of Heaven, that in our affection should be quenched the discord of our parents.

What else could lead those who parted infants on the hills of Derbyshire, to meet thus in the valleys of Man ?" Alice, however new such a scene, and, above all, her own emotions, might be, was highly endowed with that exquisite delicacy which is imprinted in the female heart, to give warning of the slightest approach to impropriety in a situation like hers.
"Rise, rise, Master Peveril," she said; "do not do yourself and me this injustice--we have done both wrong--very wrong; but my fault was done in ignorance.