His nerves were shattered--those strong young nerves! He thought of his dead father when he first saw Cleveland; but when he glanced round the room prepared for him, and observed the care for his comfort, and the tender recollection of his most trifling peculiarities everywhere visible, Alice, the watchful, the humble, the loving, the lost Alice rose before him.
Surprised at his ward's delay, Cleveland entered the room; there sat Ernest still, his face buried in his hands.

Cleveland drew them gently away, and Maltravers sobbed like an infant.

It was an easy matter to bring tears to the eyes of that young man: a generous or a tender thought, an old song, the simplest air of music, sufficed for that touch of the mother's nature.

But the vehement and awful passion which belongs to manhood when thoroughly unmanned--this was the first time in which the relief of that stormy bitterness was known to him!.