Good heavens! what shall I do with this unhappy child ?" "Yes, sir, I am very unhappy," said Alice, catching at the last words; and the tears rolled silently down her cheeks.
Maltravers never was more touched in his life.

Whatever thoughts of gallantry might have entered his young head, had he found Alice such as he might reasonably have expected, he now felt that there was a kind of sanctity in her ignorance; and his gratitude and kindly sentiment towards her took almost a brotherly aspect.--"You know, at least, what school is ?" he asked.
"Yes, I have talked with girls who go to school." "Would you like to go there, too ?" "Oh, no, sir, pray not!" "What should you like to do, then?
Speak out, child.

I owe you so much, that I should be too happy to make you comfortable and contented in your own way." "I should like to live with you, sir." Maltravers started, and half smiled, and coloured.

But looking on her eyes, which were fixed earnestly on his, there was so much artlessness in their soft, unconscious gaze, that he saw she was wholly ignorant of the interpretation that might be put upon so candid a confession.
I have said that Maltravers was a wild, enthusiastic, odd being--he was, in fact, full of strange German romance and metaphysical speculations.
He had once shut himself up for months to study astrology--and been even suspected of a serious hunt after the philosopher's stone; another time he had narrowly escaped with life and liberty from a frantic conspiracy of the young republicans of his university, in which, being bolder and madder than most of them, he had been an active ringleader; it was, indeed, some such folly that had compelled him to quit Germany sooner than himself or his parents desired.

He had nothing of the sober Englishman about him.