"Ay," answered Philosophy and Pride, those wise dupes that are always so solemn and always so taken in; "but what is virtue without trial ?" And now every evening, when the windows were closed, and the hearth burnt clear, while the winds stormed, and the rain beat without, a lithe and lovely shape hovered about the student's chamber; and his wild songs were sung by a voice which Nature had made even sweeter than his own.
Alice's talent for music was indeed surprising; enthusiastic and quick as he himself was in all he undertook, Maltravers was amazed at her rapid progress.

He soon taught her to play by ear; and Maltravers could not but notice that her hand, always delicate in shape, had lost the rude colour and roughness of labour.

He thought of that pretty hand more often than he ought to have done, and guided it over the keys when it could have found its way very well without him.
On coming to the cottage he had directed the old servant to provide suitable and proper clothes for Alice; but now that she was admitted "to sit with the gentleman," the crone had the sense, without waiting for new orders, to buy the "pretty young woman" garments, still indeed simple, but of better materials and less rustic fashion; and Alice's redundant tresses were now carefully arranged into orderly and glossy curls, and even the texture was no longer the same; and happiness and health bloomed on her downy cheeks, and smiled from the dewy lips, which never quite closed over the fresh white teeth, except when she was sad--but that seemed never, now she was not banished from Maltravers.
To say nothing of the unusual grace and delicacy of Alice's form and features, there is nearly always something of Nature's own gentility in very young women (except, indeed, when they get together and fall a-giggling); it shames us men to see how much sooner they are polished into conventional shape than our rough, masculine angles.

A vulgar boy requires Heaven knows what assiduity to make three steps--I do not say like a gentleman, but like a body that has a soul in it; but give the least advantage of society or tuition to a peasant girl, and a hundred to one but she will glide into refinement before the boy can make a bow without upsetting the table.

There is sentiment in all women, and sentiment gives delicacy to thought, and tact to manner.