"I was not conscious, at least, of so
doing. And yet had we two sat down there by the wayside, or on that
English stile, which attracted your attention so much; had we sat down
there and thrown forth each his own dream, each his own knowledge, it
would have saved much that we must now forever regret. Are you even now
ready to confide wholly in me?"
"Alas," said Middleton, with a darkening brow, "there are many reasons,
at this moment, which did not exist then, to incline me to hold my peace.
And why has not Alice returned?--and what is your connection with her?"
"Let her answer for herself," said Rothermel; and he called her, shouting
through the silent house as if she were at the furthest chamber, and he
were in instant need: "Alice!--Alice!--Alice!--here is one who would know
what is the link between a maiden and her father!"
Amid the strange uproar which he made Alice came flying back, not in
alarm but only in haste, and put her hand within his own. "Hush, father,"
said she. "It is not time."
Here is an abstract of the plot of this story. The Middleton who
emigrated to America, more than two hundred years ago, had been a dark
and moody man; he came with a beautiful though not young woman for his
wife, and left a family behind him. In this family a certain heirloom had
been preserved, and with it a tradition that grew wilder and stranger
with the passing generations.
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