"And yet, Catherine, you lament his bloom!"
"No, Mr. Athelstone, it is the cause of its loss, that fills me with regret."
"But I do;" cried Alice, "I lament the loss of all that was my former Louis! his light, ethereal step,--his look of radiance,--and his voice of such soul-entrancing gladness!--But now, his movements are slow; his cheek is wan and faded; and his voice is so full of pity, I could weep whenever he speaks."
"Give him time, my child," returned the Pastor; "the hand of recent sorrow is yet heavy on him. He must yield his tribute to Nature. Suffer him now, and Nature will reward us with an ample restoration of all his delighting powers."
Louis's entrance checked the reply of Alice. And now he was welcomed to the dear domestic breakfast table, with smiles, instead of the tears which on the foregoing night, lingered in every eye until the hour of retirement.
During the meal Mr. Athelstone made the conversation cheerful, by turning it on general subjects, and particularly enlarging on Sir Anthony's improved manner of life. He had thrown aside all his old, reprehensible habits, and preferring the occasional society of his niece Cornelia, (who, in consequence of the gout flying about him, was now with him at Cheltenham,) his days passed in the equable current of domestic comfort and social respectability.
While the Pastor pursued this discourse, and Louis listened to him with evident pleasure, Alice contemplated her cousin's face and figure; and at last wondered within herself, how she could have thought him so greatly altered. If any change had taken place in his figure, it unquestionably was to its advantage. A certain martial dignity was added to its former pliant grace. It was now a form where _every god had seemed to have set his seal_ to shape the perfect man;--before, it was that of a beautiful youth,--the dawn of this checquered, but resplendent day!
If this were the case, it must then be his black garments, which had at first struck her with some melancholy idea of a change in his person as well as face! she scanned that face with equal scrutiny. To her poetic fancy, his still matchless smile played under the soft moon-light of his now pensive eyes, like the shadowed, yet scintillating wave of her native stream.