The Waverley novels, by Sir Walter Scott, complete in 12 vol., printed from the latest English ed., embracing the author's last corrections, prefaces & notes.

200 WAVERLEY NOVELS.
Then Alice, on her part, hardly knew even what was implied by the word
libertine or seducer. IIer mother had died early in the commencement of
the Civil War, and she had been bred up chiefly with her brother and cousin;
so that she had an unfearing and unsuspicious frankness of manner, upon
which Charles was not unwilling or unlikely to put a construction favourable
to his own views. Even Alice's love for her cousin —the first sensation
which awakens the most innocent and simple mind to feelings of shyness and
restraint towards the male sex in general —had failed to excite such an
alarm in her bosom. They were nearly related; and Everard, though young,
was several years her elder, and had, from her infancy, been an object of
her respect as well as of her affection. When this early and childish
intimacy ripened into youthful love, confessed and returned, still it differed
in some shades from the passion existing between lovers originally strangers
to each other, until their affections have been united in the ordinary course
of courtship. Their love was fonder, more familiar, more perfectly confidential; purer too, perhaps, and more free from starts of passionate violence,
or apprehensive jealousy.
The possibility that any one could have attempted to rival Everard in her
affection, was a circumstance which never occurred to Alice; and that this
singular Scottish lad, whom she laughed with on account of his humour,
and laughed at for his peculiarities, should be an object of danger or of
caution, never once entered her imagination. The sort of intimacy to which
she admitted Kerneguy was the same to which she would have received a
companion of her own sex, whose manners she did not always approve, but
whose society she found always amusing.
It was natural that the freedom of Alice Lee's conduct, which arose from
the most perfect indifference, should pass for something approaching to
encouragement in the royal gallant's apprehension, and that any resolutions
he had formed against being tempted to violate the hospitality of Woodstock,
should begin to totter, as opportunities for doing so became more frequent.
These opportunities were favoured by Albert's departure from Woodstock
the very day after his arrival. It had been agreed, in full council with
Charles and Rochecliffe, that he should go to visit his uncle Everard in the
county of Kent, and, by showing himself there, obviate any cause of suspicion which might arise from his residence at Woodstock, and remove any
pretext for disturbing his father's family on account of their harbouring one
who had been so lately in arms. He had also undertaken, at his own
great personal risk, to visit different points on the sea-coast, and ascertain
the security of different places for providing shipping for the King's leaving
England.
These circumstances were alike calculated to procure the King's safety,
and facilitate his escape. But Alice was thereby deprived of the presence
of her brother, who would have been her most watchful guardian, but who
had set down the King's light talk upon a former occasion to the gaiety of
his humour, and would have thought he had done his sovereign great
injustice, had he seriously suspected him of such a breach of hospitality as
a dishonourable pursuit of Alice would have implied.
There were, however, two of the household at Woodstock, who appeared
not so entirely reconciled with Louis Kerneguy or his purposes. The one
was Bevis, who seemed, from their first unfriendly rencontre, to have kept
up a pique against their new guest, which no advances on the part of Charles
were able to soften. If the page was by chance left alone with his young
mistress, Bevis chose always to be of the party; came close by Alice's chair,
and growled audibly when the gallant drew near her. " It is a pity," s'aid
the disguised Prince, " that your Bevis is not a bull-dog, that we might dub
him a roundhead at once- He is too handsome, too noble, too aristocratic,
to nourish those inhospitable prejudices against a poor houseless cavalier.
I am convinced the spirit of Pym or Hampden has transmigrated into the