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.

190 WAVERLEY NOVELS.
their most eminent beauties. Alice being a very young girl, who, in consequence of the Civil War, had been almost entirely educated in the country,
and often in great seclusion, it was certainly no wonder that she should
listen with willing ears, and a ready smile, to what the young gentleman,
their guest, and her brother's prot6g6, told with so much gaiety, and
mingled with such a shade of dangerous adventure, and occasionally of
serious reflection, as prevented the discourse from being regarded as merely
light and frivolous.
In a word, Sir Henry Lee laughed, Alice smiled from time to time, and
all were satisfied but Albert, who would himself, however, have been scarce
able to allege a sufficient reason for his depression of spirits.
The materials of breakfast were at last removed, under the active superintendence of the neat-handed Phoebe, who looked over her shoulder, and
lingered more than once, to listen to the fluent discourse of their new guest,
whom, on the preceding evening, she had, while in attendance at supper,
accounted one of the most stupid inmates to whom the gates of Woodstock
had been opened since the times of Fair Rosamond.
Louis Kerneguy then, when- they were left only four in the chamber,
without the interruption of domestics, and the successive bustle occasioned
by the discussion and removal of the morning meal, became apparently
sensible, that his friend and ostensible patron Albert ought not altogether
to be suffered to drop to leeward in the conversation, while he was himself
successfully engaging the attention of those members of his family to whom
he had become so recently known. He went behind his chair, therefore,
and, leaning on the back, said with a good-humoured tone, which made his
purpose entirely intelligible,"Either my good friend, guide, and patron, has heard worse news this
morning than he cares to tell us, or he must have stumbled over my tattered
jerkin and leathern hose, and acquired, by contact, the whole mass of
stupidity which I threw off last night with those most dolorous garments.
Cheer up, my dear Colonel Albert, if your affectionate page may presume
to say so - you are in company with those whose society, dear to strangers,
must be doubly so to you. Oddsfish, man, cheer up! I have seen you gay
on a biscuit and a mouthful of water-cresses - don't let your heart fail you
on Rhenish wine and venison."
" Dear Louis," said Albert, rousing himself into exertion, and somewhat
ashamed of his own silence, "I have slept worse, and been astir earlier than
you."
" Be it so," said his father; " yet I hold it no good excuse for your sullen
silence. Albert, you have met your sister and me, so long separated from
you, so anxious on your behalf, almost like mere strangers, ahd yet you are
returned safe to us, and you find us well."
" Returned indeed - but for safety, my dear father, that word must be a
stranger to us Worcester folk for some time. However, it is not my own
safety about which I am anxious."
" About whose, then, should you be anxious? - All accounts agree that
the King is safe out of the dogs' jaws."
"Not without some danger, though," muttered Louis, thinking of his
encounter with Bevis on the preceding evening.
" No, not without danger, indeed," echoed the knight; " but, as old Will
says, -'There's such divinity doth hedge a king,
That treason dares not peep at what it would.'
No, no - thank God, that's cared for; our Hope and Fortune is escaped,
so all news affirm, escaped from Bristol - if I thought otherwise, Albert, I
should be as sad as you are. For the rest of it, I have lurked a month in
this house when discovery would have been death, and that is no longer
since than after Lord Holland and the Duke of Buckingham's rising at