Explore "Ernest Maltravers Book I" by Edward Bulwer-lytton on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
"The guardian oak Mourn'd o'er the roof it shelter'd: the thick air Labour'd with doleful sounds. " ELLIOTT of /Sheffield/.
MANY days had passed, and Alice was still alone; but she had heard twice from Maltravers. The letters were short and hurried. One time his father was better, and there were hopes; another time, and it was not expected that he could survive the week. They were the first letters Alice had ever received from him. Those /first/ letters are an event in a girl's life -- in Alice's life they were a very melancholy one. Ernest did not ask her to write to him; in fact, he felt, at such an hour, a repugnance to disclose his real name, and receive the letters of clandestine love in the house in which a father lay in death. He might have given the feigned address he had previously assumed, at some distant post-town, where his person was not known. But, then, to obtain such letters, he must quit his father's side for hours. The thing was impossible. These difficulties Maltravers did not explain to Alice.