re we awake it is there, and before we are conscious
of aught else we are conscious of the grief which weighs heaviest on our
soul. Thus it was with Anna Vyvyan: the awaking to life brought with it
the pain in all its intensity, although she lay there on the cold
stones, her clothing drenched through and through, bareheaded, her hair
matted together with the sea water, bruised and cut and faint from
exhaustion, still the present physical suffering seemed by comparison
nothing to her. Everything was buried in the sorrow of the past, the
sorrow that she had lived through, but had not left behind.

CHAPTER II.

The stately homes of England
How beautiful they stand,
Amidst their tall ancestral trees,
O'er all the pleasant land!
The deer across their greensward bound
Through shade and sunny gleam,
And the swan glides past them with the sound
Of some rejoicing stream.

The merry homes of England--
Around their hearths by night,
What gladsome looks of household love
Meet in the ruddy light!
There women's voice flows forth in song
Or childhood's tale is told
Or lips move tunefully along
Some glorious page of old.

The blessed homes of England,
How softly on their bowers,
Is laid the holy quietness
That breathes from Sabbath hours
Solemn, yet sweet, the church bell's chime
Floats through their woods at morn,
All other sounds at that still time
Of breeze and leaf are born.

Miss Vivyan was the daughter of an officer of high rank in the navy of
Queen Elizabeth, who lost his life in the royal service while his little
girl Anna was still very young. His valor had gained for him many medals
and yet more substantial honors in the form of valuable grants of land
from Her Majesty. This property, added to the family inheritance of
Anna's mother, who was a lady of old and noble race, left both the widow
and her child in very affluent circumstances. The young widow, handsome
and possessed of brilliant talents, attracted many suitors for her hand;
but her heart lay far down beneath the sea with her dead husband, and
she resolved to devote her love and her life to the care of her child.
She accordingly retired to an old manor house on the borders of Wales,
which had descended to her through many generations. The great stone
halls and corridors, the long, low rooms and the little diamond-shaped
window