efully to charm her back to cheerfulness, she faded month
by month. It was not till the end was drawing near that she was told of
the death of Lord Earlshope, and her last journey was to Saltcoats to
see the wild waste of waters that were his grave.

There came a night when she beckoned her husband to her and asked him in
a scarcely audible voice: "Tom, am I going to die?" And when in answer
he could only look at her sad eyes, she said: "I am not sorry. It will
be better for you and everyone; and you will not blame me because I
could not make your life more happy for you--it was all a misfortune, my
coming to this country."

"Coquette, Coquette," he said, beside himself with grief, "if you are
going to die, I will go with you, too--see, I will hold your hand, and
when the gates are open, I will not let you go--I will go with you,
Coquette."

Scarce half an hour afterwards the gates opened, and she silently passed
through, while a low cry broke from his lips: "So near--so near! And I
cannot go with her, too!"

* * * * *

R. D. BLACKMORE

Lorna Doone

Richard Doddridge Blackmore, one of the most famous English
novelists of the last generation, was born on June 9, 1825, at
Longworth, Berkshire, of which parish his father was vicar.
Like John Ridd, the hero of "Lorna Doone," he was educated at
Blundell's School, Tiverton. An early marriage with a
beautiful Portuguese girl, and a long illness, forced him to
live for some years in hard and narrow circumstances. Happily,
in 1860, he came, unexpectedly, into a considerable fortune.
Settling down at Teddington, he divided his life between the
delights of gardening and the pleasures of literature;
cultivating his vines, peaches, nectarines, pears, and
strawberries, and writing, first, sensational stories, and
then historical romances. In 1869, with his third attempt in
fiction, "Lorna Doone: A Romance of Exmoor," he suddenly
became famous as a novelist, and acted as the pioneer of the
new romantic movement in fiction which R. L. Stevenson and
other brilliant writers afterwards carried on. Lorna Doone is
the most famous of his heroines, but in "Cradock Nowell," a
fine tale of the New Forest, in "Alice Lorraine," a story of
the South Downs, and in "The Maid of Sker," he has depicted
womanly types equal in charm to Lorna. He died a