riends who formerly admired her, agree
now that she looks worn and aged. The more merciful judgment of others
remarks, with equal truth, that her eyes, her hair, her simple grace
and grandeur of movement have lost but little of their olden charms. The
truth lies, as usual, between the two extremes. In spite of sorrow and
suffering, Mrs. Crayford is the beautiful Mrs. Crayford still.

The delicious silence of the hour is softly disturbed by the voice of
the younger lady in the garden.

"Go to the piano, Lucy. It is a night for music. Play something that is
worthy of the night."

Mrs. Crayford looks round at the clock on the mantelpiece.

"My dear Clara, it is past twelve! Remember what the doctor told you.
You ought to have been in bed an hour ago."

"Half an hour, Lucy--give me half an hour more! Look at the moonlight
on the sea. Is it possible to go to bed on such a night as this? Play
something, Lucy--something spiritual and divine."

Earnestly pleading with her friend, Clara advances toward the window.
She too has suffered under the wasting influences of suspense. Her face
has lost its youthful freshness; no delicate flush of color rises on
it when she speaks. The soft gray eyes which won Frank's heart in the
by-gone time are sadly altered now. In repose, they have a dimmed and
wearied look. In action, they are wild and restless, like eyes suddenly
wakened from startling dreams. Robed in white--her soft brown hair
hanging loosely over her shoulders--there is something weird and
ghost-like in the girl, as she moves nearer and nearer to the window in
the full light of the moon--pleading for music that shall be worthy of
the mystery and the beauty of the night.

"Will you come in here if I play to you?" Mrs. Crayford asks. "It is a
risk, my love, to be out so long in the night air."

"No! no! I like it. Play--while I am out here looking at the sea. It
quiets me; it comforts me; it does me good."

She glides back, ghost-like, over the lawn. Mrs. Crayford rises, and
puts down the volume that she has been reading. It is a record of
explorations in the Arctic seas. The time has gone by when the two
lonely women could take an interest in subjects not connected with their
own anxieties. Now, when hope is fast failing them--now, when their last
news of the _Wanderer_ and the _Sea-mew_ is news that is more than two
years old--they can read of nothing, they can think of nothing, but
dangers and discoveries, losses and