sails graduating in hue from extreme whiteness to reddish brown, the
varying actual colours varied again in a double degree by the rays of
the declining sun.

Presently the distant bell from the boat was heard, warning the
passengers to embark. This was followed by a lively air from the harps
and violins on board, their tones, as they arose, becoming intermingled
with, though not marred by, the brush of the waves when their crests
rolled over--at the point where the check of the shallows was first
felt--and then thinned away up the slope of pebbles and sand.

She turned her face landward and strained her eyes to discern, if
possible, some sign of Owen's return. Nothing was visible save the
strikingly brilliant, still landscape. The wide concave which lay at the
back of the hill in this direction was blazing with the western light,
adding an orange tint to the vivid purple of the heather, now at the
very climax of bloom, and free from the slightest touch of the invidious
brown that so soon creeps into its shades. The light so intensified the
colours that they seemed to stand above the surface of the earth and
float in mid-air like an exhalation of red. In the minor valleys,
between the hillocks and ridges which diversified the contour of the
basin, but did not disturb its general sweep, she marked brakes of tall,
heavy-stemmed ferns, five or six feet high, in a brilliant light-green
dress--a broad riband of them with the path in their midst winding like
a stream along the little ravine that reached to the foot of the hill,
and delivered up the path to its grassy area. Among the ferns grew
holly bushes deeper in tint than any shadow about them, whilst the whole
surface of the scene was dimpled with small conical pits, and here and
there were round ponds, now dry, and half overgrown with rushes.

The last bell of the steamer rang. Cytherea had forgotten herself, and
what she was looking for. In a fever of distress lest Owen should
be left behind, she gathered up in her hand the corners of her
handkerchief, containing specimens of the shells, plants, and fossils
which the locality produced, started off to the sands, and mingled with
the knots of visitors there congregated from other interesting points
around; from the inn, the cottages, and hired conveyances that had
returned from short drives inland. They all went aboard by the primitive
plan of a narrow plank on two wheels--the women being assisted by a
rope. Cytherea l