dolefully, dear
Miss Jane, as if you had already seen my passport to perdition signed
and sealed. You, at least, have done your whole duty,--have set all
the articles of orthodoxy, well-flavored and garnished, before me;
and, if I am finally lost, my spiritual starvation can never be
charged against you in the last balance-sheet. I am not ignorant of
the Bible, nor altogether unacquainted with the divers creeds that
spring from its pages as thick, as formidable, as ferocious, as the
harvest from the dragon's teeth; and, thanking you for all you have
taught me, I here undertake to pilot my own soul in this boiling,
bellowing sea of life. I doubt whether some of the charts you value
will be of any service in my voyage, or whether the beacons by which
you steer will save me from the reefs; but, nevertheless, I take the
wheel, and, if I wreck my soul,--why, then, I wreck it."

In the magic evening light, which touches all things with a rosy,
transitory glamour, the fresh young face with its daintily sculptured
lineaments seemed marvellously and surpassingly fair; but, like
_morbidezza_ marble, hopelessly fixed and chill, and might have served
for some image of Eve, when, standing on the boundary of eternal
beatitude, she daringly put up her slender womanly fingers to pluck
the fatal fruit. Her large, brilliant eyes followed the sinking sun
as steadily--as unblinkingly--as an eagle's; but the gleam that rayed
out was baleful, presaging storms, as infallibly as that sullen, lurid
light, which glares defiantly over helpless earth when to-day's sun
falls into the cloudy lap of to-morrow's tempest.

A heavy sigh struggled across Miss Jane's unsteady lips, as, removing
her glasses, she wiped her eyes, and said, slowly,--

"Yes; I am a stupid, unsuspecting old dolt; but I see it all now."

"My ultimate and irremediable ruin?"

"God forbid!"

Salome approached the arm-chair, and, stooping, looked intently at the
aged, wan face.

"What is it that you see? Miss Jane, when people stand, as you do,
upon the borders of two worlds, the Bygone fades,--the Beyond grows
distinct and luminous. Lend me your second sight, to decipher the
characters scrawled like fiery serpents over the pall that envelops
the future."

"I see nothing but the grim, unmistakeable fact that my little,
clinging, dependent child, has, without my knowledge, put away
childish things, and suddenly steps before me a wilful, irreverent,
graceless woman, as ea