aw me in the yacht, only once; she knew me; she
was afraid. Then she said, 'Perhaps I still love you,--a little; I do
not know; I am in despair; take me from this home I hate.' We sailed
that day in the small boat for Narragansett,--I know not where. She
hardly looked up or spoke; but for me, I cared for nothing since she
was with me. When the storm came, she was frightened, and said, 'It is a
retribution.' I said, 'You shall never go back.' She never did. Here she
is. You cannot take her from me."

Once on board the light-ship, she had been assigned the captain's
state-room, while Antoine watched at the door. She seemed to shrink from
him whenever he went to speak to her, he owned, but she answered kindly
and gently, begging to be left alone. When at last the vessel parted her
moorings, he persuaded Emilia to come on deck and be lashed to the mast,
where she sat without complaint.

Who can fathom the thoughts of that bewildered child, as she sat amid
the spray and the howling of the blast, while the doomed vessel drifted
on with her to the shore? Did all the error and sorrow of her life pass
distinctly before her? Or did the roar of the surf lull her into quiet,
like the unconscious kindness of wild creatures that toss and bewilder
their prey into unconsciousness ere they harm it? None can tell. Death
answers no questions; it only makes them needless.

The morning brought to the scene John Lambert, just arrived by land from
New York.

The passion of John Lambert for his wife was of that kind which ennobles
while it lasts, but which rarely outlasts marriage. A man of such
uncongenial mould will love an enchanting woman with a mad, absorbing
passion, where self-sacrifice is so mingled with selfishness that the
two emotions seem one; he will hungrily yearn to possess her, to call
her by his own name, to hold her in his arms, to kill any one else who
claims her. But when she is once his wife, and his arms hold a body
without a soul,--no soul at least for him,--then her image is almost
inevitably profaned, and the passion which began too high for earth ends
far too low for heaven. Let now death change that form to marble, and
instantly it resumes its virgin holiness; though the presence of life
did not sanctify, its departure does. It is only the true lover to whom
the breathing form is as sacred as the breathless.

That ideality of nature which love had developed in this man, and which
had already drooped a little dur