er book, and turned the leaves quickly, as
if she were reading with absorption. Presently Miss Camilla thought
she looked better. The soft lapping as of waves, of the Sabbath calm,
began again to oversteal her body and spirit. Visions of her peaceful
past seemed to confuse themselves with the present. "You--must stay
to tea, and--not--go home until--after sunset, when it is cooler,"
she murmured, drowsily, and with a dim conviction that this was a
Sabbath of long ago, that Lucina was a little girl in a short frock
and pantalettes; then in a few minutes her head drooped limply
towards her shoulder, and all her thoughts relaxed into soft
slumberous breaths.

When her aunt fell asleep, Lucina looked up, with that quick,
startled sense of loneliness which sometimes, in such case, comes to
a sensitive consciousness. "Aunt Camilla is asleep," she thought; she
turned to her book again. It was a copy of Mrs. Hemans's poems.
Somehow the vivid sentiment of the lines failed to please her, though
she, like her young lady friends, had heretofore loved them well.
Lucina read the first stanza of "The warrior bowed his crested head"
with no thrill of her maiden breast; then she turned to "The Bride of
the Greek Isles," and that was no better.

She arose, tiptoed softly over to the table, and examined the other
books thereon. There were volumes of the early English poets, an
album, and _A Souvenir of Friendship_, in red and gold, like the
Hemans. She opened the souvenir, and looked idly at the small,
exquisitely fine steel engravings, the alliterative verses, the tales
of sentiment beginning with long preambles couched in choicest
English. She shut the book with a little weary sigh, and looked
irresolutely at her sleeping aunt, then at the chair by the north
window.

Lucina felt none of the languor which is sometimes caused by extreme
heat. Instead, there was a fierce electric tension through all her
nerves. She was weary almost to death, the cool of this dark room was
unutterably grateful to her, yet she could not remain quiet. She had
left her parasol and hat on the hall-table. She stole out softly,
with scarcely the faintest rustle of skirts, tied on her hat, took
her parasol, and went through the house to the back-garden door.

Looking back, she saw the old servant-woman's broadly interrogatory
face in a vine-wreathed kitchen-window. "I am going out in the garden
a little while, 'Liza," said Lucina.

The garden was down-crush