pecially _now_."

"Ah yes; now that I have lost Gerty. Ah, siss! you nor any one else in
the wide world can ever tell how dearly I loved, and still love, that
faithless girl."

"And she, Jack, will break her heart that she cannot marry you. That is
what I came to tell you, Hush, Jack, hush! I know all you would say;
but you do not understand women, and least of all do you understand
Gerty. _I_ do, Jack; yes, I do."

"Sissy," said the young man earnestly, "the cruellest thing mortals can
be guilty of is to arouse the dying to feeling again, when the
bitterness of death is almost past. _You_ would not be so unkind. You
did not come here to raise hopes in my heart that would be as certainly
doomed to disappointment as that blooming flowers shall fade."

"No, Jack, no. I only came because I wanted to pour balm, not hope, into
your bleeding heart. I came to tell you all Gerty Keane's story, that
you may not think the very, very worst of her. Listen, Jack."

The young man sat in silence for quite a long time after his sister had
finished the story of Gerty Keane, and of her fondness for her lonesome,
friendless, and unlovable father; sat gazing out upon the moonlit
landscape, but seeing nothing; sat while the nightingale's lilt,
plaintive and low or mournfully sweet, bubbled tremulously from the
grove, but hearing nothing. And in the shadow of the old-fashioned
arm-chair snuggled Flora, her eyes resting lovingly, wistfully on her
brother's sad but handsome face.

At last he sighed and turned towards her. "Flora," he said, "I'm going
to try to forgive Gerty. I'm going to live in hope I one day may be able
to forgive. Just tell her from me I wish her that happiness with another
which fate has decreed it shall never be my joy to impart. Tell her--but
there! no more, Flora, no more."

"Spoken like my own brother; spoken like a true and brave Mackenzie.
Kiss me, Jack. I'm glad I came."

He held her hand a moment there, the moonbeams shining on both. "But,
Flora," he said, "you too have a little story."

"Ye--es, Jack."

Her head drooped like a lily.

"And, siss, it--is connected with--don't tremble so, Flora--with Tom?"

The moonbeams shone on Jack alone now; his sister had stolen into the
shadow to hide her blushes.

"Good-night again," she whispered, and so went gliding away like a
beautiful ghost.

CHAPTER VIII.

ON BOARD THE SAUCY "TONNERAIRE."

"O'er the wide wave-swelling ocean,
Tossed