bestow it; in his love there would yet
be silent reservations.

"Mr. Raleigh," said Marguerite, "did you ever love my mother?"

"Once I thought I did."

"And now?"

"Whereas I was blind, now I see."

"Listen! Mrs. Purcell is singing in the drawing-room."

"Through lonely summers, where the roses blow
Unsought, and shed their tangled sweets,
I sit and hark, or in the starry dark,
Or when the night-rain on the hill-side beats.

"Alone! But when the eternal summers flow
And refluent drown in song all moan,
Thy soul shall waste for its delight, and haste
Through heaven. And I shall be no more alone!"

"What a voice she sings with to-night!" said Marguerite. "It is stripped
of all its ornamental disguises,--so slender, yet piercing!"

"A needle can pain like a sword-blade. There goes the moon in clouds.
Hark! What was that? A cry?" And he started to his feet.

"No," she said,--"it is only the wild music of the lake, the voices of
shadows calling to shadows."

"There it is again, but fainter; the wind carries it the other way."

"It is a desolating wind."

"And the light on the land is like that of eclipse!"

He stooped and raised her and folded her in his arms.

"I have a strange, terrible sense of calamity, _Mignonne!_" he said.
"Let it strike, so it spare you!"

"Nothing can harm us," she replied, clinging to him. "Even death cannot
come between us!"

"Marguerite!" said Mr. Laudersdale, entering, "where is your mother?"

"She went down to the lake, Sir."

"She cannot possibly have gone out upon it!"

"Oh, she frequently does; and so do we all."

"But this high wind has risen since. The flaws"----And he went out
hastily.

There flashed on Mr. Raleigh's mental sight a vision of the moonlit
lake, one instant. A boat, upon its side, bending its white sail down
the depths; a lifted arm wound in the fatal rope; a woman's form,
hanging by that arm, sustained in the dark transparent tide of death;
the wild wind blowing over, the moonlight glazing all. For that instant
he remained still as stone; the next, he strode away, and dashed down
to the lake-shore. It seemed as if his vision yet continued. They had
already put out in boats; he was too late. He waited in ghastly suspense
till they rowed home with their slow freight. And then his arm supported
the head with its long, uncoiling, heavy hair, and lifted the limbs,
round which the drapery flowed like a pall on sculpture, till another