ing
half-sarcastically at her. "My poor story, it is but too evident, will
never do for Godey or Graham! Only think of your falling asleep at what
I hoped the newspaper critics would pronounce a most brilliant,
powerful, imaginative, pathetic, and original winding up! Well, the
manuscript must serve to light lamps with;--if, indeed, being so imbued
with my gentle dulness, it is any longer capable of flame!"

"Me asleep! How can you say so?" answered Phoebe, as unconscious of the
crisis through which she had passed as an infant of the precipice to
the verge of which it has rolled. "No, no! I consider myself as having
been very attentive; and, though I don't remember the incidents quite
distinctly, yet I have an impression of a vast deal of trouble and
calamity,--so, no doubt, the story will prove exceedingly attractive."

By this time the sun had gone down, and was tinting the clouds towards
the zenith with those bright hues which are not seen there until some
time after sunset, and when the horizon has quite lost its richer
brilliancy. The moon, too, which had long been climbing overhead, and
unobtrusively melting its disk into the azure,--like an ambitious
demagogue, who hides his aspiring purpose by assuming the prevalent hue
of popular sentiment,--now began to shine out, broad and oval, in its
middle pathway. These silvery beams were already powerful enough to
change the character of the lingering daylight. They softened and
embellished the aspect of the old house; although the shadows fell
deeper into the angles of its many gables, and lay brooding under the
projecting story, and within the half-open door. With the lapse of
every moment, the garden grew more picturesque; the fruit-trees,
shrubbery, and flower-bushes had a dark obscurity among them. The
commonplace characteristics--which, at noontide, it seemed to have
taken a century of sordid life to accumulate--were now transfigured by
a charm of romance. A hundred mysterious years were whispering among
the leaves, whenever the slight sea-breeze found its way thither and
stirred them. Through the foliage that roofed the little summer-house
the moonlight flickered to and fro, and fell silvery white on the dark
floor, the table, and the circular bench, with a continual shift and
play, according as the chinks and wayward crevices among the twigs
admitted or shut out the glimmer.

So sweetly cool was the atmosphere, after all the feverish day, that
the sum