glittering like basilisks, she looked at neither of them.

She slowly raised her left hand, she withdrew a ruby ring from it, and
dropped the ring on the sand between the two.

She turned on her heel, and was gone as she had come, without a word
spoken.

They looked at one another, stupefied at first; after a considerable
pause the stern old woman stooped, picked up the ring, and, in spite of
a certain chill that the young woman's majestic sorrow had given her,
said, placing it on her own finger, "This is for your wife!!!"

"It will be for my coffin, then," said her son, so coldly, so bitterly
and so solemnly that the mother's heart began to quake.

"Mother," said he calmly, "forgive me, and accept your son's arm.

"I will, my son!"

"We are alone in the world now, mother."

Mrs. Gatty had triumphed, but she felt the price of her triumph more
than her victory. It had been done in one moment, that for which she
had so labored, and it seemed that had she spoken long ago to Christie,
instead of Charles, it could have been done at any moment.

Strange to say, for some minutes the mother felt more uneasy than her
son; she was a woman, after all, and could measure a woman's heart, and
she saw how deep the wound she had given one she was now compelled to
respect.

Charles, on the other hand, had been so harassed backward and forward,
that to him certainty was relief; it was a great matter to be no longer
called upon to decide. His mother had said, "Part," and now Christie had
said, "Part"; at least the affair was taken out of his hands, and his
first feeling was a heavenly calm.

In this state he continued for about a mile, and he spoke to his mother
about his art, sole object now; but after the first mile he became
silent, _distrait;_ Christie's pale face, her mortified air, when her
generous offer was coldly repulsed, filled him with remorse. Finally,
unable to bear it, yet not daring to speak, he broke suddenly from his
mother without a word, and ran wildly back to Newhaven; he looked back
only once, and there stood his mother, pale, with her hands piteously
lifted toward heaven.

By the time he got to Newhaven he was as sorry for her as for Christie.
He ran to the house of the latter; Flucker and Jean told him she was
on the beach. He ran to the beach! he did not see her at first, but,
presently looking back, he saw her, at the edge of the boats, in company
with a gentleman in a boating-dress. He looked--coul