Kiss me straight on the brows and part!
Again! again, my heart, my heart!
What are we waiting for, you and I?
A pleading look--a stifled cry!
Good-bye for ever---"

Horror! what was that? A lithe swift serpent of fire twisting
venomously through the dark heavens! Zara raised her arms, looked up,
smiled, and fell--senseless! With such appalling suddenness that we had
scarcely recovered from the blinding terror of that forked
lightning-flash, when we saw her lying prone before us on the balcony
where one instant before she had stood erect and smiling! With
exclamations of alarm and distress we lifted and bore her within the
room and laid her tenderly down upon the nearest sofa. At that moment a
deafening, terrific thunder-clap--one only--as if a huge bombshell had
burst in the air, shook the ground under our feet; and then with a
swish and swirl of long pent-up and suddenly-released wrath, down came
the rain.

Amy's voice died away in a last "Good-bye!" and she rushed from the
piano, with pale face and trembling lips, gasping out:

"What has happened? What is the matter?"

"She has been stunned by a lightning-flash," I said, trying to speak
calmly, while I loosened Zara's dress and sprinkled her forehead with
eau-de-Cologne from a scent-bottle Mrs. Challoner had handed to me.
"She will recover in a few minutes."

But my limbs trembled under me, and tears, in spite of myself, forced
their way into my eyes.

Heliobas meanwhile--his countenance white and set as a marble
mask--shut the window fiercely, pulled down the blind, and drew the
heavy silken curtains close. He then approached his sister's senseless
form, and, taking her wrist tenderly, felt for her pulse. We looked on
in the deepest anxiety. The Challoner girls shivered with terror, and
began to cry. Mrs. Everard, with more self-possession, dipped a
handkerchief in cold water and laid it on Zara's temples; but no faint
sigh parted the set yet smiling lips--no sign of life was visible. All
this while the rain swept down in gusty torrents and rattled furiously
against the window-panes; while the wind, no longer a moan, had risen
into a shriek, as of baffled yet vindictive anger. At last Heliobas
spoke.

"I should be glad of other medical skill than my own," he said, in low
and stifled accents. "This may be a long fainting-fit."

Mr. Challoner at once proffered his services.

"I'll go for you anywhere you like," he said cheerily; "and I think m