ous.

Gwynplaine started up, stretched his hands on high, and said, "I come."

He strode across the deck, towards the side of the vessel, as if
beckoned by a vision. A smile came upon his face, such as Dea had just
worn. One step more.

"I am coming, Dea; I am coming," he said.

There was no bulwark, the abyss of waters was before him; he strode into
it, and fell. The night was dark and heavy, the water deep. He
disappeared calmly and silently. None saw nor heard him. The ship sailed
on, and the river flowed out to the sea.

* * * * *

ELIZABETH INCHBALD

A Simple Story

The maiden name of Mrs. Inchbald, actress, novelist,
dramatist, and society favourite, was Elizabeth Simpson, and
she was the daughter of a farmer living near Bury St. Edmunds,
where she was born on October 15, 1753. At the age of eighteen
she ran away to London, under the influence of romantic
expectations, which were realised by a sudden marriage with
Joseph Inchbald, the actor. After seventeen years on the
stage, without attaining conspicuous success, Mrs. Inchbald
retired, and devoted herself to the writing of novels and
plays and the collection of theatrical literature. Her first
novel, written in 1791, was "A Simple Story." With "Nature and
Art," a tale written later, it has kept a place among the
fiction that is reprinted for successive generations. In later
years Mrs. Inchbald lived quietly on her savings, retaining a
flattering social position by her beauty and cleverness. She
died on August 1, 1821.

_I.--The Priest's Ward_

Dorriforth, bred at St. Omer's in all the scholastic rigour of that
college, was, by education and the solemn vows of his order, a Roman
Catholic priest. He was about thirty, and refusing to shelter himself
from the temptations of the layman by the walls of a cloister, but
finding that shelter in his own prudence, justice, fortitude, and
temperance, had lived in London near five years, when a gentleman with
whom he had contracted a most sincere friendship died, and left him the
sole guardian of his daughter, who was then eighteen.

It is in this place proper to remark that Mr. Milner was a member of the
Church of Rome, but his daughter had been educated in her dead mother's
religion at a boarding-school for Protestants, whence she had returned
with her little heart employed in all the