righten him. Be
sure and not mention it, dear Mrs. Harrington."

"Oh, of course not,--just as you like. But what a handsome man that was!
North--North? Who can he be? I have never met him!"

"Whoever he is, he has saved our lives," said Elsie.

"Yes, yes! But, dear Miss Fuller, how oddly you acted!"

"Do put up your veil, Bessie," added Elsie.

Elizabeth obeyed, showing her face, pale and tremulous still.

"I was very much frightened," she said; "I think my side was hurt a
little--that was why I fainted."

She made no other answer to their wondering questions, and they drove
rapidly back to Mrs. Harrington's house.

The stranger stood upon the porch of the hotel, looking after the
carriage so long as it was in sight, with a strange, inexplicable
expression upon his handsome face.

After a time, he roused himself, mounted his horse, and rode slowly back
to the city.

CHAPTER IV.

HIGH FESTIVAL AT PINEY COVE.

On the shores of Long Island, where the ocean heaves in its wildest and
most crystalline surf, a small cove had broken itself into the slopes of
an irregular hill, after generations of beating storms and crumbling
earth, taking a crescent shape, and forming one of the most picturesque
bits of landscape to be found along the coast. The two points or
promontories that stretched their green arms to the ocean, were clothed
with thickly growing white pines, scattered with chestnuts, and a few
grand old oaks. The country sloped beautifully down to this bright sheet
of water, and swept around it in rocky points and broken groves, giving
glimpses of rich grass-land, more luxuriantly cultivated than is usual
to that portion of the island. As you looked on the scene from the
water, a house was visible on the hillside, and came in full view as the
shore was approached. It was a noble stone mansion, old as the hills,
people were used to say, and solid as their foundations. The house had
been a stately residence before the Revolution, and, without an
earthquake or a ton of powder, would remain such for a century to come.

Whatever the body of the house had been in the good old times, when
ornament was little thought of, it was now rendered picturesque by lofty
towers, and additional wings with oriel windows and carved balconies in
one direction; while the other wing clasped in a conservatory, of which
nothing could be seen from the distance but wave upon wave of rolling
crystal emerald, tinted like the oc