y excuses; then afraid that she was exciting
suspicion, changed the subject in great haste, and tried to make Eveleen
come indoors, telling her she would tire herself to death, and vexed
by her cousin's protestations that the fresh cool air did her good.
Besides, Eveleen was looking with attentive eyes at another pair
who were slowly walking up and down the shady walk that bordered the
grass-plot, and now and then standing still to enjoy the subdued silence
of the summer evening, and the few distant sounds that marked the
perfect lull.

'How calm--how beautiful!' murmured Amabel.

'It only wants the low solemn surge and ripple of the tide, and its dash
on the rocks,' said Guy. 'If ever there was music, it is there; but it
makes one think what the ear must be that can take in the whole of those
harmonics.'

'How I should like to hear it!'

'And see it. O Amy! to show you the sunny sea,--the sense of breadth
and vastness in that pale clear horizon line, and the infinite number of
fields of light between you and it,--and the free feelings as you stand
on some high crag, the wind blowing in your face across half the globe,
and the waves dashing far below! I am growing quite thirsty for the
sea.'

'You know, papa said something about your taking your reading-party to
Redclyffe.'

'True, but I don't think Markham would like it, and it would put old
Mrs. Drew into no end of a fuss.'

'Not like to have you?'

'O yes, I should be all very well; but if they heard I was bringing
three or four men with me, they would think them regular wild beasts.
They would be in an awful fright. Besides, it is so long since I have
been at home, that I don't altogether fancy going there till I settle
there for good.'

'Ah! it will be sad going there at first.'

'And it has not been my duty yet.'

'But you will be glad when you get there?'

'Sha'n't I? I wonder if any one has been to shoot the rabbits on the
shag rock. They must have quite overrun it by this time. But I don't
like the notion of the first day. There is not only the great change,
but a stranger at the vicarage.'

'Do you know anything about the new clergyman? I believe Mrs. Ashford is
a connection of Lady Thorndale's?'

'Yes; Thorndale calls them pattern people, and I have no doubt they will
do great good in the parish. I am sure we want some enlightenment, for
we are a most primitive race, and something beyond Jenny Robinson's dame
school would do us no harm.'