autiful evening. A clear moonlight made it as brilliant
outside on the lawn as the lights made the house within. There was a
band of music stationed under the shrubbery, and those who chose could
dance. Those who were more romantic wandered away down the shaded walks,
and listened to the dripping of the fountain.

Lawrence and Isabella returned from a walk through the grounds, and
stopped a moment on the terrace in front of the house. Just then a dark
cloud appeared in the sky, threatening the moon. The wind, too, was
rising, and made a motion among the leaves of the trees.

"Do you remember," asked Lawrence, "that child's story of the Fisherman
and his Wife? how the fisherman went down to the sea-shore, and cried
out,--

'O man of the sea,
Come listen to me!
For Alice, my wife,
The plague of my life,
Has sent me to beg a boon of thee!'

The sea muttered and roared;--do you remember? There was always something
impressive to me in the descriptions, in the old story, of the changes
in the sea, and of the tempest that rose up, more and more fearful, as
the fisherman's wife grew more ambitious and more and more grasping in
her desires, each time that the fisherman went down to the sea-shore. I
believe my first impression of the sea came from that. The coming on of
a storm is always associated with it. I always fancy that it is bringing
with it something beside the tempest,--that there is something ruinous
behind it."

"That is more fanciful than you usually are," said Isabella; "but, alas!
I cannot remember your story, for I never read it."

"That is where your education and Celia's was fearfully neglected," said
Lawrence; "you were not brought up on fairy stories and Mother Goose.
You have not needed the first, as Celia has; but Mother Goose would have
given a tone to your way of thinking, that is certainly wanting."

A little while afterwards, Isabella stood upon the balcony steps leading
from the drawing-room. Otho was with her. The threatening clouds had
driven almost every one into the house. There was distant thunder and
lightning; but through the cloud-rifts, now and then, the moonlight
streamed down. Isabella and Otho had been talking earnestly,--so
earnestly, that they were quite unobservant of the coming storm, of the
strange lurid light that hung around.

"It is strange that this should take place here!" said Isabella,--"that
just here I should learn that you love me! Strange that my