"And it is always so, Sir Rohan," said Miriam, glancing at him a moment; "all summer long, all day, till the moon comes with her white sereneness, and swings it to and fro upon her queenly will. And in clear nights of sweet darkness how it must brood to itself, and what calm and hush come instead, and overshadow it with unwavering wings!"

Now and then a little shallop furrowed some cove, and again, from a misty distance a broad white sail broke into life, and tacking through the sunshine, buried itself from view in other firmaments.

"The sky is as worthy of study," said Sir Rohan. "Observe how the sea near the shore borrows its hues and changes, but further out and near the horizon, the sky borrows those of the sea. The beauty here, one could swear, is eternal. It is because we see it in the vast, the mass; the details are not so pleasant."

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"O, do you think so? Don't you find any beauty in those sea-anemones, and madrepores, and nettles with their fine scarlet and cool purple? I believe there are no such shades on your easel. Surely you've seen the sun-fish shining white and

lucid, like a ghost under water, and the dying colors of the mackerel along these shores."

"I did not think of those in speaking, and they are hardly what I mean. Perhaps it is a peculiar prejudice. In the midst of a thing, one can hardly form a correct idea of it. One needs almost the supremacy where may be seen the earth rocking her great tides now on the long coast-line of the Americas, now on all the broken gulfs and reaches from Africa to Thule. We must come up here some dark night, Miss Miriam, and see the briony," he added. "Redruth and his boys shall go out in their skiffs and whip the water till it is all aflame, and over the sea of fire you will look to have the heavens roll together like a scroll, and the last day dawn upon us."

"Don't send them, then. I will enjoy here a little longer. I don't care, yet, for that Last Day."

"Miriam," said St. Denys, "why do you persist in speaking so lightly?"

"I never thought, papa, — please forgive me," she answered, turning quickly toward him. "You won't be angry with me, frowning Puritan?"

But the indulgent smile was reply enough, and

her sole care dismissed, she returned to the enjoyment of her view, while St. Denys moved away to examine the garniture of the room.

"There was always a charm to me," said Sir Rohan, "in the myths of those old existences of ocean. Not Neptune, nor yet Nereids, and hardly Mermen, but Spirits of the Sea."

"Yes," answered Miriam," and I have frequently thought, if I were not a woman,—which is a state so much sweeter, you know,— that I would choose my metempsychosis to be into a water-mist, or any part of its great source."

"The sea is, nevertheless, foreign to me. It seems when sparkling, too much like a living thing rejoicing in the hurry and bustle of the great world."

"To me it is a Beneficence."

"What! with its caprice and treachery, its hollows of green darkness beneath the shining shield that sleeps in the sun, its rage and its laughter;remorseless, and yet, I can fancy, kind."

"All that is because you must float on it some calm noon, in the shallows, where the sunbeams bend into it and stain it a mort d'ore, as if yellow waves were rising and falling below the skin of

brown ripples, and every instant you might see some glorious creature come sliding up their under swell, all radiant with these Murillo tints, these browns and gold."

"Like yourself, Miss Miriam."

Thus speaking, the dialogue paused, and they continued for a time silent, together watching dim purple vapors that rose as Thetis rose to Achilles, -yet uncertainly, like smoke,-and then crept in silently over the land. For Miriam it was the incense of the ocean, but for Sir Rohan the palest and mournfulest of shadows fashioned herself from the ascending cloud to gaze at him, vanishing as it spread, and gathering form again in each succeeding one.

"We must wait till sunset," said Miriam; "how kind to bring me here!"

"You have an artist's eye," he rejoined; but looking at her to avoid the phantom, the relics of the old ribbon caught his own again. Miriam observed the glance, and immediately returned to the topic from which he had so successfully diverted her. "I wonder who wore it," she repeated. "May I open this closet, Sir Rohan ?"

Without waiting for his response, she turned

the rusty key quickly, and looked within. A gray cloak lay on the floor, and a cap, linen and once white, of some rustic pattern. Sir Rohan could neither move nor speak; too well he remembered the day in which he had thrown those garments here, too homely grown for their wearer's use; and now was this strange girl, — inquisitively raising them, throwing the cloak round her, setting the tattered cap gravely on her hair and holding it by its single string, was she their angel of resurrection?—to drag them into what judgment! What right had she to come and search his wounds with her curious fingers?-perhaps, he thought on the moment, to heal them with "sweet inspersion of fit balms."

Miriam had laughingly displayed herself to St. Denys, while Sir Rohan repeated another question which again and again had recurred; but quickly dropping them off, she exclaimed:

"And now I wonder what is in the other closet. There is no key to it; was it never opened?" "Never, to my knowledge."

"But can't you open it, Sir Rohan?"

There was nothing more which he dreaded to have her see; indeed, he did not suppose there