With what a glow of happy yet subdued brightness the fair face was illuminated as he read! Agnes, who never had written a line, had a far more poetical mind than he had, who span them by the mile. Some mysterious tide seemed to rise in her veins as the words fell on her ears. It was all poetry--the situation, the scene, the voice, the wonderful incredible joy that had come to her beyond all expectation. She sat as in a dream, but it was a dream that was true; and the sunshiny sea stretched round them, and the soft air caressed them, and the soft ripples of water tinkled against the boat with silvery delicious sound, and the sky, unfathomable, awful, yet lovely, stretched over them. They were alone, absolutely free from all interruption, and the charmed hours flew. Oswald had provisioned the boat as he could, while she went to say good-by to her little charge, and to announce her intention of returning early to town. Agnes had eluded the kind Sisters, making a guilty pretence of having no time to see them. It was wrong, and a sense of guilt was in her heart; but the temptation was so great. He was her betrothed; there was no real _wrong_ in these few sweet hours together; and he had pleaded so anxiously, and would have been so unhappy, so much disappointed had she refused him. So nature won the day, as nature does so often, and this was the result. They ate a celestial meal together, biscuits and a little wine, which even in the happiness of the moment Oswald recognised as bad. They had floated out to the horn of the bay, and there lay moving softly with the gentle lapping of the water, wishing for no more--too happy in the moment to desire any change. At last, however, the sunset became too apparent, attracting their notice with its low lines of gold that came into their very eyes, low as they were upon the surface of the sea. Agnes had no watch, and Oswald would not look at his. ‘There is plenty of time,’ he said; ‘we shall get our train, too soon; let us have as much of this as we can;’ and Agnes assented timidly. ‘So long as we make sure of our train.’ ‘Perhaps there may never be such a day again,’ she added softly, under her breath. ‘Better days,’ darling--hundreds of them,’ he said, and then looking at her, began to repeat softly poetry which was very different from his own:-- It is a beauteous evening, calm and free, The holy time is quiet as a nun, Breathless with adoration: the bright sun Is sinking down in its tranquillity: The gentleness of heaven broods o’er the sea. The words hushed them, their pulses being toned to all manner of fantasies. The poetry was more real than the evening, and the evening more real than anything in earth besides. And thus time glided, and the water rippled, and the sun went down, and the evening melted away.