Julia Kavanagh (1824-1877), _Daisy Burns_ (1853), volume 1, Tauchnitz edition Produced by Daniel FROMONT COLLECTION OF BRITISH AUTHORS. VOL. CCLXIII. DAISY BURNS BY JULIA KAVANAGH. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. TAUCHNITZ EDITION By the same Author, NATHALIE 2 vols. GRACE LEE 2 vols. RACHEL GRAY 1 vol. ADELE 2 vols. A SUMMER AND WINTER IN THE TWO SICILES 2 vols. SEVEN YEARS AND OTHER TALES 2 vols. FRENCH WOMEN OF LETTERS 1 vol. ENGLISH WOMEN OF LETTERS 1 vol. QUEEN MAB 2 vols. BEATRICE 2 vols. SYBIL'S SECOND LOVE DORA 2 vols. SILVIA 2 vols. BESSIE 2 vols. JOHN DORRIEN 2 vols. DAISY BURNS; A TALE BY JULIA KAVANAGH, AUTHOR OF "NATHALIE." _COPYRIGHT EDITION_. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. LEIPZIG BERNHARDT TAUCHNITZ 1853. JULIA KAVANAGH DAISY BURNS. CHAPTER I. As I sat alone this evening beneath the porch, the autumn wind rose and passed amongst the garden trees, then died away in the distance with a low murmuring. A strange thrill ran through me; the present with its aspects vanished; I saw no more the narrow though dearly loved limits which bound my home; the little garden, so calm and grey in the dewy twilight, was a wide and heaving sea; the low rustling of the leaves seemed the sound of the receding tide; the dim horizon became a circular line of light dividing wastes of waters from the solemn depths of vast skies, and I, no longer a woman sitting in my home within reach of a great city, but an idle, dreaming child, lay in the grassy nook at the end of our garden, whence I watched the ships on their distant path, or sent a wandering glance along the winding beach of sand and rock below. A moment effaced years, and my childhood, with its home, its joys, and its sorrows, passed before me like a thing of yesterday. Rock Cottage, as my father had called it, rose on a lonely cliff that looked forth to the sea. It was but a plain abode, with whitewashed walls, green shutters, and low roof, standing in the centre of a wild and neglected garden, overlooked by no other dwelling, and apparently far removed from every habitation. In front, a road, coming down from the low hills of Ryde, wound away to Leigh; behind, at the foot of a cliff, stretched the sea. The people of Leigh wondered "how Doctor Burns could live in a place so bleak and so lonely," and they knew not that to him its charms lay in that very solitude with its boundless horizon; in the murmurs of the wind that ever swept around his dwelling; in the aspect of that sublime sea which daily spread beneath his view, serene or terrible, but ever beautiful.