“Yes; I am a little tired.” It would seem as if Lucy too were tired, for she also was silent, and sat watching the changing landscape with a thoughtful gaze. But upon her silence Laurence Desmond made no remark. She had, indeed, been silent and thoughtful all the day, and yet not unhappy. Unhappy!--he loved her! She had been telling herself that fact over and over again, with ever-delightful iteration. He loved her! To know that it was so constituted an all-sufficient happiness. The water-journey with one pair of sculls between Chertsey and Hampton is a long one, and many are the locks which arrest the swift progress of the voyager, and often echoes the cry of “Lo-o-óck!” over the quiet waters; but so bright and changing is the landscape, so soothing the influence of the atmosphere, that the voyager must be dull indeed who finds the way too long. The changing banks shifted past Mrs. Jerningham like pictures in a dream. A profound silence had fallen upon the boat. The rower dipped his oars with a measured mechanical motion, and his grave face might have been the countenance of Charon himself, conveying a boatload of shadows to the Rhadamanthine shore. To Emily it seemed as if they were indeed voyagers on some mystic, symbolical river, rather than on the friendly breast of Thames. The end of her life had come. What had she to do but die? All that she held dear--the one sustaining influence of her weak soul, the very keystone of the edifice of her life--this she was to lose. And what then? Beyond this point she could not look. That a dismal duty, a bitter sacrificial act, must be performed by her, she knew. But that by the doing of that act she might possibly attain peace, consolation, release from a long and harassing bondage, she could not foresee. “I will give him up,” she said to herself; “soon--to-night. It is like the bitter medicine they made me take sometimes when I was a child. I cannot take it too soon.” And then she looked at Lucy, and her lip curled ever so little as she scrutinized the fair but not altogether perfect face. She measured her charms against those of her happier rival, and told herself that all the advantage was on her own side. And yet, and yet--this fair-faced girl was dearer to him, by an infinite degree, than she who had loved him so many years. While silence still held the voyagers as by a spell, the rain came splashing heavily down, and the perils of the journey began. They had not yet reached Sunbury, and some miles of winding water lay between them and Hampton. “I am afraid we are in for it,” Laurence said. “We had better land at Sunbury, and get back in a fly.”