He could not find the opportunity he sought of questioning Edith. He asked her to dance—to promenade with him. She held up to him her tablets, with its lengthy list of names, and with her musical laugh cries, “Mercy, I pray you.” Charles turned off, with a bow he vainly strives to make as careless as her manner to him, and rejoins the Ashtons. Bel will not dance. She is somewhat provoked with Charles, whom she saw addressing Edith with more _empressement_ and _diffidence_ of manner than he exhibited toward herself, and hence the cloud. Their party leave early, and Lennard, restless and disquieted, wanders forth to the beach seeking company from the moaning and restless waves for his own troubled thoughts. Strains of melody are borne to him on that lonely shore from the scene of gay festivity, and he feels angry with Edith, whom his jealous imagination pictures reveling in the dance, for thus enjoying herself to his own misery. He sat down on the breakwater, watching the waves, and in his despairing mood wished for death, bethinking himself of the heartlessness of all womankind, and of Edith in particular. The stars were paling in the quiet sky when he betook himself homeward, worn out and exhausted. He passed the now deserted ball-room, “whose guests had fled,” and threw himself on his bed, to toss in dark dreams the few remaining hours that intervened between then and the time he could reasonably expect to see Edith. CHAPTER VI. What a glorious night! How dazzling look the shining sand, the glistening water, in the moon’s mellow rays which fall now so brightly upon them, and bathing in its effulgence those two youthful figures who are pacing to and fro on the ramparts of Fortress Monroe, nearest the bay. The lady was gazing on the ground, and he—into her lovely face. ’Twas Edith and Lennard! Vainly had he sought the interview during the day, but he could only see her the centre of an admiring circle, for Edith was decidedly the “star of beauty” and the “belle” amid the many who thronged the crowded saloons of the Hygeia Hotel. At last she promised to walk with him; and directly after tea had she gone with Charles to the garrison, and there, ’neath that brightly shining moon, had he told her of his fault—of his love. And Edith? She like a _true_ woman forgave him, for she loved _much_. At first, however, she made him writhe under her assumed inconstancy, until she saw his agony, and then, when almost in despair of regaining his lost treasure—her love—came her forgiveness, like the manna to the starving Israelites. Adding, by way of _coda_ to her musical words, the laughing exhortation, “To be a good boy, and she would—_try to love him_.”