In comparison with the grim destiny Mrs. Orme had so systematically planned the hideous "death in life," upon which she was deliberately preparing to enter, a leap over that wall into the placid sea beneath would have been welcome as heaven to tortured Dives; but despite the loathing and horror of her sickened and outraged soul, she contemplated her future lot as calmly as St. Lawrence the heating of his gridiron. Over the beautiful blue bay, where the moon had laid her pavement of gold, floated a low sweet song, a simple barcarolle, that came from a group of happy souls in a small boat "Che cosi vual que pesci Fiduline! L'anel que me casca Nella bella mia barca Nella bella se ne va. Fiduline." Approaching the shore, the ruddy light burning at one end of the boat showed its occupants; a handsome athletic young fisherman, and his pretty childish wife, hushing her baby in her arms, with a slow cradle-like movement that kept time to her husband's song. "Te daro cento scudi Fiduline. Sta borsa riccama Por la bella sua barca Colla bella se ne va Fidulilalo, Fiduline." Springing ashore he secured the boat, and held out his arms for the sleeping bud that contained in its folded petals all their domestic hopes; and as the star-eyed young mother kissed it lightly and laid it in its father's arms, the happy pair walked away, leaving the echo of their gay musical chatter lingering on the air. To the woman who watched and listened from the parapet above, it seemed a panel rosy, dewy, fresh from Tempe, set as a fresco upon the walls of Hell, to heighten the horrors of the doomed. From her chalice fate had stolen all that was sweet and rapturous in wifehood and motherhood, substituting hemlock; and as the vision of her own fair child was recalled by the sleeping babe of the Italian fisherman, she suffered a keen pang in the consciousness that those tender features of her innocent daughter reproduced vividly the image of the man who had blackened her life. The face in Regina's portrait was so thoroughly Laurance in outline and Laurance in colour, that the mother had covered it with a thick veil, unable to meet the deep violet eyes that she had learned to hate in Rene Laurance and his son. Yet for the sake of that daughter, whose gaze she shunned, she was about to step down into flames far fiercer than those of Tophet, silently immolating all that remained of her life. Although she neither turned her head nor removed her eyes from the sea, she knew that the end was at hand. For one instant her heart seemed to cease beating, then with a keen spasm of pain slowly resumed its leaden labour. The erect, graceful, manly figure at her side bent down, and the grizzled moustache touched her forehead.