Pauline stood by, distressed, yet relieved, as her mistress put her two thin hands to her face and the great tears rolled through the slender fingers--the weeping might agitate for a time, but it would do good in the end. For three weeks Margery had lain between life and death. Her overwrought mind and body had given way suddenly beneath the shock of Lady Enid’s death; she had been so tired, so shaken by her former trouble and despair, that the excitement of her marriage, the supreme agony when she realized that the sweet friend and sister had passed away, were too much for her, and she sunk beneath the weight. Nugent, Earl of Court, sat and watched beside her couch. He saw the struggle that took place between the terrible fever and Margery’s delicate yet healthy constitution, not daring to give words to his fears. She knew nothing during those days--her lustrous eyes met his unmeaningly. She was his wife, the treasured bequest of his dying sister; but all his devotion, his tenderness, the greatness of his new passion for her, was unknown--her mind was a blank. When the fever passed away she grew better in body, but the vacant look lingered in her eyes, and her memory had not returned. The doctors spoke hopefully, and ordered a change of air, and so they removed her to the seaside, and waited for the moment to come when the dark cloud which obscured her mind would lift, and she would be the Margery of old. For a week there was no improvement, but on this day nature seemed to wake from its trance, and, when Pauline spoke, as she had spoken many times before, the veil fell, and Margery’s memory came back to her. Presently the tears stopped, her hands fell to her side, and she raised herself feebly into a sitting position. She was not in bed, but dressed in a loose, white silk gown, resting on a couch. She looked around, critically taking in the costly appointments of the room. Pauline watched her curiously, and noted each sign of pleasure that flitted across the lovely, pale face. “It is beautiful,” Margery declared, after a time; “and the sea is there”--pointing to the large bay window through which the sunlight streamed. “I will look at it, Pauline; I have never seen the sea.” The maid passed her arm round the slender figure, and guided it to the window, pushing forward a large, luxurious chair as they reached it, into which Margery sunk with a sigh of fatigue. She closed her eyes for one minute, then opened them on a picture of such new, such wondrous, startling beauty that her pulses thrilled with the momentary delight. It was the sea-- “The sea, the sea, the open sea-- The blue, the fresh, the ever free!” Everything was forgotten in that moment’s supreme pleasure. She had conjured up visions of the ocean, fed by pictures she had seen; but no canvas could ever portray the boundless dignity, the majesty, the rippling beauty of the sea as it appeared to Margery on that October afternoon.