character of nervousness, that when he exultingly told of the rapid discharge of his own pistol, as having been the only means of averting the fate of the doomed, she could not refrain from rising suddenly in the boat, and putting her hand to her side, with the shrinking movement of one who had been suddenly wounded. While in the act of rising she had drawn the cloak, with which, like the other ladies, she was provided, more closely over her shoulders--Sambo seemed to have caught some new idea from this action, for furtively touching Henry Grantham, who sat immediately before him, and on the right of Miss Montgomerie, he leaned forward and whispered a few sentences in his ear. Meanwhile Miss Montgomerie was not a little rallied on the extreme susceptibility which had led her as it were to identify herself with the scene. Gerald remarked that on recovering her presence of mind, she at first looked as if she fancied herself the subject of sarcasm, and would have resented the liberty; but finding there was nothing painted in the manner of those who addressed her, finished by joining, yet with some appearance of constraint, in the laugh against herself. "I confess," she said coloring, "that the strange incident which Mr. Grantham has related, and which he has so well described, has caused me to be guilty of a ridiculous emotion. I am not usually startled into the expression of strong feeling, but there was so much to excite and surprise in his catastrophe that I could not avoid in some measure identifying myself with the scene." "Nay, Miss Montgomerie," remarked Julia D'Egville, "there can be no reason why such emotion should be either disavowed or termed ridiculous. For my part, I own that I cannot sufficiently express my horror of the wretch who could thus deliberately attempt the life of another. How lucky was it, Gerald, that you arrived at that critical moment; but have you no idea--not the slightest--of the person of the assassin or of his intended victim?" "Not the slightest--the disguise of the person was too effectual to be penetrated, and the face I had not once an opportunity of beholding. "Yet," observed Miss Montgomerie, "from your previous description of the figure, it is by no means a matter of certainty that it was not a woman you pursued, instead of a man--or, was there anything to betray the vacillation of purpose which would naturally attend one of our sex in an enterprise of the kind." "What, a woman engage in so unnatural a deed!" remarked Henry Grantham--"surely, Miss Montgomerie," for he always spoke rather _at_ than _to_ her--"cannot seek to maintain a supposition so opposed to all probability--neither will she be so unjust towards herself as to admit the existence of such monstrous guilt in the heart of another of her sex."