My Lady is once more a fisherman's daughter, upon the banks of Blea. The river that flows beside her father's door is almost as salt as the sea itself, and twice a day the sea itself comes up and fills the creeks, and sets afloat the boats and colliers that lie sideways on the oozy beach. When it retires, she longs to be taken with it, for ere that tide can reach the open sea, it must needs pass by the port of Bleamouth, where her lover Ralph dwells. Young as she is, she has been wooed by others, and they better matches than this roving sailor, who, although he has saved a little money, does not know, says her father, how to keep it; and when that is gone, how will he keep himself save by going to sea again; much more, then, how will he keep wife Lucy and a household? But these wise sayings are naught in Lucy's ears, in which love whispers always its smooth prophecies, and Ralph's rich laugh dispels the old man's forebodings, or plays upon them as though they were the very strings of mirth. As handsome and stout-hearted a lad he is as ever was fitted to make his own way through the world; able enough to thrust to left and right all jostling compeers, and by no means one to lack or to let those dear to him lack, while bread is to be got by sweat of brow. A smile comes o'er my Lady's face, and makes it young again, the while she dreams; for now she sees his signals in the coming boat, and now himself, and now he leaps ashore, and clasps her with his stalwart arm, and now her fingers play with the dark locks that curl above his tanned and manly brow. 'Tis more than half a lifetime back--but she knows not that--and the colour comes again to the wan cheek as though it were a maiden's, and once more love awakens in her widowed heart. He speaks; but ere his tongue can shape the words, a sense of doubt begins to perplex and pain her. She is a girl, and yet a woman in the vale of years; a fisher's daughter though a lady bred, with all the circumstances of rank and wealth about her; the voice is her lover's voice, and yet sounds strangely like another's; she is on the borderland 'twixt waking and sleeping, where, as in a dissolving view, the coming and the passing pictures interlace and exchange features, and the Dream and the Reality struggle together for life. Some one is speaking, however, that is certain, and the voice, as no woman can doubt, is tremulous and love-laden. “And yet, Rose--for I may call you Rose, may I not?--beautiful as these pictures are, I do not think they are more exquisite than those which you have painted yourself.”