And thus the pleasant act of bathing was interrupted in the very middle, for how could there be any more splashing and tumbling and mermaiding with this terrible loss weighing upon Isabella’s heart? She would not know how to face her mother; and as for Ballennie, might he not think that she who would not take better care of a love-token had no great love on her part to be betokened by a ring or anything else. The very sea which a moment before was as beautiful as a blushing bride holding out her arms for the embrace of the bridegroom, became as hateful to her as a Fury, and, hastening to the bank with tears in her eyes, which, of course, could not be seen, she began to dress. Mary, who seemed to participate in her young mistress’s sorrow, commenced the same operation; but when the clothes were on what was to be done? The tide was ebbing, and an hour, or at most two, would discover the channel at the spot where the unlucky slip was made, but to remain all that time would produce uneasiness at home, and there appeared to be nothing for it but for the young lady to go to Edinburgh, and leave Mary to wait for the ebbing of the tide, and make a search among the shingle for the valuable article. A plan accordingly carried out. Mary certainly awaited the ebb, and did make a search among the gravel, but whether that search was conducted in that assiduous way followed by those who are lighted in their travel by the Lamp of Hope, it is not for us at present to say. Certain at least it is that Mary did not seem very greatly disappointed at her failure in not finding Isabella’s precious love-token, for which want of feeling we do not require to go very deep into Mary’s breast, or any other body’s breast, seeing she was a woman, and had a lover of her own, even George Gallie, as good as Ballennie any day. True, he had never given her a ruby ring; though, as for that, he would if he could, and if he couldn’t how could he? So Mary was on a par with Isabella in that matter; still, we confess, she might have searched more carefully, unless, indeed, we are to be so ungallant as to believe that she had in her mind some foregone secret conclusion that the ring was not there to be found. Nor, what is almost as strange, did Mary take up her basket and commence her journey homeward in that saddened way which belongs to deep disappointment. Nay, we are not sure but that the words of the old song of her whose ring had been stolen by a mermaid, were conned by Mary to herself as she trudged homewards,-- “And sair she moiled, and sair she toiled, To find the ring lost in the sea, And still the thought within her wrought That she would never married be.”