"Something has happened since you sang the 'Three Fishers' and sat looking out of the window an hour ago. Your face has changed. What is it, Edna? Can't you trust me?" "Yes. I received a letter which troubles me. It announces the feeble health of a dear and noble friend, who writes begging me to come to him, and nurse and remain with him as long as he lives. You need not start and shiver so--I am not going. I shall not leave you; but it distresses me to know that he has asked an impossible thing. Now you can understand why I did not wish to be alone." She leaned her cheek down on the boy's head, and both stood silent, looking over the wide heaving waste of immemorial waters. A glowing orange sky overarched an orange ocean, which slowly became in turn ruby, and rose, and violet, and pearly gray, powdered with a few dim stars. As the rising waves broke along the beach, the stiffening breeze bent the spray till it streamed like silvery plumes; and the low musical murmur swelled to a monotonous moan, that seemed to come over the darkening waters like wails of the lost from some far, far "isles of the sea." Awed by the mysterious solemnity which ever broods over the ocean, Felix slowly repeated that dirge of Tennyson's, "Break, break, break!" and when he commenced the last verse, Edna's voice, low and quivering, joined his. Out of the eastern sea, up through gauzy cloud-bars, rose the moon, round, radiant, almost full, shaking off the mists, burnishing the waves with a ghostly lustre. The wind rose and fluttered Edna's scarlet scarf like a pirate's pennon, and the low moan became a deep, sullen, ominous mutter. "There will be a gale before daylight; it is brewing down yonder at the southwest. The wind has veered since we came out. There! did you notice what a savage snort there was in that last gust?" Felix pointed to the distant water-line, where now and then a bluish flash of lightning showed the teeth of the storm raging far away under southern constellations, extinguishing for a time the golden flame of Canopus. "Yes, you must go in, Felix. I ought not to have kept you out so long." Reluctantly she turned from the beach, and they had proceeded but a few yards in the direction of the house when they met Mrs. Andrews and her guest. "Felix, my son! Too late, too late for you! Come in with me. Miss Earl, as you are so fond of the beach, I hope you will show Sir Roger all its beauties. I commit him to your care." She went toward the house with her boy, and as Sir Roger took Edna's hand and bent forward, looking eagerly into her face, she saw a pained and startled expression cross his own. "Miss Earl, did you receive a letter from me written immediately after the perusal of your book?" "Yes, Sir Roger, and your cordial congratulations and flattering opinion were, I assure you, exceedingly gratifying, especially as you were among the first who found anything in it to praise."