into something quite different from the wooden sort of being into which I had gradually been hardening. With the dull routine of my office-life were broken up also many of the cynical ways of thinking into which I had fallen. I felt as if the springs of youth were not quite dried up. The real secret of this improvement was in the eager hope I entertained that the real criminals were soon to be brought to light, and the Argylls made to realize the cruel wrong they had done me. Already, in imagination, I had accepted their regret and forgiven them their injustice. It seemed as if every breath of the sea-breeze, and every bound of the sparkling waves, swept away a portion of the bitterness which had mingled with my nature. The old poetry of existence began to warm my chilled pulses and to flush the morning and evening sky. For hours most melancholy, yet most delicious, I would climb to some lonely post of observation--for I was a perfect sailor among the ropes--and there, where the blue of heaven bent down to meet the blue of the ocean, making an azure round in which floated only the ethereal clouds, all the sweetness of the past would come floating to me in fragments, like the odor of flowers blown from some beloved and distant shore. The most vivid picture in my sea-dreams, was that of the parlor of the old Argyll mansion, as I had seen it last, on the night of my excursion to the oak-tree. Mary, in the rosy bloom of young womanhood, the ideal of beauty to the eye of a young and appreciative man, whose standard of female perfection was high, while his sensitiveness to its charm was intense--Mary, reading her book beneath the rich light of the chandelier--I loved to recall the vision, except always that it was marred by that shadow of James coming too soon between me and the light. But that flitting vision of Eleanor was as if a saint had looked down at me out of its shrine. I saw, then, that she was no longer of this world, as far as her hopes were concerned. My once strong passion had been slowly changing into reverence; I had grieved with her with a grief utterly self-abnegating, and when I saw that her despair had worked itself up to a patient and aspiring resignation, I now felt less of pity and more of affectionate reverence. I would have sacrificed my life for her peace of heart; but I no longer thought of Eleanor Argyll as of a woman to be approached by the loves of this world. Still, as I mused in my sea-reveries, I believed myself to have exhausted my wealth of feeling upon this now dead and hallowed love. I had given my first offering at the feet of a woman, peerless amid her compeers, and since she had chosen before me, I must needs live solitary, too honored by having worshiped a woman like Eleanor, to ever be satisfied with a second choice. For Mary I felt a keen admiration, and a brother's fondest love. The noble words she had spoken in my favor had thrilled me with gratitude, and increased the tenderness I had always cherished