At the rising of the sun, the jubilant matin songs of the myriads of birds that swarmed the Isle awakened her. She arose, and knelt, and offered up her morning worship, then came out of her chamber, and when she was joined by Madeline, who with a bathing dress hung over arm, attended her young lady down to the crystal creek, where for half an hour she bathed and swan about like a Nereid in the limpid stream. Then resuming her ordinary dress, she returned to the house where Julius Luxmore would be waiting with two horses to take her on her morning ride. After a gallop of three-quarters of an hour around the beach, she would return with a fine appetite for breakfast. After the morning meal was over, she would retire to her own parlor, the front room on the right hand of the passage on the first floor, where she would occupy the long forenoon in reading, drawing, and practicing music on the piano or guitar, until one o’clock—when she would go out for an hour’s walk in the shady groves before returning to dinner at two. After the midday meal she would take her needle-work and go into her uncle’s cool sitting-room, where she would sit and sew, while the Monsieur Henri reclined in his arm-chair, and Julius Luxmore read to them both from Milton, Shakspeare, Paley, or some other of the English poets or essayists, until the old man fell asleep. They would then leave him to enjoy his nap, and go down to the beach, enter the smack, hoist a sail, and take a run of five or six miles up and down the Bay; after which they would return to an early tea. When the evening repast was over, Etoile would take her guitar and join her uncle and Julius Luxmore on the vine-shaded piazza, where they would sit, and she would sing and play for them, until the hour of retirement. At ten everybody on the Island was in bed. Thus I have given you as a sample one day of Etoile’s life. A sufficiently happy programme for a single day; but when day after day, week after week, and month after month, with little variety, passed in this manner, it is not surprising that it should become monotonous and wearisome, and that, notwithstanding all the means and appliances of happiness with which she was surrounded, the beautiful Etoile should sigh for the unknown world beyond, which her imagination painted in such brilliant hues. And when Mr. Luxmore, after one of his visits to the main land, would return, bringing some rare exotic, some beautiful bird, some exquisite picture or sweet-toned lute, she would receive them with a smile of joy and gratitude that would be quickly followed by a deep sigh of aspiration for that world beyond, whence all these beautiful things came! For if every thing that came from that distant, shore was so charming, how much more charming must the shore itself be, she reasoned. And thus time and circumstances increased her longing to see the mainland.