"What a delightful evening this is!" said Lady Arranmore to Ellen Ravensworth, as their boat, whose wing-like sails not a breath filled, was rowed slowly up clear Leman by the measured splash of the oars, over which bent two stout Switzers. "How exquisite is every tint of mountain, lake, and cloud! it was surely on a sister evening to this that Lord Byron penned those beautiful lines in Childe Harold? Listen, Miss Ravensworth," continued the young Marchioness, as she opened a handsomely bound pocket edition of that poem, and in a sweet clear voice read the following stanza:-- "It is the hush of night, and all between Thy margin and the mountains, dusk, yet clear, Mellowed and mingling, yet distinctly seen, Save darkened Jura, whose capt heights appear Precipitously steep; and drawing near, There breathes a living fragrance, from the shore, Of flowers yet fresh with childhood; on the ear Drops the light drip of the suspended oar, Or chirps the grasshopper one good-night carol more." _Childe Harold_, Canto iii., Stanza lxxxvi. Ellen listened abstractedly without reply, as if her mind was too filled with beauty to speak, and preferred silent adoration. The slight felucca-like craft, in which our young friends glided over the glassy surface of the dark-blue lake, was now some miles from Geneva, whose white palaces rose clearly above the waters, and were doubled in apparent height by their perfect reflection below. To the left frowned the black chain of Jura, and on the right beyond the Saleve--dear to Ellen from its wonderful resemblance to the Salisbury crags of modern Athens--rose, cloud-like, "the monarch of mountains," throned high above the many aiguilles that stood like courtiers around their king. The summits of these Alps were distinctly reflected in the indigo depths beneath their boat, though a distance of fifty miles severed the admirers from their mirror.