My Sicilian Siren finally disappeared in a gloomy arched-way leading into the convent, and I returned to the hotel to dream of her until the morning sunshine once more bathed Conca D'Oro in splendor,--when I instituted a search for the name and residence of my inamorata. Six hours of enthusiastic investigation yielded me the coveted information, but imagine the profound despair in which I was plunged when I ascertained from her own smiling lips that she was a happy wife and the proud mother of two beautiful children. As she rose to present her swarthy husband, I bowed myself out and took refuge aboard ship. Here ends the recital of the first and last bit of romance that ever threw its rosy tinge over the quiet life of your staid and humble brother--Ulpian Grey, M.D." "Ah, my dear sailor boy, I am afraid thirty-five years of experience have rendered you too wary to be caught by such chaff as pretty girls sprinkle along your path! I should be glad to see your bride enter this door before I am carried out feet foremost to my final rest by Enoch's side." "Do not despair of me, dear Jane, for I am not exactly Methuselah's rival; and comfort yourself by recollecting that Lessing was forty years old when he first loved the only woman for whom he ever entertained an affection--his devoted Eva Koenig." Dr. Grey bent over his sister's easy-chair, and, taking her thin, sallow face tenderly in his soft palms, kissed the sunken cheeks--the wrinkled forehead; and then, laying her head gently back upon its cushions, entered his buggy and drove to his office. "Salome, what makes you look so moody? There are as many furrows on your brow as lines in a spider's web, and your lips are drawn in as if you had dined on green persimmons. Child, what is the matter?" Miss Jane lifted her spectacles from her nose, and eyed the orphan, anxiously. "I am very sorry to hear that 'Solitude' will be filled once more with people, and bustle, and din. It is the nearest point where we can reach the beach, and I have enjoyed many quiet strolls under its grand, old, solemn trees. If haunted at all, it is by Dryads and Hamadryads, and I like the babble of their leaves infinitely better than the strife of human tongues. Miss Jane, if I were only a pagan!" "I am not very sure that you are not," sighed the invalid. "Nor I. I have lost my place,--I am behind my time in this world by at least twenty centuries, and ought to have lived in the jovial age of fauns and satyrs, when groves were sacred for other reasons than the high price of wood,--when gods and goddesses were abundant as blackberries, and at the beck and call of every miserable wretch who chose to propitiate them by offering a flask of wine, a bunch of turnips, a litter of puppies, or a basket of olives. Hesiod and Homer understood human nature infinitely better than Paul and Luther." "Salome, you are growing shockingly irreverent and wicked."