In the magic evening light, which touches all things with a rosy, transitory glamour, the fresh young face with its daintily sculptured lineaments seemed marvellously and surpassingly fair; but, like _morbidezza_ marble, hopelessly fixed and chill, and might have served for some image of Eve, when, standing on the boundary of eternal beatitude, she daringly put up her slender womanly fingers to pluck the fatal fruit. Her large, brilliant eyes followed the sinking sun as steadily--as unblinkingly--as an eagle's; but the gleam that rayed out was baleful, presaging storms, as infallibly as that sullen, lurid light, which glares defiantly over helpless earth when to-day's sun falls into the cloudy lap of to-morrow's tempest. A heavy sigh struggled across Miss Jane's unsteady lips, as, removing her glasses, she wiped her eyes, and said, slowly,-- "Yes; I am a stupid, unsuspecting old dolt; but I see it all now." "My ultimate and irremediable ruin?" "God forbid!" Salome approached the arm-chair, and, stooping, looked intently at the aged, wan face. "What is it that you see? Miss Jane, when people stand, as you do, upon the borders of two worlds, the Bygone fades,--the Beyond grows distinct and luminous. Lend me your second sight, to decipher the characters scrawled like fiery serpents over the pall that envelops the future." "I see nothing but the grim, unmistakeable fact that my little, clinging, dependent child, has, without my knowledge, put away childish things, and suddenly steps before me a wilful, irreverent, graceless woman, as eager to challenge the decrees of the Lord as was complaining Job before the breath of the whirlwind smote and awed him. Some day, Salome, that same voice that startled the old man of Uz will make you bend and tremble and shiver like that acacia yonder, which the wind is toying with before it snaps asunder. When that time comes the clover will feed bees above my gray head, but I trust my soul will be near enough to the great white throne to pray God to have mercy on your wretched spirit, and bring you safely to that blessed haven whither you can never pilot yourself." Nervous excitement gave unwonted strength to the feeble limbs; and, grasping her crutches, Miss Jane limped into her own room and closed the door after her. For some moments the girl stood looking out over the lawn, where fading sunshine and deepening shadow made fitful _chiaroscuro_ along the primrose-paved aisles that stretched under the elm arches,--then, raising her fingers as if tracing lines on the soft, gold-dusted atmosphere that surrounded her, she muttered doggedly,-- "Yes; I am at sea! But, if God is just, Miss Jane and I will yet shake hands on that calm, surgeless, crystal sea, shining before the throne. So, now I take the helm and put the head of my precious charge before the wind, and only the Almighty can foresee the result. In His mercy I put my trust. So be it.