As Mary Lee grew up, she came necessarily under the view of young Ashley, who, as he called for the boat, noticed the young maiden sitting on the beach, throwing the glances of her blue eye on the mirror of the silvery Solway; a fair type of her own nature, though she was unconscious of the similitude—beautiful in its soft and playful undulations, but terrible in its rage. “Have we got a mermaid sitting here?” said Robin, on a day, to a companion. “How like she is to the pictured fancy of that creature of imagination! She has only to let her hair fall over her shoulders, and send forth one of those plaintive; seductive cries which, like the singing of the Sicilian virgins mentioned by Ovid, tempt poor passengers ashore to their destruction, to realize the type in its greatest perfection. Well, by the way, I think I would have risked myself in the arms of those famous sirens, who are represented to have been so cruel as to kill their lovers—at least I would trust myself with that fair one. What thinkest thou of my courage?” “Indeed, Robin,” replied his friend, George Henley, a neighbouring laird’s son, “I fear the danger which Ovid represents as being all on the side of the sailors, who listened to these virgins, would, in your case, be transferred to the charmer; and yet they say that Mary Lee, with all her beauty and apparent mildness, has all the siren about her but the fledged tail; and, if the feathers are there awanting, I fear the deficiency is supplied by a sting.” The hint thrown out by Henley increased the desire of Robin to get acquainted with Mary; for such is the fate of those who are consigned to the intoxications of vice, that they indulge in morbid desires, which, as in the case of the gourmand, produce in their gratifications all the effects of poison. “A fury for a lover!” he ejaculated. “Good! I have had too many soft, breaking hearts. Their very softness has palled upon my appetite; and, as the lover of gourmandize requires stimulants to whip up the jaded powers of his overwrought stomach, my wearied heart longs for a spice of piquant amativeness, to resuscitate its flagging energies.”