Before leaving the hospitable roof of General Curzon beneath which I tarried for several days awaiting the tardy sailing of the packet-steamer Kosciusko, bound for New York, circumstances determined me to leave in the hands of my host a desk which I had intended to carry with me, and which contained most of my treasures. First among these, indisputably, in intrinsic value were my diamonds “sole remnant of a past magnificence;” but the miniatures of my father and mother, and Mabel, in the cases of which locks of twisted hair brown, and black, and golden, and gray were contained and combined (dear, imperishable memorials of vitality in most instances when all the rest was dust and ashes), and the early letters of my parents, together with the carefully-kept diary I had written at Beauseincourt, ranked beyond these even in my estimation.

The cause of this deposit of valuables was simply owing to the unstable lock of my trunk, the condition of which was detected too late to have it repaired before sailing. Madame Curzon had suggested to me the unsafe nature of such custody for objects of price, if, indeed, I possessed such at all. I told her then of my diamonds, and it was agreed between us that these, at least, had better be deposited in the bank of her husband, who would bring them to me himself a few months later and on reflection I concluded to add my desk, pictures, and papers, to my more substantial treasures. These, at least, I felt assured no accident should throw into the hands of Bainrothe.

On my way to the ship I left the carriage for a moment, in pursuance with this idea, and, followed by King, the bearer of my large and weighty desk, entered the banking-house of my host, and was shown at once, by attentive clerks, to his peculiar sanctum. I told him my errand in a few words.

“Keep it until called for, unless you hear from me in the interval,” I had said in allusion to my deposit, for he acknowledged the chances were slight of his leaving home until the following year, notwithstanding Madame Curzon’s convictions.

“Called for by whom?” he asked, calmly.

“By Miriam Monfort in person or her order,” I replied, laughingly, “This is a mystery that, by-and-by, shall be explained to you.”

“I understand something of that already,” he rejoined. “Marion has been whispering to the reeds, you know, or Madame Curzon, the same thing nearly; but let us be earnest, as your time is short, and mine precious to-day. Life is uncertain, and, young and strong as you are, or seem to be, you cannot foresee one hour even of the future, or of your own existence. Suppose Miriam Monfort neither comes in person nor sends her order for its restoration what, then, is to become of this treasure-chest of hers?”

“You shall keep it then,” I replied, unhesitatingly, “until my little sister reaches her majority, and cause it to be placed in her own hands, none other or, stay, let her have it on the day before her marriage, should this occur earlier than the time mentioned, or when she reaches her eighteenth year in any case; but, above all things, be careful.”

“So many conflicting directions confuse and mystify me, I confess. Come, let me write down your wishes, and the matter can be arranged formally, which is always best in any case. There, I think I have the gist of your idea,” he said a few moments later, as he pushed over to me a slip of paper to read and sign, which done, I shook hands with him cordially, preparing to go. “But your receipt you have forgotten to take it up!”

“O General Curzon! the whole proceeding seems so ominous,” I said, turning back at the door to receive the proffered scrap, which, in another moment, dropped from my nerveless fingers, while these, clasped over my streaming eyes, forgot their office.

“My dear young lady,” he remonstrated, “I am shocked. What can have occurred to impress you thus? Not this mere routine of affairs, surely? Duncan, a glass of water here for Miss Monfort.”

“I do not know, I am sure, why I should be so weak for such a trifle,” I said, after a few swallows of ice-water had somewhat restored my equilibrium; “but I do feel very dismally about this voyage have done so ever since I left Beauseincourt. This is the last straw on the camel’s back, believe me, General Curzon. You must not reproach yourself in the least nor me; and now let me bid you farewell once more, perhaps eternally!”

These words of mine were remembered later in a very different spirit from that in which they were then received (one of incredulous compassion) remembered as are ever the last utterances of the doomed, whether innocent or guilty, in solemn awe and reverential tenderness, not unmingled with a superstitious faith in presentiment.

“Why, you look bluer than your very obvious veil, bluer than your invisible school-marmish stockings, bluer than the skies, or a blue bag, or Madame de Stael’s ‘Corinne,’ or Byron’s ‘dark-blue ocean,’” said Major Favraud, as he assisted me again into the carriage, where Dr. Durand and Marion awaited me, for, as I have said, we were now on our way to the vessel which was to bear me and my destinies forever from that lovely Southern land in which I had seen and suffered so much.

Dr. Durand looked serious at the sight of my woful aspect, and Marion mutely proffered her vinaigrette, gratefully accepted, as was the good doctor’s compassionate silence; but, as usual, Favraud, after having once gotten fairly under weigh, ran on. “What is the use of bewailing the inevitable?” he pursued. “We have all seen your penchant for Curzon, and his for you, for three days past; but Octavia is as tough as lignum-vitae, I regret to assure you, my dear Miss Harz, and your chance is as blue as your spirits, or the flames of snap-dragon, or Marion’s eyes. You will have to just put up with the captain, I fear, for even the doctor there is in harness for life. Southern women, you know, proverbially survive their husbands; and, as the suttee is out of fashion, they sometimes have to marry Yankees as a dernier ressort of desperation! Of course, there are occasional sad exceptions” looking grave for a moment, and glancing at the black hat-band on the Panama hat he was nursing on his knees, so as to let the breeze blow through his silky, silver-streaked black hair “but but in short, why will you all look so doleful? Isn’t it bad enough to feel so?”

“The loveliest fade earliest, we all know,” and the tears were in his honest, frivolous eyes, dashed away in the next moment as he exclaimed, eagerly, “Why, there goes the Lamarque equipage, as I live! I had forgotten all about it. The pleasantest woman in Savannah, young or old, is to be your compagnon de voyage, Miss Harz, and the most determined widower on record her escort; a perfect John Rogers of a man, with nine little motherless children, her brother Raguet (’Rag,’ as we called him at school, on account of his prim stiffness, so that ‘limber as a rag’ seemed a most preposterous saying in his vicinity). He is handsome, however, and intelligent, a perfect gentleman, but on the mourners’ bench just now, like some others you know of” heaving a deep sigh. “His wife, poor thing, died last autumn a pretty girl in her day was Cornelia Huger! I was a little weak in that direction once myself before that is, before O doctor! what a trouble it is to remember!”

And again the small, fleet hand was dashed across the twinkling, tearful eyes of this April day of a middle-aged man of the world this modern Mercutio merry and mournful at once, as if there were two sides to his every mood, like the famous shield of story. When we reached the quay the Kosciusko was already getting up her steam, and, in less than an hour afterward, the friends I loved were gone like dreams, the bustle of departure was over, and, with lifted canvas and a puffing engine, we were grandly steaming past the noble forts (poor Bertie’s broach and buckle, be it remembered) on our path of pride and power toward the broad Atlantic.

The weather was oppressively hot, and, for the first thirty-six hours, scarcely a breath of wind lifted us on our way, so that the engine, wholly incompetent to the work of both sails and machinery, bore us very slowly on our northward ocean-flight. Indeed, the failure of this engine to do its duty, at first, had sorely disheartened both captain and crew as we found later, for upon its execution and energies, in the beginning, had rested our entire dependence.

On the evening of the second day’s voyage, a sudden and violent thunder-storm occurred, not unusual in those latitudes; during the raging of which our mainmast was struck by lightning, and wholly disabled.

The fire was extinguished in the only possible manner, by cutting it away from the decks, letting it gently down upon them, deluging it, so that our mast lay charred and blackened after its bath of sea-water, like a mighty serpent stretched along the ship, from stem to stern, and wrapped loosely in its shrouds. It did us good service later, though not by defying the winds of heaven, nor spreading forth its snowy sails to catch the tropic breezes.

Before many hours, it was destined to ride the waves in a shape that was certainly never intended by those who chose it among many others taper and stately in its group of firs to be the chief adornment of a gallant ship, and lift a pointing finger to the stars themselves, as an index of its might, and, with this exception, the hope of those it served that of a charred and blackened life raft.

The renewed freshness of the atmosphere, and the joyful upspringing of the breezes, alone remained, at midnight, to tell the story of the recent hurricane.

These tropic breezes came like benevolent fairies, to aid our groaning Titan in his labors.

I can never rid myself for one moment of the idea that an engine really works, with weary, reluctant strength like a genii slave, waiting vengefully for the time of retaliation, which sooner or later is sure to come; or of the visionary notion that a graceful, gliding ship, with all sails set, receives the same pleasure from its own motion and beauty that a snow-white swan must do “as down she bears before the gale,” with her white plumage and stately crest.

I think, if ever I am called to give a toast, it shall be “Sail-ships; may their shadows never be less!” They are, indeed, a part of the romance of ocean.

The moon was full, in the balmy summer night that succeeded the tempest, and the ship’s quarter-deck was crowded with the passengers of the Kosciusko, enjoying to the utmost, as it seemed, the delicious, newly-washed atmosphere, the moonlit heavens and sea, the exquisitely-caressing softness of the tardily-awakened breezes that filled the white sails of the vessel, and fluttered the silken scarf of the maiden, with the same wooing breath of persuasive, subtle strength.

Around Miss Lamarque, the lady of whom Major Favraud had spoken so admiringly, and to whose kindness he had committed me, a group had gathered, chiefly of the young, not to be surpassed in any land for manly bearing, graceful feminine beauty, gayety, wit, and refinement.

There was Helen Oscanyan, fair as a dream of Greece, in her serene, marble perfectness of form and feature; and the lovely Mollie Cairns, her cousin, small, dark, and sparkling both under the care of that stately gentleman, their uncle, Julius Severe, of Savannah; and there were the sisters Percy, twins in age and appearance, with voices like brook-ripples, and eyes like wood-violets, and feet of Chinese minuteness and French perfection the darlings and only joys of a mother still beautiful, though sad in her widowhood, and gentle as the dove that mourns its mate.

There was the brilliant Ralph Maxwell, whose jests, stinging and slight, just glanced over the surface of society without inflicting a wound, even as the skater’s heel glides over ice, leaving its mark as it goes, yet breaking no crust of frost; and there was the poetic dreamer Dartmore, with his large, dark eyes, and moonlight face, and manner of suffering serenity, on his way to put forth for fame, as he fondly believed, his manuscript epic on the “Sorrows of the South.”

All these, and more, were there gathering about the leader of their home-society, on that alien deck, as securely as though they were sitting in her own drawing-room at “Berthold,” on one of her brilliant reception-evenings.

How could they know how could they dream the truth or descry the hidden skeleton at the festival, wreathed in flowers and veiled with glittering, filmy draperies, which yet put forth its bony fingers to beckon on and clutch them?

I too was joyous and unconscious as the rest, and for the first time for many days felt the burden literally heaved rather than lifted away that had oppressed me.

Was I not on my way to him in whose presence alone I lived my true life? and what feeling of his morbid fancy was there that my hand could not smooth away, when once entwined in his? Beauseincourt, and all its shadows, had I not put behind me? The sunshine lay before, and in its light and warmth I should still rejoice, as it was my birthright to do.

I was “fey” that night, as the Scotch say, when an unaccountable lightness of mood precedes a heavy sorrow, which it so often does, as well as the more usual mood, the presage of gloom. I felt that I had the power to put aside all ills to grapple with my fate, and compel back my lost happiness. Truly my bosom’s lord sat lightly on her throne, as of late it had not been her wont to do.

Against my inclination had I been drawn into the current of that youthful gayety, and now my bark floated without an effort on the stream. I was in my own element again, and my powers were all responsive.

The small hours came the happy group dispersed not without many interchanges of social compliment, much badinage, and merry plans for the morrow. The monster Sea-sickness had been defied on the balmy voyage, save in the brief interval of tempest, and his victors mocked him, baffled as he was, with their purpose of amusement.

“We shall get up the band to-morrow evening,” said Major Ravenel, “and have a dance; the gallop would go grandly here. See what reach of quarter-deck we have! There are Germans on board who play in concert violins and wind-instruments.”

“Suppose we dress as sea-nymphs,” said Honoria Pyne; “enact a masque for old Neptune’s benefit? It would be so complimentary, you know; bring down the house, no doubt. I have a sea-green tarlatan lying so conveniently. Colonel Latrobe looks exactly like a Triton, with that wondrous beard. A little alum sprinkled over its red-gold ground would do wonders in the way of effect would be gorgeous wouldn’t it, now, Miss Harz?”

“But all that could be done on shore as well, Miss Pyne,” I replied, in the way of reminiscence. “It is a pity to waste our opportunities of observation now, in getting up costumes; and, for my part, I confess that I have a wholesome dread of these sea-deities, and fear to exasperate their finny feelings by reducing them to effigies. Thetis is very spiteful, sometimes; and jealous, too, you remember.”

Miss Pyne did not remember, but did not mean to be baffled either, she would let Miss Harz know, even if that lady did know more about mythology than herself; and, if no one else would join her, meant to play her rôle, of sea-nymph all alone, with Major Latrobe for her Triton in waiting, tooting upon a conch-shell, and looking lovely! At which compliment, open and above-board, poor Major Latrobe, who was over head and ears in love with her, and a very ugly man, only bowed and looked more silly than before, which seemed a work of supererogation.

After the rest were gone, Miss Lamarque and I concluded to promenade on the nearly-deserted deck, in the moonlight, and let the excitement of the evening die away through the medium of more serious conversation. She was a woman of forty-five, still graceful and fine-looking, but bearing few traces of earlier beauty, probably better to behold, in her overripe maturity, than in the unfolding of her less attractive time of bud and blossom. Self had been laid aside now (which it never can be until the effervescence of youth and hope are over). She had accepted her position of old maid and universal benefactress; and sustained it nobly, gracefully. She was thoroughly well-bred and agreeable, very vivacious, astute, and intelligent, rather than intellectual, yet she had the capacity (had her training been different) to have been both of these.

I remember how it chanced that, after a long promenade, during which we had discussed men, manners, books, customs, costumes, and politics, even (that once tabooed subject for women, now free, to all), with infinite zest and responsiveness that charmed us mutually, so that we swore allegiance on the strength of this one day’s rencontre, like two school-girls or knights of old remember how the dropping of her comb at his feet caused Miss Lamarque to pause, compelling me to follow her example, by reason of our intertwined arms, in front of the man at the wheel, as he stooped to raise it and hand it to her with a seaman’s bow. His ready politeness, unusual for one in his station, determined us to cultivate his maritime acquaintance, and in a short time we had drawn forth the outlines of his story, simple and bare as this was of incident.

His picturesque appearance had impressed us equally during the day, but until now we had not met in concert about Christian Garth, for such we soon found was the name of our polite pilot.

He was a Jerseyman, he told us, of German descent, married to the girl of his heart, and living on the coast of that adventurous little State, famous alike for its peaches and wrecks.

“Sall had a stocking full of money,” he informed us, “silver, and copper, and gold, when he married her, for her mother had been a famous huckster and never missed her post in the Philadelphia market for thirty years, and this was her child’s inheritance, and with this money he had fixed up his old hut, till it looked ’e’en a’most inside like a ship-captain’s cabin.’”

And now Sall wanted him to stay at home, he informed us, with her and the children, but somehow or other he could never tarry long at the hearth, for the sea pulled him like it was his mother, and the spell of the tides was on him, and he must foller even if he went to his own destruction, like them men that liquor lures to loss, or the love of mermaids.

“All land service is dead when likened to the sea,” he said, shaking his great water-dog head, and looking out lovingly upon his idol. “But ships a’n’t like they oncst was, ladies,” he added, “before men put these here heavy iron ingines to work in ’em it’s like cropping a bird’s wing to make a river-boat of a ship, and a dead, dead shame to shorten sails till it looks like a young gal dressed in breeches or any other onnatural thing for a sailing-ship and a full-flowing petticoat always rise up in a true man’s mind together God bless them both, I say.”

“To which we cordially say amen, of course,” said Miss Lamarque, laughing. “We should have been at a loss, however, Mr. Garth, but for our engine during the dead calm preceding the storm, when our ship’s sails flapped so lazily about her masts, and she rocked like a baby’s cradle without making progress. It is well the engineer manoeuvred so successfully while we lay fireless on the low rolling waves; but we are speeding along merrily enough now, to make up for it all I take comfort in that ”

“But not exactly in the right direction, though, to suit my stripe,” he said, turning his quid in his mouth as he looked out to leeward, revealing, as he did so, a fine yet rugged profile relieved against the silvery purple sheen of the moonlit sky.

“Do you see that dark object lying beyond” (our eyes mechanically followed his), “so still on the water?” and he indicated it with the pipe he held in one sinewy hand for the native courtesy of the man had involuntarily proffered us the homage of removing it from his lips, when we addressed him.

“Yes what is it? a wreck? a whale? a small volcanic island? Do explain, Mr. Garth,” said Miss Lamarque.

“Nothing but an iceberg, and we are bearing down upon it rather too rapidly, it seems to me.”

And so speaking, he turned his wheel in silence warily.

“But you have the command of the helm, and have nothing to do but ”

“Obey orders,” he interrupted, grimly. “Ef the captain was to tell me to run the ship to purgatory, I’d have to do it, you know.”

“But surely the captain would not jeopardize the lives of a ship’s company, even if he likes warm latitudes, by ordering you to run foul of an iceberg; and, if he did, you certainly would not dare to obey him with the fear of God before your eyes?” remonstrated Miss Lamarque, indignantly. “For my part I shall go to him immediately and desire him to change his course but after all I don’t believe that dingy black thing is an iceberg at all an old hencoop rather, thrown over from some merchant-ship, or a vast lump of charred wood. You are only trying to alarm us.”

“Ef you was to see it close enough, you would find it to shine equal to the diamond on your hand; but I hope you never will, that’s all I hope you never will, lady! I sot on a peak of that sort oncst myself for three days in higher latitudes than this here me and five others, all that was spared from the wreck of the schooner Delta, and we felt our convoy melting away beneath us, and courtesying e’en a’most even with the sea, before the merchant-ship Osprey took us off, half starved, and half frozen, and half roasted all at oncst! Them is onpleasant rickollections, ladies, and it makes my blood creep to this day to see an iceberg in konsikence; but a man must do his dooty, whatsomever do betide. It was in the dead of night, and Hans Schuyler had the wheel, I remember, when we went to pieces on that iceberg, all for disregarding the captain’s orders; you see, he meant to graze it like!”

“Graze it!” almost shrieked Miss Lamarque. “Did he think he was driving a curricle? Graze it Heaven, what rashness!”

“Don’t don’t! Mr. Garth,” I petitioned; “I shall never sleep a wink on this ship if you continue your narrative.”

“Do do! Mr. Garth,” entreated Miss Lamarque, whose penetration showed her by this time that the pilot was only playing on our fears, for want of a better instrument for his skill. “I quite enjoy the idea that you have actually been astride a fragment of the arctic glacier, and that we may perhaps make the acquaintance of a white bear ourselves when we get near our iceberg, or a gentle seal. Wouldn’t you like one for a pet, Miss Harz?”

“It is very cold,” I said, digressively. “I feel the chill of that fragment of Greenland freeze my marrow. I must go fetch my shawl; but first reassure us, Mr. Garth, if possible.”

He laughed. “I have paid you now for making fun of me to-day,” he said, saucily. “I saw your drawing of me in your books, and heerd the ladies laughing. I peeped as I passed when Myers took the helm, and I wanted to see what all the fun was about; then I said to myself, ’I will give her a skeer for that if I have a chance’ but, all the same, the chill you feel is a real one, for as sure as death that lump of darkness is an iceberg. I have told you no yarn, as you will find out to-morrow when you ask the captain. I’ll steer you clear of the iceberg though, ladies, never fear. Hans Schuyler has not got the wheel to-night you see he was three sheets in the wind anyhow, and the captain, says, ‘Hans,’ says he, ‘don’t tech another drop this night, or we’ll never see another mornin’ till we are resurrected,’ and so he turned into his hammock and swung himself to sleep a way he had, for he didn’t keer for nothin’ where his comfort was concerned, having been raised up in the Injies.”

“Come, Miss Lamarque,” I interrupted. “I must not hear another word. ‘Macbeth doth murder, sleep,’ and I shall be nervous for a month after, this. So, good-night, Mr. Garth, and be sure you merit your first name by taking good care of us while we imitate the example of your worthy captain and ‘swing ourselves to sleep,’ or rather let the waves perform that office for us. I shall make it my care to-morrow morning early, if you still hold the helm, to show you my sketch, and convince you that it was never made for fun at all, but that it is a real portrait of a very fine-looking seaman, a real viking in appearance, and somewhat better than one at heart, I trust. I shall hope to earn your good opinion instead of ill-will, when you have only seen my sketch.”

“You have it already, you have it already, young gal young miss, I mean,” he said, with a wave of the hand, which meant to be courteous, no doubt, but seemed only defiant. “An’ this much I kin say without injury to Sall that I’d rather hear you talk and see you smile, as I has been watchin’ of you constant do to-day, than go to the circus in New York, or even to a Spanish bull-fight, or hear a Fourth-of-July oration, or’tend camp-meetin’ and that’s saying no little an’ no iceberg shall come near you while Christian Garth lays a hand upon this helm. But don’t be skeered, ladies; no harm will come to the good ship Kosciusko.”

“I declare our pilot is quite chivalrous, as far as you are concerned, for I marked his glance, Miss Harz,” said Miss Lamarque, archly, as we turned our faces cabin-ward, under the protection of our helmsman’s promised vigilance. “See what it is to be young and pretty, and remark the truth of the old proverb, as exemplified in his case, that ’extremes meet.’ Victoria herself is not more independent of me or my position established facts as both are in the eyes of some than is Christian Garth. To him, this outsider of the world of fashion, I am only a homely old woman; no prestige comes in to garnish the unvarnished fact a plain old maid, my dear with not even the remembrance of beauty as a consolation, nor its remnant as a sign of past triumphs, ’only this and nothing more,’ as that wonderful man Poe makes his raven say. We never find our level until we go among people who know and care nothing about us, who have never ’heard of us’ that exordium of most greetings from folks of our own class. It is absolutely refreshing to be so unaffectedly despised and slighted it does one a world of good, there is no doubt of that, especially when one’s grandfather was a Revolutionary notability, and other antecedents of a piece but men are all alike at heart, only the worldly ones wear flimsy masks, you know, and pretend to adore intellect and ugliness, when beauty is the only thing they care for all a sham, my dear, in any case.”

“Yes, all alike,” I repeated, making, as I spoke, one mental entire reservation. “All vain alike, I mean; flatter their vanity ever so little and they are at your very feet, asking ‘for more,’ like Oliver Twist; more bread for amour propre, the insatiable! It was that sketch of mine that wrought the spell, though unintentionally, of course, and the sly fellow knew very well that it was no caricature that is, if he peeped, as he pretends but a tolerably correct likeness that might have satisfied Sall herself. By-the-by, I have a great mind to bestow it upon him as a ‘sop for Cerberus,’ should her jealousy ever be aroused by your reports of his devotion to me, or admiration rather, most unequivocally avowed, it must be acknowledged. I really had no intention of injuring Sally, and, if you think it best, will make the amende honorable by being as cross as possible to him to-morrow.”

“No, no, carry out your first intention and conciliate him; for, remember, he has us in the hollow of his hand. Bestow the picture, by all means, and just as many smiles and compliments as he can stand, or you can afford to squander; for you are worse than a mermaid, Miss Harz, for fascination, all the gentlemen say so; and, as to Captain Falconer ”

“They are malignants,” I rejoined, ignoring purposely the last clause of the sentence which I had interrupted; “and you are perfidious to hear them slander me so. I hate fascinating people; they always make my flesh crawl like serpents. The few I have known have been so very base.” “Good specimens of ‘thorough bass,’” she interpolated, laughing. “I am sure I am glad I have no attributes of fascination, if a strange old work I met with at Beauseincourt may be considered responsible. Did you ever see it, Miss Lamarque, you who see every thing? Hieronymus Frascatorius tells of certain families in Crete who fascinated by praising, and to avert this evil influence some charm was used consisting of a magic word (I suppose this was typical of humility, though related as literal). This naïvete on the part of the old chronicler was simply impayable, as Major Favraud would say, with his characteristic shrug. One Varius related (you see my theme has full possession of me, and the book is, a collation of facts on the subject of fascination of all kinds, even down to that of the serpent) that a friend of his saw a fascinator with a look break in two a precious gem in the hands of a lapidary typical this, I suppose, of some fond, foolish, female heart. Fire, according to this author, represents the quality of fascination; and toads and moths are subject to its influence, as well as some higher animals deer, for instance, who are hunted successfully with torches; and he relates, further, that in Abyssinia artificers of pottery and iron are thus fearfully endowed, and are consequently forbidden to join in the sacred rites of religion, as fire is their chief agent. Isn’t this a strange, quaint volume, to set before a king? and how do you like my lecture delivered extempore?”.

“Oh, vastly! but I did not know that was your style before. Don’t cultivate it, dear, if you hope to win manly hearts. Men like to do all the lecturing themselves, and I find it diplomatic to feign profound ignorance on all subjects, outside of a bandbox; it delights them so to enlighten us. No wonder they fancy us fools when we feign foolishness so admirably lapwings that we are!”

“But I never do, in such society. My experience is different from yours. I always pretend to know twice as much as I do, when they are about; it bluffs them off, and they are credulous sometimes as well as ignorant, notwithstanding their boasted acumen.”

“Your lamp of experience needs trimming, my pretty Miriam,” she said, shaking her head, “if you really believe this. They never forgive superiority, assumed or real; none but the noble ones, I mean; who, of course, are in the minority. Give a pair of tongs pantaloons, and it asserts itself. Trousers, my dear, are at the root of manly presumption. I discovered that long ago. A man in petticoats would be as humble as a woman. This is my theory, at least; take it for what it is worth. And now to sleep, with what heart we may, an iceberg being in our vicinity;” and, taking my face in her hand, she kissed me cordially. “It is very early in our acquaintance for such manifestations to be allowable,” she said, kindly, “but I am a sort of spoiled child of society, and dare to be natural. I consider that the best privilege that attaches to my condition, that of the ‘bell-wether’ of Savannah ton the universally-accepted bore! You know Favraud has told you, of course; he always characterizes as he goes.”

“He has called you the most agreeable woman in Savannah, I remember, young or old, and was truly glad, on my account, to know that you were on board. Of your brother he spoke very kindly also, even admiringly.”

“Oh, yes, I know; but of Raguet there is little question now. His wife’s death has crushed him. I never saw so changed a man; he is half idiotic, I believe; and I am with him now just to keep those children from completing the work of destruction. Six little motherless ones only think and as bad as they can possibly be; for poor Lucilla was no manager. Isn’t it strange, the influence those little cottony women get over their husbands? You and I might try forever to establish such absolute despotism, all in vain. It is your whimpering sort that rule with the waving of a pocket-handkerchief; but poor, dear little woman, she is powerless now; and I suppose the next will be like unto her. Raguet would never look at any thing feminine that hadn’t white eyes and pink hair (yellow, I mean, of course) his style, you know, being dark and stern, he likes the downy, waxy kind. All this is shockingly egotistical; but the question is, who that has a spark of individuality is otherwise? Good-night, again, and may all sweet dreams attend you; for my part, I never dream, being past the dreaming age, and realities fortunately disappear with daylight; even cross children are wheedled into quietness, and servants forget to fidget and giggle; and, for mosquitoes, there are bars. Adieu.”

And thus we parted, never to meet again in mutual mood like this!

Yet, had the free agency of which some men boast been ours, we had scarcely chosen to face the awful change to look into each other’s eyes through gathering death-doom!