world, that the Long Walls went down, Elaphion and her shameless sisters blowing their best and dancing their worst, while their admirers tore away the city's bulwarks. Euthucles and I, however, have escaped all this hideous pomp and ghastly mirth. The grey old captain whose ship I saved at Syracuse, has carried us back in it towards Rhodes, as I dictated to my husband this story of my last adventure.

'But, oh Athens, to perish thus! Why did not fire fling his resplendent arms around thee passionately, and take thee up to the Immortal Gods, folding temple by temple to his breast, until all thy white wonders faded out in ashes? Why did not the earth swallow thee, and save thy Acropolis for Persephone to rule her realm in, that the ghosts may be consoled for all the glories they have lost? Or why didst not thou, oh sea! rush in with all thy watery vastness, might upon might, and stand, face to face, with the city, thy blue waves glassing her marbled magnificence, until they blossomed into a pale tremulous flower of foam, and then, when the land could breathe again, Athens would be no more? Such a fate I could have borne! But henceforth Athens shall live in my heart, richer than those sunset clouds !'

IT

T is a gala day at the country-seat of the Treshams, and Lord Thorold's retainers are dressed in their best liveries, and arranged in state to receive his neighbour, Earl Mertoun, who comes with great pomp to present himself as a suitor for the hand of Lady Mildred. There is much drinking and rejoicing among the servants; but Thorold's old warrener, Gerard, shows such sullenness and melancholy as none of his mates can understand. And this conduct is all the more strange because his master receives the Earl with the utmost cordiality, though his fondness for his sister, as well as his pride of ancestry, makes him examine her lover with the sharpest possible scrutiny.

When the high-born young wooer has departed, with the assurance that he is heartily welcomed by the family, and the promise that Mildred, whom he has not yet seen, except accidentally, according to his own story, shall at once send him word whether she is willing to hear him plead his suit in person, Thorold

All

is loud in praise, though his brother, Austin Tresham, and the latter's betrothed, the Lady Guendolen, think that the Earl is altogether too ready to take it for granted that Mildred will consent. This, however, she does, almost as a matter of course. Indeed, she shows such lack of curiosity about her lover, as much amazes Guendolen, who follows her cousin to her chamber, full of news which meets no welcome. Mildred cares to know is whether Thorold has really received the Earl kindly. Guendolen is further surprised to find that, when she speaks of the young man's graceful ringlets of light hair, her cousin reminds her of the fact that it is brown. Mildred, however, cuts short the conversation as soon as she can, by repeatedly pleading that it is midnight, and she is very weary. Then, as soon as Guendolen has gone, Mildred lifts the small lamp which hangs before the Virgin's image in her painted window, and places it in front of a purple pane, saying, 'I must have sinned much that I suffer so. Mildred and Mertoun! Mildred, Mertoun's bride, with Thorold's consent and all the world's? Too late! It is sweet to think of. It would be sweeter still to hope that such a blessed end might soften the curse on our beginning. know it is too late! The sweetest of all would be to die in such a dream. Oh, why did sin-the serpent -glide into the paradise which Heaven meant for us?'

But I

The window is opened softly from without, and a low voice sings :

'There's a woman like a dew-drop, she's so purer than the

purest;

And her noble heart's the noblest, yes, and her sure faith's the surest :

And her eyes are dark and humid, like the depth on depth of lustre

Hid in the harebell, while her tresses, sunnier than the wild-grape cluster,

Gush, in golden-tinted plenty down her neck's rosemisted marble:

Then her voice's music . call it the well's bubbling, the bird's warble!

And this woman says, "My days were sunless, and my nights were moonless,

"Parched the pleasant April herbage, and the lark's heart's outbreak tuneless,

"If you loved me not!" And I who-(ah, for words of flame!) adore her,

Who am mad to lay my spirit prostrate palpably before

her,

I may enter at her portal soon, as now her lattice takes me, And by noontide as by midnight make her mine, as hers she makes me !' *

As Earl Mertoun sings this, he enters at the window and bends over Mildred, who sits before it. Then he throws off his long cloak and slouched hat, saying, My very heart sings, and so I sing, beloved.'

* Act I. sc. 3, 11. 95, &c.

G

'Be seated, Henry; but do not take my hand'

'It is mine! The meeting that appalled us both Now happiness begins, such as the

so much is over.

world does not contain !'

'Do we deserve that, Henry? Tell your soul, what mine has grown used to hear, like a death-knell, once much noticed but now familiar; this will not be !'

'Oh, Mildred ! have I met your brother, and compelled myself, if not to speak untruth, to disguise and put aside the truth, as nothing but you had ever prevailed upon me to stoop to? Have I at last gained that brother, the one scarer of your dreams, and sole apprehension of your waking thoughts? Does a new life break, like sunrise on our night of rain and storm? And will you not see the living blossoms and tints of flame on each dripping spray, and the inexpressible glory in the East? When I am by you, and am to be ever with you; when I have won you, and may worship you: Oh, Mildred! can you say, "This will not be?"

'Sin has surprised us, and so will punishment,' she urges.

'No; me alone! I sinned alone!'

'The night you likened our past life too, was it all storm to you then, Henry?'

'It was your life I spoke of.

What am I?

what is my life to waste a thought about, when you