t three tomorrow
morning--Is that the bill of fare? Ask Sir Richard where, Atty? It is
against punctilio now for me to speak to him till after I am killed."

"On the sands opposite. The tide will be out at three. And now, gallant
gentlemen, let us join the bowlers."

And so they went back and spent a merry evening, all except poor Rose,
who, ere she went back, had poured all her sorrows into Lady Grenville's
ear. For the kind woman, knowing that she was motherless and guileless,
carried her off into Mrs. St. Leger's chamber, and there entreated her
to tell the truth, and heaped her with pity but with no comfort. For
indeed, what comfort was there to give?

* * * * *

Three o'clock, upon a still pure bright midsummer morning. A broad
and yellow sheet of ribbed tide-sands, through which the shallow river
wanders from one hill-foot to the other, whispering round dark knolls
of rock, and under low tree-fringed cliffs, and banks of golden broom.
A mile below, the long bridge and the white walled town, all sleeping
pearly in the soft haze, beneath a cloudless vault of blue. The
white glare of dawn, which last night hung high in the northwest, has
travelled now to the northeast, and above the wooded wall of the hills
the sky is flushing with rose and amber.

A long line of gulls goes wailing up inland; the rooks from Annery come
cawing and sporting round the corner at Landcross, while high above them
four or five herons flap solemnly along to find their breakfast on the
shallows. The pheasants and partridges are clucking merrily in the long
wet grass; every copse and hedgerow rings with the voice of birds, but
the lark, who has been singing since midnight in the "blank height of
the dark," suddenly hushes his carol and drops headlong among the corn,
as a broad-winged buzzard swings from some wooded peak into the abyss of
the valley, and hangs high-poised above the heavenward songster. The air
is full of perfume; sweet clover, new-mown hay, the fragrant breath of
kine, the dainty scent of sea-weed wreaths and fresh wet sand. Glorious
day, glorious place, "bridal of earth and sky," decked well with bridal
garlands, bridal perfumes, bridal songs,--What do those four cloaked
figures there by the river brink, a dark spot on the fair face of the
summer morn?

Yet one is as cheerful as if he too, like all nature round him, were
going to a wedding; and that is Will Cary. He has been bathing down
below, to cool