ant. My little English Puritan, I love Protestantism
in you. I own its severe charm. There is something in its ritual I
cannot receive myself, but it is the sole creed for 'Lucy.'"

All Rome could not put into him bigotry, nor the Propaganda itself make
him a real Jesuit. He was born honest, and not false--artless, and not
cunning--a freeman, and not a slave. His tenderness had rendered him
ductile in a priest's hands, his affection, his devotedness, his
sincere pious enthusiasm blinded his kind eyes sometimes, made him
abandon justice to himself to do the work of craft, and serve the ends
of selfishness; but these are faults so rare to find, so costly to
their owner to indulge, we scarce know whether they will not one day be
reckoned amongst the jewels.

* * * * *

And now the three years are past: M. Emanuel's return is fixed. It is
Autumn; he is to be with me ere the mists of November come. My school
flourishes, my house is ready: I have made him a little library, filled
its shelves with the books he left in my care: I have cultivated out of
love for him (I was naturally no florist) the plants he preferred, and
some of them are yet in bloom. I thought I loved him when he went away;
I love him now in another degree: he is more my own.

The sun passes the equinox; the days shorten, the leaves grow sere;
but---he is coming.

Frosts appear at night; November has sent his fogs in advance; the wind
takes its autumn moan; but--he is coming.

The skies hang full and dark--a wrack sails from the west; the clouds
cast themselves into strange forms--arches and broad radiations; there
rise resplendent mornings--glorious, royal, purple as monarch in his
state; the heavens are one flame; so wild are they, they rival battle
at its thickest--so bloody, they shame Victory in her pride. I know
some signs of the sky; I have noted them ever since childhood. God
watch that sail! Oh! guard it!

The wind shifts to the west. Peace, peace, Banshee--"keening" at every
window! It will rise--it will swell--it shrieks out long: wander as I
may through the house this night, I cannot lull the blast. The
advancing hours make it strong: by midnight, all sleepless watchers
hear and fear a wild south-west storm. That storm roared frenzied, for
seven days. It did not cease till the Atlantic was strewn with wrecks:
it did not lull till the deeps had gorged their full of sustenance. Not
till the destroying angel of