d the promontory, a beautiful
ship with all sails set, looking like some gigantic white bird;
sailing, sailing, so swiftly yet so surely by, through the dim light;
and I cried out in admiration: for there is something in the sight of
a ship silently gliding that always sets my heart beating. But Sir
Adrian's face grew stern, and he said: "A ship is a whitened
sepulchre."

But for all that he looked at it long and pensively.

Now it had struck me before this that Sir Adrian, with all his
kindness of heart, takes but a dismal view of human nature and human
destiny; that to him what spoils the face of this world is that strife
of life--which to me is as the breath of my nostrils, the absence of
which made my convent days so grey and hateful to look back upon.

I did not like to feel out of harmony with him, and so almost angrily
I reproached him.

"Would you have every one live like a limpet on a rock?" cried I.
"Great heavens! I would rather be dead than not be up and doing."

He looked at me gravely, pityingly.

"May _you_ never see what I have seen," said he. "May you never learn
what men have made of the world. God keep your fair life from such
ways as mine has been made to follow."

The words filled me, I don't know why, with sudden misgiving. Is this
life, I am so eager for, but horror and misery after all? Would it be
better to leave the book unopened? They said so at the convent. But
what can they know of life at a convent?

He bent his kind face towards mine in the thickening gloom, as though
to read my thoughts, and his lips moved, but he did not speak aloud.
Then, above the song of the waves as they gathered, rolled in, and
fell upon the shingle all around, there came the beat of oars.

"Hark," said Sir Adrian, "our good Rene!"

His tone was cheerful again, and, as he hurried me away down the
stairs, I knew he was glad to divert me from the melancholy into which
he had allowed himself to drift.

And then "good Rene" came, bringing breezy life and cheerfulness with
him, and a bundle and a letter for me.

Poor Madeleine! It seems she has been quite ill with weeping for
Molly; and, indeed, her dear scrawl was so illegible that I could
hardly read it. Rene says she was nearly as much upset by the joy as
by the grief. Mr. Landale was not at home; he had ridden to meet Tanty
at Liverpool, for the dear old lady has been summoned back in hot
haste with the news of my decease!

He for one, I thought to m