he smooth lake
towards the islet. The stranger wielded the oars so dextrously that
they soon reached their destination. Then leaping on shore he assisted
Lucille to get out. They walked along the shore wending their way
between the birches and the high bulrushes, apparently with the
intention of making, the circuit of the small island. Everhard's heart
throbbed so wildly that he had to lean against the stem of a fir-tree
till the first giddiness had passed.

Who was the new comer who seemed so intimate with her, that she
followed him on his boating excursions, and thus granted him what she
had ever refused to Everhard her friend and helper? Who was this
stranger that she leant on his arm, and while walking by his side, and
gaily conversing with him seemed even to forget her child, and
abandoned it to the care of the nurse? Well whoever it was, he had
arrived just in time to wake them all out of the dream into which the
solitary stillness of the place had lulled them.

Doubtless the sight of this old acquaintance brought back to Lucille's
remembrance all that she had forgotten at the bed-side of her child;
her intercourse with the outer world; her friends, and admirers,
recollections to which Everhard would ever remain a stranger, and which
summoned her back to a life in which he could have no share. So much
the better! It could but facilitate the execution of his resolves, and
confirm the urgency of a separation.

He felt it was impossible to share her presence with a third. He strode
down the precipitous path, and reached the house greatly exhausted, and
his knees knocking under him. He remarked a travelling carriage which
stood beside the shed, and in the stables in which a cow was kept
during the winter, two horses were tied to the manger. Without heeding
the landlady who was dying to tell him the news, he walked straight
into the room where the child sat at the table playing with a new doll.

"Uncle Max is here," she cried out to him, her face beaming with joy.
"He has brought me a doll that can move its eyes; then he dined with
Mamma, and now they are both on the island. They will soon return
however, as Uncle Max means to take us away in his large travelling
carriage, but Mamma said that she would not move a step without your
special consent."

"Fanny," he said, and took the child's curly head between his hands,
"you won't forget me, though I cannot offer you a beautiful doll, but
only a simple bunch of flow