with the government in England. My
great-grandfather sir Everard, was displeased with his second son, and the
dissension led my grandfather to the province of Carolina. But, as the
breach has long since been healed, I often think my brother and myself may
yet return to the halls of our ancestors. Much will, however, depend on
the manner in which we dispose of our treasure on this side of the
Atlantic."

As the really well-meaning, though, perhaps, a little too much
self-satisfied lady concluded her remark, she glanced her eye at the
perfectly unconscious subject of the close of her speech. Gertrude had, as
usual, when her aunt chose to favour her governess with any of her family
reminiscences, turned her head aside, and was now offering her cheek,
burning with health, and perhaps a little with shame, to the cooling
influence of the evening breeze. The instant the voice of Mrs de Lacey had
ceased, she turned hastily to her companions; and, pointing to a
noble-looking ship, whose masts, as it lay in the inner harbour, were seen
rising above the roofs of the town, she exclaimed, as if glad to change
the subject in any manner,--

"And yonder gloomy prison is to be our home, dear Mrs Wyllys, for the next
month!"

"I hope your dislike to the sea has magnified the time," mildly returned
her governess; "the passage between this place and Carolina has been often
made in a shorter period."

"That it has been so done, I can testify," resumed the Admiral's widow,
adhering a little pertinaciously to a train of thoughts, which, once
thoroughly awakened in her bosom, was not easily diverted into another
channel, "since my late estimable and (I feel certain all who hear me will
acquiesce when I add) gallant husband once conducted a squadron of his
Royal Master, from one extremity of his Majesty's American dominions to
the other, in a time less than that named by my niece: It may have made
some difference in his speed that he was in pursuit of the enemies of his
King and country, but still the fact proves that the voyage can be made
within the month."

"There is that dreadful Henlopen, with its sandy shoals and shipwrecks on
one hand, and that stream they call the Gulf on the other!" exclaimed
Gertrude, with a shudder, and a burst of natural female terror, which
makes timidity sometimes attractive, when exhibited in the person of youth
and beauty. "If it were not for Henlopen, and its gales, and its shoals,
and its gulfs, I could