leep until I have exonerated myself in your clear,
truthful, holy eyes: I can not endure that you should think harshly of
me, even for a day. This room is suffocating! I will meet you on the
portico; and yonder, by the sea, I will show you my life."

She went to the escritoire, opened one of the drawers, and took out a
package. Wrapping a cloak around her, she quitted the parlor, and
found Dr. Grey leaning against one of the columns.

He did not offer her his arm as formerly, but slowly and silently they
walked down towards the beach, where the surf was rolling heavily in
with a steady roar, and tossing sheets of foam around the stone
piers.

... "While far across the hill,
A dark and brazen sunset ribbed with black,
Glared, like the sullen eyeballs of the plague."

CHAPTER XXVII.

"Doctor Grey, had you possessed a tithe of the ingenuity of
Peiresc, you might long ago have interpreted the deep, dark
incisions in my character, which, like the indentations on his
celebrated amethyst, show where the _laminae_ of luckless events
inscribed my history with mournful ciphers. Elsie's hints would have
furnished any woman with a clew; but, since you have not availed
yourself of their aid, I must lift the shroud that hides the corpse of
my youth, my happiness, my faith in man, my hope in God. Ah! unto what
shall I liken it? This ruined, wretched thing I call my life? To the
_Tauk e Kerra_,--standing in a dreary waste, lifting its vast,
keyless arch helplessly to heaven? Even such a crumbling arch,
beautiful and grand in its glorious promise, is the incomplete,
crownless life of Agla Gerome,--a lonely and melancholy monument of a
gigantic failure. Two months before my birth, my father, Henderson
Flewellyn, died, and when I was three hours old, my poor young mother
followed him, leaving me to the care of her nurse, Elsie Maclean,
and of an old uncle who was at that time residing in Copenhagen.
Having no relatives to dictate, Elsie named me Vashti, for my
mother; but my great-uncle wrote that my baptism must be deferred
until he could be present, and instructed her to call me Evelyn,
after himself. But the stubborn Scotch will would not bend, and my
name was written in the family Bible, Vashti Flewellyn. Before the
expiration of three years, Mr. Mitchell Evelyn died, bequeathing his
fortune to me, as Evelyn Flewellyn, and consigning me to the
guardianship of Mr. Lucian Wright, a widowed minister of New Y