faithful nurse sat weeping and waiting. One hour
later, the vessel swung from her moorings, and Elsie and I were soon
at sea. A girl only sixteen, four hours married, separated forever
from husband and friends,--without hope or faith in either human or
heavenly things,--hating, with most intolerable intensity, the man
whose name she had just assumed, and to whom she felt indissolubly
bound, in accordance with the vow '_So long as ye both shall live_.'"

Out of the tossing, moaning sea, the moon had risen slowly, breaking
through a rent scarf of cloud that barred her solemn, white disc,
and silvering the foam of the racing waves that seemed to reflect
the glittering fringe of the scudding vapor in the chill vault above
them. There was no mellow radiance, no golden lustre such as
southern moons are wont to shed, but a weird, fitful glitter on
sea and land, that now shone with startling vividness, and anon
waned, until sombre shadows seemed stalking in spectral ranks from
some distant, gloomy ocean lair. It was one of those melancholy
nights when the supernatural realm threatened to impinge upon the
physical, that shuddered and shrank from the contact,--when the
atmosphere gave vague hints of ghostly denizens, and every passing
breeze seemed laden with sepulchral damps and vibrating with
sepulchral sounds.

Mrs. Gerome sat erect, with her hands resting on the balustrade, and
under that mysteriously white moon her pearl-pale face looked as
hopelessly cold and rigid as any Persepolitan sphinx, that nightly
fronts the immemorial stars which watch the ruined tombs of
Chilminar.

Raising her fingers to her forehead, she lifted and shook a band of
the shining white hair, and resumed her narration, in the same steady,
passionless tone.

"These gray locks were the fruit of that bridal day, for, on the
afternoon that we sailed, I was taken very ill with what was called
congestion of the brain,--was unconscious throughout the voyage, and
when we reached Liverpool, my hair, once so black and glossy, was as
you see it now. Ah! how often, since that time, have I heard poor
Elsie mourning over my mother's untimely death, and quoting that
ancient superstition, 'You should never wean a child while trees are
in blossom; otherwise it will have gray hair.' Mr. Wright was so
prostrated by grief at what had occurred, that he survived my departure
only a few weeks; and at his death, Mr. Carlyle attempted to seize and
control my estate. Ur