no notice of his passionate pleading, and he sprang down one step
directly in front of her.

The white face was turned to the sea, and the large, wide,
wonderfully lovely yet mournful gray eyes were gazing fixedly across
the waste of water, at a filmy cloud as fine as lace, that like a
silver netting caught the full October moon which was lifting itself
in the pearly east.

The long black lashes did not droop, nor the steady eyes waver, and
with a horrible foreboding Dr. Grey seized her hands. They were rigid
and icy. He stooped, caught her to his bosom, and pressed his lips to
hers, but they were colder than the marble column against which she
leaned; for, one hour before, Vashti Carlyle had fronted her God.

Alone in the autumn evening, sitting there with the golden poplar
leaves drifting over her, the desolate woman had held her last
communion with the watching ocean that hushed its murmuring, to see
her die; and, laying down the galling burden of her sunless, dreary
life, she had joyfully and serenely "put on immortality" in that
everlasting rest, where "there was no more sea, no more death, neither
shall there be any more pain, for the former things are passed away."

Ah! beautiful and holy was--

"That peaceful face wherein all past distress
Had melted into perfect loveliness."

CHAPTER XXXV.

Since that October day when Ulpian Grey sat on the steps of the tomb,
holding in his arms the beautiful white form, whom in life God had
denied him the privilege of touching, six months had drifted slowly;
yet time had not softened the blow, that, while almost crushing his
tender, unselfish heart, had no power to shake the faith which was so
securely anchored in Christ.

Among the papers found in Mrs. Carlyle's desk was one containing the
request that Dr. Grey would superintend the erection of a handsome
monument over the remains of her husband, whenever and wherever he
chanced to die; and her will provided that her fortune should be
appropriated as the nucleus of a relief fund for indigent painters.

Her own pictures, to which she had carefully affixed in delicate
violet ciphers the name "Agla," she directed placed on exhibition in a
New York gallery, and ultimately sold for the benefit of the orphans
of artists. To Robert she bequeathed a sum sufficient to maintain him
in ease and comfort; and to Dr. Grey her escritoire, piano, books, and
the sapphire ring she had always worn.

The latter was found