l her manner the last
evening she was with us, when, although her want of self-regulation was
very apparent, not less so was the native nobleness and purity of her
soul. I could not think of this "unsphered angel wofully astray" without
inward tears that dimmed the vision of my foreboding heart.

Could Lewis mistake her indifference? Could he avoid suffering from it?
Could he, for a moment, accept her conventional expletives in place of
the irrepressible and endearing tokens of a real love? Could he see what
had weaned her from him, and was still, like a baleful star, wiling her
farther and farther on its treacherously lighted path? Could he
see,--feel?--had he a heart? These questions I incessantly asked myself.

In the last days of summer we went with the children to Nantasket Beach.

We had walked to a point of rocks at some distance from the bay, above
which we lodged, and were sitting in the luxury of quiet companionship,
gazing out on the water.

The ineffable, still beauty of Nature, separated from the usual noises
of actual life,--the brilliant effect of the long reaches of color from
the plunging sun, as it dipped, and reappeared, and dipped again, as
loath to leave its field of beauty,--then the still plash against the
rocks, and the subsidence in murmurs of the retiring wave, with all its
gathered treasure of pebbles and shells,--all these sounds and sights of
reposeful life suggested unspeakable thoughts and memories that clung to
silence. We had not been without so much sorrow in life as does not well
afford to dwell on its own images; and we rose to retrace our steps to
the measure of the eternal and significant psalm of the sea.

As we turned away, we both perceived at once a sail in the distance,
against the western sky. It had just rounded the nearest point and was
coming slowly in with a gentle breeze, when it suddenly tacked and put
out to sea again. It had come so near, however, that with our glass we
saw that it was a small boat, holding two persons, and with a single
sail.

Immediately after, a dead calm succeeded the light wind which had before
rippled the distant waves, and we watched the boat, lying as if asleep
and floating lazily on the red water against the blazing sky,--or
rather, itself like a cradle, so pavilioned was it with gorgeous
cloud-curtains, and fit home for the two water-sprites lying in the
slant sunbeams.

Walking slowly borne, we felt the air to be full of oppressive la