away and disappeared,
closing a door behind her.

His hat had rolled out of sight, and as he searched hurriedly for it,
Mrs. Waul spoke from her distant recess:

"General Laurance will find his hat between the ottoman and the
window."

The winding walks of the Villa were comparatively deserted, when Mrs.
Orme began to pace slowly to and fro beneath the trees, whose foliage
swayed softly in the mild evening air. When the few remaining groups
had passed beyond her vision, she threw back the long thick veil that
had effectually concealed her features, and approaching the parapet
that overhung the sea, sat down. Removing her hat and veil, she
placed them beside her on the seat, and resting her hands on the iron
railing, bowed her chin upon them, and looked out upon the sea
murmuring at the foot of the wall.

The flush and sparkle of an hour ago had vanished so utterly, that it
appeared incredible that colour, light, and dimples could ever wake
again in that frozen face, over whose rigid features brooded the calm
of stone.

"A woman fair and stately,
But pale as are the dead,"--

she seemed some impassive soulless creature, incapable alike of
remorse or of hope, allured by no future, frightened by no past;
silently fronting at last the one sunless, joyless, dreary goal,
whose attainment had been for years the paramount aim of her stranded
life. The rosy glow of dying day yet lingered in the sky and tinged
the sea, and a golden moon followed by a few shy stars watched their
shining images twinkling in the tremulous water; but the loveliest
object upon which their soft light fell was that lonely, wan,
lilac-robed woman.

So Jephtha's undaunted daughter might have looked, as she saw the
Syrian sun sink below the palms and poppies, knowing that when it
rose once more upon the smiling happy world, her sacrifice would have
been accomplished, her fate for ever sealed; or so perhaps Alcestis
watched the slow-coming footsteps of that dreadful hour, when for her
beloved she voluntarily relinquished life.

To die for those we love were easy martyrdom, but to live in
sacrificial throes fierce as Dirce's tortures, to endure for tedious
indefinite lingering years, jilted by death, demands a fortitude
higher than that of Cato, Socrates, or Seneca.

To all of us come sooner or later lurid fateful hours that bring us
face to face with the pale Parcae; so close that we see the motionless
dista