it no longer. She sent for John.

"John," said she, "I am getting uneasy about Miss Lorton. I wish you
would walk along the beach and meet her. It is too late for her to be
out alone."

John departed on his errand, and Zillah felt a sense of relief at
having done something, but this gave way to renewed anxiety as time
passed, and they did not appear. At length, after what seemed an age
to the suffering girl, John returned, but alone.

"Have you not found her?" Zillah almost shrieked.

"No, miss," said the man, in a pitying tone.

"Then why did you come back?" she cried. "Did I not tell you to go on
till you met her?"

"I went as far as I could, miss."

"What do you mean?" she asked, in a voice pitched high with terror.

The man came close up to her, sympathy and sorrow in his face.

"Don't take on so, miss," said he; "and don't be downhearted. I dare
say she has took the road, and will be home shortly; that way is
longer, you know."

"No; she said she would come by the shore. Why did you not go on till
you met her?"

"Well, miss, I went as far as Lovers' Bay; but the tide was in, and I
could go no farther."

Zillah, at this, turned deadly white, and would have fallen if John
had not caught her. He placed her on the sofa and called Mathilde.

Zillah's terror was not without cause. Lovers' Bay was a narrow inlet
of the sea, formed by two projecting promontories. At low tide a
person could walk beyond these promontories along the shore; but at
high tide the water ran up within; and there was no standing room any
where within the inclosure of the precipitous cliff. At half tide,
when the tide was falling, one might enter here; but if the tide was
rising, it was of course not to be attempted. Several times strangers
had been entrapped here, sometimes with fatal results. The place owed
its name to the tragical end which was met with here by a lover who
was eloping with his lady. They fled by the shore, and came to the
bay, but found that the rising tide had made the passage of the
further ledge impossible. In despair the lover seized the lady, and
tried to swim with her around this obstacle, but the waves proved
stronger than love; the currents bore them out to sea; and the next
morning their bodies were found floating on the water, with their
arms still clasped around one another in a death embrace. Such was
the origin of the name; and the place had always been looked upon by
the people here with a superstit