she is beautiful, clever, elevated by her intelligence
far above some of my own order. She has caressing ways, too, when it
pleases her to assume them, and a look out of those almond-shaped eyes
when she is pleased or grieved, that troubles even me with painful
admiration. No, if money can buy her she shall be out of her thraldom,
and happy as a bird, but only on condition that she flies away to her
own country, or stays in this after we leave it. Strive as I will for
charity, nothing on earth, I do think, will ever make me like that girl
even as a servant.

"Our steamboat is just now turning into the mouth of the Guadalquiver.
What strange, barren-looking things are these Spanish castles! Their
walls, of a dull, yellowish red, seem more like an upheaving of the soil
itself, than massive stone piled up by the labor of man. They are bare,
too, of the rich vines and tremulous leafage which makes the ruins of
Italy so picturesque, and those of England so grand in their decay. Here
is a massive building on our right, full of historic interest, I dare
say, and it may be rich in Moorish embellishments if I could see the
interior; but at this distance it looks bleak and barren as a prison. My
own vague 'castles in Spain' are ten thousand times more beautiful.

"I said this to James Harrington as he came and stood beside me on the
deck.

"'Oh,' he answered with a sigh, 'Who of us does not build air castles
only to see them vanish into mist. As you say, mine have been more
beautiful than that heap of stones. After all, architecture is severely
perfect, which Nature does not claim after it leaves the hand of its
constructor. The struggle which she makes to draw art back into her own
bosom, is always beautiful.'

"Thus he will talk to me for hours, but never of himself. What have I
done that we are driven so far apart,--that he so studiously turns his
eyes away when mine question him with unconscious
earnestness,--unconscious till some look of his reminds me that for a
moment I have been off my guard. Then I grow angry with myself, and
avoid him with what must seem to him childish caprice. Does he
understand all that I think and suffer? Does he know how that day among
the water lilies haunts my memory?"

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

THE EATON FAMILY.

"There is an American family on board--some persons whom the Harringtons
have met before in the South, and who have attempted to renew the
acquaintance. The old people seem to