PART III.

_SEA AND SHORE_.

CHAPTER I.

It was a calm and hazy morning of Southern summer that on which I turned
my face seaward from the "keep" of Beauseincourt, never, I knew, to see
its time-stained walls again, save through the mirage of memory. There
is an awe almost as solemn to me in a consciousness like this as that
which attends the death-bed parting, and my straining eye takes in its
last look of a familiar scene as it might do the ever-to-be-averted face
of friendship.

The refrain of Poe's even then celebrated poem was ringing through my
brain on that sultry August day, I remember, like a tolling bell, as I
looked my last on the gloomy abode of the La Vignes; but I only said
aloud, in answer to the sympathizing glances of one who sat before
me--the gentle and quiet Marion--who had suddenly determined to
accompany me to Savannah, nerved with unwonted impulse:

"Madame de Stael was right when she said that 'nevermore' was the
saddest and most expressive word in the English tongue" (so harsh to her
ears, usually). "I think she called it the sweetest, too, in sound; but
to me it is simply the most sorrowful, a knell of doom, and it fills my
soul to-day to overflowing, for 'never, never more' shall I look on
Beauseincourt!"

"You cannot tell, Miss Harz, what _time_ may do; you may still return to
visit us in our retirement, you and Captain Wentworth," urged Marion,
gently, leaning forward, as she spoke, to take my hand in hers.

"'Time the tomb-builder'" fell from my lips ere they were aware. "That
is a grand thought--one that I saw lately in a Western poem, the
New-Year's address of a young editor of Kentucky called Prentice. Is it
not splendid, Marion?"

"Very awful, rather," she responded, with a faint shudder. "Time the
'comforter,' let us say, instead, Miss Miriam--Time the
'veil-spreader.'"

"Why, Marion, you are quite poetic to-day, quite Greek! That is a sweet
and tender saying of yours, and I shall garner it. I stand reproved, my
child. All honor to Time, the _merciful_, whether he builds palaces or
tombs! but none the less do I reverence my young poet for that
stupendous utterance of his soul. I shall watch the flight of that
eaglet of the West with interest from this hour! May he aspire!"

"Not if he is a Jackson Democrat?" broke in the usually gentle Alice
Durand, fired with a ready defiance of all heterodox policy, common, if
not peculiar, to that region.

"Oh, but he is not;