Greece, in her serene,
marble perfectness of form and feature; and the lovely Mollie Cairns,
her cousin, small, dark, and sparkling--both under the care of that
stately gentleman, their uncle, Julius Severe, of Savannah; and there
were the sisters Percy, twins in age and appearance, with voices like
brook-ripples, and eyes like wood-violets, and feet of Chinese
minuteness and French perfection--the darlings and only joys of a mother
still beautiful, though sad in her widowhood, and gentle as the dove
that mourns its mate.

There was the brilliant Ralph Maxwell, whose jests, stinging and
slight, just glanced over the surface of society without inflicting a
wound, even as the skater's heel glides over ice, leaving its mark as it
goes, yet breaking no crust of frost; and there was the poetic dreamer
Dartmore, with his large, dark eyes, and moonlight face, and manner of
suffering serenity, on his way to put forth for fame, as he fondly
believed, his manuscript epic on the "Sorrows of the South."

All these, and more, were there gathering about the leader of their
home-society, on that alien deck, as securely as though they were
sitting in her own drawing-room at "Berthold," on one of her brilliant
reception-evenings.

How could they know--how could they dream the truth--or descry the
hidden skeleton at the festival, wreathed in flowers and veiled with
glittering, filmy draperies, which yet put forth its bony fingers to
beckon on and clutch them?

I too was joyous and unconscious as the rest, and for the first time for
many days felt the burden literally heaved rather than lifted away that
had oppressed me.

Was I not on my way to him in whose presence alone I lived my true life?
and what feeling of his morbid fancy was there that my hand could not
smooth away, when once entwined in his? Beauseincourt, and all its
shadows, had I not put behind me? The sunshine lay before, and in its
light and warmth I should still rejoice, as it was my birthright to do.

I was "fey" that night, as the Scotch say, when an unaccountable
lightness of mood precedes a heavy sorrow, which it so often does, as
well as the more usual mood, the presage of gloom. I felt that I had the
power to put aside all ills--to grapple with my fate, and compel back
my lost happiness. Truly my bosom's lord sat lightly on her throne, as
of late it had not been her wont to do.

Against my inclination had I been drawn into the current of that
youthful gayety