ve Marble loves a ship so well he
would hardly know how to love a woman."

Lucy made no answer to this indiscreet and foolish speech. Why it was
made, I scarce knew myself; but the heart has its bitter moods, when it
prompts sentiments and declarations that are very little in accordance
with its real impulses. I was so much ashamed of what I had just said,
and, in truth, so much frightened, that, instead of attempting to laugh it
off, as a silly, unmeaning opinion, or endeavouring to explain that this
was not my own way of thinking, I walked on some distance in silence,
myself, and suffered my companion to imitate me in this particular. I have
since had reason to think that Lucy was not pleased at my manner of
treating the subject, though, blessed creature! she had another matter to
communicate, that lay too heavy on her heart, to allow one of her
generous, disinterested nature to think much of anything else.

"Miles," Lucy, at length, broke the silence, by saying--"I wish, I _do_
wish we had not met that other sloop this morning."

I stopped short in the highway, dropped my beautiful companion's arm, and
stood gazing intently in her face, as if I would read her most inmost
thoughts through those windows of the soul, her serene, mild, tender, blue
eyes. I saw that the face was colourless, and that the beautiful lips, out
of which the words that had alarmed me more by their accents than their
direct signification, were quivering in a way that their lovely mistress
could not control. Tears, as large as heavy drops of rain, too, were
trembling on the long silken eye-lashes, while the very attitude of the
precious girl denoted hopelessness and grief!

"This relates to Grace!" I exclaimed, though my throat was so parched, as
almost to choke my utterance.

"Whom, or what else, can now occupy our minds, Miles; I can scarce think
of anything but Grace; when I do, it is to remember that my own brother
has killed her!"

What answer could I have made to such a speech, had my mind been
sufficiently at ease as respects my sister to think of anything else? As
it was, I did not even attempt the vain office of saying anything in the
way of alleviating my companion's keen sense of the misconduct of Rupert.

"Grace is then worse in consequence of this unhappy rencontre?" I
observed, rather than asked.

"Oh! Miles; what a conversation I have had with her, this afternoon! She
speaks, already, more like a being that belongs to the r