tically murmured, without moving
round.

'What?'

'A cyclone in the sun.'

The lady paused, as if to consider the weight of that event in the scale
of terrene life.

'Will it make any difference to us here?' she asked.

The young man by this time seemed to be awakened to the consciousness
that somebody unusual was talking to him; he turned, and started.

'I beg your pardon,' he said. 'I thought it was my relative come to look
after me! She often comes about this time.'

He continued to look at her and forget the sun, just such a reciprocity
of influence as might have been expected between a dark lady and a flaxen-
haired youth making itself apparent in the faces of each.

'Don't let me interrupt your observations,' said she.

'Ah, no,' said he, again applying his eye; whereupon his face lost the
animation which her presence had lent it, and became immutable as that of
a bust, though superadding to the serenity of repose the sensitiveness of
life. The expression that settled on him was one of awe. Not unaptly
might it have been said that he was worshipping the sun. Among the
various intensities of that worship which have prevailed since the first
intelligent being saw the luminary decline westward, as the young man now
beheld it doing, his was not the weakest. He was engaged in what may be
called a very chastened or schooled form of that first and most natural
of adorations.

'But would you like to see it?' he recommenced. 'It is an event that is
witnessed only about once in two or three years, though it may occur
often enough.'

She assented, and looked through the shaded eyepiece, and saw a whirling
mass, in the centre of which the blazing globe seemed to be laid bare to
its core. It was a peep into a maelstrom of fire, taking place where
nobody had ever been or ever would be.

'It is the strangest thing I ever beheld,' she said. Then he looked
again; till wondering who her companion could be she asked, 'Are you
often here?'

'Every night when it is not cloudy, and often in the day.'

'Ah, night, of course. The heavens must be beautiful from this point.'

'They are rather more than that.'

'Indeed! Have you entirely taken possession of this column?'

'Entirely.'

'But it is my column,' she said, with smiling asperity.

'Then are you Lady Constantine, wife of the absent Sir Blount
Constantine?'

'I am Lady Constantine.'

'Ah, then I agree that it is your ladyship's. But will you a