, there would be no comfort if I
were not sure that if aught of grief or pain should come to you through
me, it will not, cannot really hurt you, my Amy.'

'No, unless by my own fault, and you will help me to meet it. Hark! was
that a nightingale?'

'Yes, the first! How beautiful! There--don't you see it? Look on that
hazel, you may see its throat moving. Well!' when they had listened for
a long time,--'after all, that creature and the sea will hardly let one
speak of gloom, even in this world, to say nothing of other things.

'The sea! I am glad I have never seen it, because now you will show it
to me for the first time.'

'You will never, can never imagine it, Amy! and he sung,--

'With all tones of waters blending,
Glorious is the breaking deep,
Glorious, beauteous, without ending,
Songs of ocean never sleep.'

A silence followed, only broken by the notes of the birds, and presently
by the strokes of the great clock. Guy looked at his watch.

'Eleven, Amy! I must go to my reading, or you will have to be very much
ashamed of me.'

For, after the first few days, Guy had returned to study regularly every
day. He said it was a matter of necessity, not at all of merit, for
though he did not mean to try for honours, Amy must not marry a plucked
man. His whole career at Oxford had been such a struggle with the
disadvantages of his education, that all his diligence had, he thought,
hardly raised him to a level with his contemporaries. Moreover,
courtship was not the best preparation for the schools, so that
though he knew he had done his best, he expected no more than to pass
respectably, and told Amy it was very good of her to be contented with a
dunce, whereat she laughed merrily. But she knew him too well to try to
keep him lingering in the April sunshine, and in they went, Guy to his
Greek, and Amy to her mother. Charlotte's lessons had been in
abeyance, or turned over to Laura of late, and Mrs. Edmonstone and her
dressing-room were always ready for the confidences of the family, who
sought her there in turn--all but one, and that the one whose need was
the sorest.

Amy and her mother comforted themselves with a good quiet cry, that was
not exactly sorrowful, and came to the conclusion that Guy was the most
considerate person in the world, and they would do whatever best suited
him and papa. So, when Mr. Edmonstone came home, he was rewarded for
putting off the lette