la, it is unnecessary to say, had confided her entire past life
to Himself after a few hours' acquaintance, while both he and Ronald,
concealing in the most craven manner their original objections to the
part she proposed to play in our triangular alliance, thanked her, with
tears in their eyes, for her devotion to their sovereign ladies.

We had tea in the Italian garden at Rosnaree, and Dr. Gerald, arm in arm
with Himself, walked between its formal flower borders, along its paths
of golden gravel, and among its spirelike cypresses and fountains, where
balustrades and statues, yellowed and stained with age (stains which
Benella longs to scrub away), make the brilliant turf even greener by
contrast.

Tea was to have been followed in due course by dinner, but we all agreed
that nothing should induce us to go indoors on such a beautiful evening;
so baskets were packed, and we went in rowboats to a picnic supper on
Illanroe, a wee island in Lough Beg.

I can close my eyes to-day and see the picture--the lonely little lake,
as blue in the sunshine as the sky above it, but in the twilight first
brown and cool, then flushed with the sunset. The distant hills, the
rocks, the heather, wore tints I never saw them wear before. The singing
wavelets 'spilled their crowns of white upon the beach' across the lake,
and the wild-flowers in the clear shallows near us grew so close to the
brink that they threw their delicate reflections in the water, looking
up at us again framed in red-brown grasses.

By and by the moon rose out of the pearl-greys and ambers in the east,
bevies of black rooks flew homeward, and stillness settled over the face
of the brown lake. Darkness shut us out from Devorgilla; and though we
could still see the glimmer of the village lights, it seemed as if we
were in a little world of our own.

It was useless for Salemina to deny herself to the children, for was
she not going to leave them on the morrow? She sat under the shadow of
a thorn bush, and the two mites, tired with play, cuddled themselves by
her side, unreproved. She looked tenderly, delectably feminine. The moon
shone full upon her face; but there are no ugly lines to hide, for there
are no parched and arid places in her nature. Dews of sympathy, sweet
spring floods of love and compassion, have kept all fresh, serene, and
young.

We had been gay, but silence fell upon us as it had fallen upon the
lake. There would be only a day or two in Dublin, w