the sight of the eye that is strained, and the touch of the hand that is stretched to discover them. And yet to be master of these is all that can make life worth having. *

*

X

*

X * So be it then, at last! Here, where to reason is to be unreasonable, where sense is nonsense, and all is fatality or frenzy, what farther can I fear? or why should I scruple to ally Passion to Superstition, weakness to weakness?

"On this lost ring will I stake all that my life has left to win or lose. If I find it-and find it I mustthen hear me for once and forever, you sightless ministers to man! and be this ring the first link in the indissoluble chain wherewith to bind her-ay, though it be forged on the anvils of Hell! I can no more, nor otherwise."

CHAPTER VII.

DRIFTING.

JULIET TO THERESA.

Extracts.

"FARE thee hence, and fare thee well, thou Unknown Bridegroom! *

X Superstition, my Theresa, comes in aid of thine admonitions. My fate is fixed. A maid I remain, for I have lost my marriage ring.

*

"We were playing at ball there. And, the better to hold my racket, I drew the ring from my finger, and put it into my handkerchief, which I had left on the pedestal of the great sphinx that Edmond has had placed in the bowling-alley. Afterward we made up a boating party on the water, and walked home by moonlight through the woods. I thought no more about my ring. But later in the evening, when we were all together in the drawing-room, I noticed that the ring was not on my finger, and immediately ran up stairs to my bedroom to fetch the handkerchief in which I remembered having tied it up. I found the handkerchief where I had left it on the toilet-table, and shook it out very carefully. A little night-moth fluttered, frightened, out of the folds of it, and burnt his pretty velvet wings in the flame of my candle, into which he foolishly flung himself. I think it may have been one of those little sphinx-moths of which,

as you know, there are in summer-time so many, and such pretty ones, about here. But I am not the less convinced that the moth was my betrothed. The magic ring must have secretly changed itself into that delicate, rash lover; for it was no longer in my handkerchief, and has not since been found.

"I have made up this fairy tale to fit my own fancy as you see, and choose rather to believe myself the widow of a butterfly than to accept any of the more prosaic conjectures of all the others here, who still insist in hunting for the lost ring in every nook and corner tripped over, my Theresa, by the footstep of thy thoughtless friend. Thoughtless? yes. I have been so. And now I reproach myself severely, not for having lost the ring, but for having joked too lightly and too loudly about the loss of it.

"The fact is, I was vexed to see all the world sprawling about on the ground to look for my missing treasure. So I cried out, 'Oh pray don't make such a fuss about it. "Tis quite useless. Don't you know that the ring is an enchanted one, and that it is destined to chain me indissolubly to him from whose hand I shall one day receive it? Now it has spirited itself away, and 'tis no use looking for it; it will only reveal itself to him whom I myself am fated to belong to for time and eternity. All this is written in the stars.'

"And these silly words were as indelicate as they were thoughtless, Theresa; for I noticed at once that Edmond looked hurt and pained to think I could so lightly console myself for the loss of a gift which he had given me with words, no doubt, inspired by a se

rious and brotherly concern for all that might affect my future. Thanks be to my good stars, however, the fatal ring has vanished. I persist in believing that the fairies have changed it into my little winged bridegroom; and that ill-fated one has been his own executioner, and roasted himself alive in the candle of his now disconsolate bride."

EXTRACT FROM THE JOURNAL OF COUNT EDMOND R

"Lost! irretrievably, irrevocably lost!

*

"And all has been in vain! Man, impuissant in the plenitude of his powers, can not, then, with the utmost faculties of his soul-with keenest effort of his will-succeed in commanding the smallest of those blind and miserable chances that aimlessly sport with his destiny? We are mocked! We are mocked!

*

*

"In that cold moment of time when the rising sun first touched with his pale beam me and the labor of my long, dark hours, I sickened at the sight and the smell of the fresh black earth upturned at my feet, and I shuddered at the imagination of my own image; for I seemed to be the spectre of myself hovering over the grave of my hope.

* "Yes! I am henceforth the living grave of a hope that is dead forever. Gods! gods! gods! do you look on at all this? And must we, too, live on thus, knowing that you know it and are not sad? And not any where, any where, any help

-neither in Heaven nor in Hell! We are mocked!

*

Yesterday, to-day, this morning, an hour ago-an age ago-Hope lived. But when he--and he ever, and still ever he !-he that had not moved a hand, nor stirred a foot-oh heaven and earth! .... when the ring which it had robbed from mine, his Evil Genius and my own dropped into his loose, idle hand, then the deathblow flashed in my eyes and fell. * * Dead! Hope is dead.

"No more praying. What have we prayed for? Let the angels go back to their Heaven empty-handed as they leave us to our earth.

*

Night every where, and forever.

waste.

*

"Night on my eyes, night in my soul. And in this darkness there is no light but the lurid sparkle of that hateful amethyst. * * It comes and goes, and passes and returns, like a marsh fire on the And They follow it— troops of them in the wicked glare. And I see the grinning of the demon faces on the dark, and I feel the groping and the clutching of the demon hands about the hollows of my heart. * My heart? Is this a heart, this chaos? Felix! Felix! thou-and why thou?-of all others. on this mad and miserable earth? Thou only? and still ever Thou !”

*

*