her. Why, he was going to see her! Was he not? Cecil Carteret lifted the pen and dipped it in the ink. No, of course not! The old subtle fascination seemed to breathe up from the scented sheet. Yes, he certainly would. They exchanged two or three billets, and all was arranged. He was going to-day to see the girl whom he had once loved almost too well-for as a girl he could not give up thinking of her; a slight slip, who should run to meet him in her yachting-dress of blue-and-white-he had seen her once in some such in a ballet. He took the Long Island Railroad, and was whirled on down, far off to a sleepy little town nestling in a cunning cove of the lower bay. He found the rowboat from the Fidèle awaiting him at the shore; out in the deep water, riding on the sun-touched waves, he beheld the Fidèle herself, a thing of beauty, surely, large and exquisitely proportioned; white, with a glittering gilt figurehead, with sails snowy as the breasts of swans, with more sailors, like this one who was ferrying him over, in white-and-yellow uniform, their golden buttons and hatbands shining in the light. "The princess had crossed the ocean in her yacht, so it was a craft of some size, and of wonderful speed," so spoke the sailor, and they were drawing near, nearer; a few strokes more and they were alongside the Fidèle, and in another moment Cecil Carteret stepped on board. The decks were spotless, with white-and-yellow awnings, with their fringes of bullion, hang over luxurious divans upholstered in white-and-gold, the cushions emblazoned with an eagle and wild dog, the crest of the Kartoryskas. No one was to be seen. As by magic the crew had disappeared, the tiny rowboat was not visible. Cecil stood like a man in a dream, listening to the plash of the waters breaking at the prow, and filled with a vague sorrow that she had not come to meet him in the pretty yachtingdress. Hark! mingling with the plash of the waves, there breaks upon his ear the soft, melancholy swell of a violin, and then the firm undertones of the harp, the bird-like notes of a flute. Slowly, like the measured plash of the waters at first, anon swelling into the sweet, so sweet melody of one of Strauss's waltzes. Is he dreaming? But no, a door opens, and a staid, elderly woman advances toward him, and with a low bow says: "Madame awaits monsieur within the saloon." So "monsieur," feeling very much as if he were in a trance, followed the attendant's gesture and entered the saloon. She sat upon a low divan, amid downy-white cushions, with their golden tassels and crests-a woman-as curiously beautiful as she had been ten years ago; the lissome figure was more fully developed, but no more rounded; there was the same marble purity, and there were the same wonderful eyes, shining like burning stars upon him. She rose, and came forward to meet her guest. Alas! not with the playful grace of the little girl he used to know in the yachting-dress, but with the sinuous and halfproclaimed abandon of the woman of the world, the woman of "society," statuesque in the clinging morning-robe of creamy cashmere, with its yellow broideries. his usual grace of manner and speech. "I find the Princess Kartoryska, and that kind of woman that your lady. ship's mirror must long since have told you she is." "Bravissimo!" she cries, putting out a hand to pat his dark head; but she knows not why. Surely Cecil Carteret did not shrink from her touch? The slender brown hand falls instead to playing with the long braids of her black hair. "And am I changed?" "Not a whit!" she cries, quickly, glancing with passionately admiring eyes at the faultless face so near her own. "And yet," adds the princess, "you are-Cecil, you are not yourself. What is it? What has life done for you since we parted in Paris? I know nothing of you, absolutely-tell me." "What has life done for me? What it does for most men, I presume-neither more nor less. I am rich as the world goes; I am” "Are you happy?" There is a wild, impatient ring to her voice as she leans toward him; an eager despair, as though for the first time the dim suspicion that her old lover might hold those dead, dear days as the dust of idle pleasuring, was creeping to shatter the new joy she had sailed over seas to find. "Happy !"-for an instant, as he repeats her word, his eyes are looking off across the blue bay, and surely the shadow of happiness shines in their depths. With a little sigh and a boyish flush he turns again to her, and in that movement it is as if Cecil Carteret put something behind him - gave himself up to this woman's siren will. "Happy! Vashti, am not I with you ?" Most voices have said this, and it would have been sweet from most in the ears of most loving women; but this voice of Cecil Carteret was one of those full, luscious voices one fancies the archangels must have. The Princess Kartoryska has risen from her drowsy lounge; she stands erect like some goddess by him, her two arms about his head as some victorious wreath, her scarlet lips fall full on his in one kiss that savors to her of heaven. And he?—that boyish flush for a moment crimsons all his face, and then, with an odd, desperate sigh, he folds her in his arms. * "Vashti, Vashti ! why did you send for me?" The yacht of the Princess Kartoryska lay at anchor off the Branch; the princess herself, who had come ashore with two or three maids and two or three monstrous trunks, had established herself at the West End. And Cecil Carteret took occasion to run down about every other afternoon-in fact, Cecil's club friends began to chaff him most unmercifully, and the affair was town-talk generally at least, so much of town as was in town in August. Cecil smiled, and made some weak remonstrances, "Old friend," "Boy and girl together," etc.; but there was a queer, haunted look in his eyes that never used to be there -a feverish, dissatisfied look; and he had odd, nervous ways with him nowadays, and seemed to be uneasy and restless whenever any one else, no matter whom, man or woman, was in conversation with Vashti. "Did he love her?" It was a question the princess asked herself a hundred times a day; 'tis true there would "Cecil-ah! Cecil, am I, then, so changed that you do be outbursts of feeling now and then-desperate gusts of not know me-Vashti ?" passionate demonstration; but were they not rather the answer of a generous nature to the wild call of her own ?— had the Princess Kartoryska lost a tithe of that old bewitching power that used to wile men from their homes and keep them at her side, as it were, against their wills, in the days when she was only Vashti Yorke? Who knows She had been walking up and down the broad piazza with him; off at sea the twenty blue-true blue-lights of the Fidèle twinkled distinguishable among the other craft. The strains of the band came sweet and strong from the ballroom, where most of the people were. The spell of the night, the music, the salt, soft air was upon her, had steeped her sensuous nature to the full. They stopped as by common inclination, and sat down beside each other on a settee under one of the windows, und neither spoke any word-neither noted the fair young woman who stood at the casement above them, whose blue, intent eyes were almost deathlike in their wide, downward stare. "Oh, my Cecil!" Vashti Yorke slipped down at his feet in the moonlight, and all her soft velvet draperies fell about her, and the diamonds on her throat and arms flashed scintillating splendor in his eyes. "Cecil, Cecil, say once, just onee, that you love me !" The lithe arms twined about him in an agonizing clasp as he tried to raise her. "No, no. Let me lie here. Let me beg for it as some slave might a boon of his master. I have hungered and thirsted for it, Cecil, and you never have said it once." The tone was low, but piercing in its intensity, and the look on her pallid face was one that Cecil Carteret remembered until he saw another there, more full of awe in its solemnity and sad incomprehensibleness. "Cecil-Mr. Carteret !" "My God !" Cecil Carteret starts to his feet and pushes Vashti Yorke from him in a kind of spurning scorn. They have both heard that low, clear voice calling his name, but they neither of them see the speaker; she is standing just above them in that window, and she meets Cecil Cateret along the eastern corridor, and laughs with a shy joy as she touches his hand with hers. "I came down for a surprise, Cecil, and I know you don't like surprises, nor do I; but I couldn't resist the temptation." "I am glad you didn't." He says it with a queer, fierce gladness in his tone. "Oh, Cecil, will you introduce me to this beautiful Russian-this Princess Kartoryska ?" There is an odd, breathless anxiety in the girlish voice. "Yes, I will." Cecil Carteret glances down at the fair, innocent face so near him. "You haven't kissed me, Mabel-will you ?" "My lord has learned to ask for favors," she answers, smiling; "how long since? Of course you may kiss me. And he does-presses one soft touch of his lips on her forehead. "The princess is right here. I will introduce you now." They turn the angle of the corridor. Vashti Yorke is sitting there in the pallid moon's light, her lithe body stretched out, and the velvets falling around her, and the gems gleaming in the dusk-like some queen in her ruined state. of the yacht and enjoyment of its luxuries, and the ex- She has placed Mabel Carteret at the foot of the table, and Cecil is at her right. Mabel is laughing and chatting with the gentlemen at either side of her. Is there a faintly nervous tremor through the young wife's langu and talk, or is it the contrast with the hostess's superb repose? "Cecil"- she calls him so quite quietly, with a little flash of defiance, maybe, in her dark eyes as they meet Mabel's blue and steady ones-"Cecil, will you hand me those peaches?" Alton reaches over quickly to supply her want. "No, thanks, captain; I asked Mr. Carteret to hand them to me, and I feel despotic to-night-like humoring my own slightest whim. Don't you think I should, Cecil ?" turning to him, and glancing choosingly at the dish of fruit he offers; "because this is my last day in America." "Your last day in America, princess ?" comes regret fully from twenty pairs of lips. She inclines her head. "Thanks. Mr. Carteret, will you peel me this one?" She hands him a golden knife that lies beside her plate, and Cecil deftly strips off the velvet coat, and cuts the large ripe fruit into dainty quarters for her. "Thank you, Cecil." Upon him flashes the dark and wondrous splendor of her eyes as she eats the peach. "Yes, my last day in America. To-morrow I shall be far enough away from you all." But upon Cecil Carteret alone does she look. "Long ago, mes amis, I was young and pretty, and a danseuse in another country. I threw away the heart that loved me that I loved-and gave myself to Prince Kartoryska. I came back to my country to find my love; I found him, had him," her great eyes flash a languid fire toward fair-haired Mabel, “heard his voice, kissed his lips and hands, but, mes amis, I could not find his heart." There is despair and desolation in the voice, and on the pallid face, where dark-gray shadows gather -- shadows that shall quench for ever the witching light of eyes divine in darkness. The guests start from their seats; but before one of them can reach her, Vashti Yorke is "far enough away from them all," verily. Cecil Carteret catches her in his arms, but the warm enfoldment meets with but the coldness of death-death that he had dealt her all unconsciously. dy"It was discovered that the golden knife with which one of the guests had cut a peach at the banquet of the Princess Kartoryska on board her yacht, the Fidèle, had been previously dipped in a deadly poison. Of this peach the princess had partaken, death ensuing almost immediately a most determined and romantic suicide." So said the newspaper reports. "Princess Kartoryska, allow me to present to you my wife." In those two words there is enough of tender, proud possession to satisfy any woman; Cecil Carteret stands leaning on the balustrade with folded arms, staring at these two women talking together, and like scales from his eyes falls off the old delusion, the olden fascination of the fiery eyes in the face of marble. Mabel Carteret never related to her husband what she had heard that night in the corridor at the West End, and Cecil Carteret, as he folds his young wife to his breast, shakes off the tragic memory of Vashti Yorke, as if it were some poisonous nightmare. ALL is hollow where the heart bears rot a part, and all is in peril where principle is not its guide. THE EARTH'S TREELESS REGION. EY PROF. J. D. WHITNEY. THE earth's surface presents itself for study and observation with a wonderful variety of form and character. In the first place, we find, as we travel over it, that we have to accustom ourselves to great changes of temperature; the range-as measured by the Fahrenheit thermometer-to which the traveler may be exposel, between the burning sands of the Desert of Sahara and the regions of the frozen north, being as much as 200 degrees. Even to one remaining on the same spot, it may, as the seasons vary, reach fully three-fourths of that amount. The most rapid of what we call the landscape. These varieties of surface may exist in any latitude; but their whole character is liable to be profoundly modified by climate, which not only manifests itself to our feelings, but influences the whole character of vegetable as well as of animal life, although the latter does not form properly a part of the landscape itself. The form of the surface depends chiefly on the character of the underlying rocks, and the diversities of condition to which these have been subjected during the lapse of the change of climate may, however, be made by rising or descending in altitude. A few hours' climb will carry the traveler from a tropical heat to eternal snow and ice. The change from a very moist to an exceedingly dry climate is another familiar experience of every person who has given a moderately wide range to his journeyings. Diversity of surface is another and an important element in the sum-total of impressions made upon the mind as any particular region of country is looked upon by even the least reflective traveler. The manifold varieties of form which exhibit themselves in plain, valley, gorge, cliff and precipice, make up one of the essential elements geological periods. Rocks, however, both in form and character, repeat themselves all over the world. The most skillful geologist could not, if dropped at random any. where on the earth's surface, place himself, or make out approximately in what region he was, from an examinatron of the rocks alone. If these, however, contained fossils, he might, in many cases, be essentially aided in his endeavor to ascertain his whereabouts by their study; for although there is a wonderful resemblance, in not a few instances, between the extinct faunas of different regions, this resemblance rarely amounts to identity. such an investigation of the fossil forms of any district Moreover, |