the party; and we'll go to the Channel Islands for a blow, { to-morrow, if you're ready."

Pearl, happening to glance up at the moment, saw a slow smile cross Lady Julia's face, as her cousin said these words. It was a very handsome face-a Southern face, almost, in its dark splendor; rich brown hair, and dreary brown eyes-those eyes that can be so kind, as well as so cruel, in their fervor and their fierceness.

"I don't like his cousin," was Pearl's flashing thought. "I hope his aunt, Lady Boynton, will be nicer."

Presently, some one of the guests was asked to sing, and from that moment vocal music became the order of the night. One after another sang; and at length, after a few low-spoken words from her cousin, Lady Julia rose, took a guitar, seated herself on a low chair that Sutherland placed for her, and began that passion-stirring song that Swinburne has written and Molloy has set-"Kissing her Hair."

She sang it wondrously! As the last note died away in the flower-laden air, a murmur arose one of those murmurs that show the hearts of the audience have been touched. Lady Julia moved from her seat, elated, gratified, the queen of the occasion, and Pearl experienced the first throb of jealousy, as she marked how ardently Mr. Sutherland thanked the lovely prima donna. Was it possible that it was really the man who had been devoted to her, to Pearl, for the last three weeks, who was now bending over, and bestowing a rapturous clasp on the taper fingers of the Lady Julia? It was possible-it was a fact! and poor Pearl sickened at the sight.

"Do you sing, Miss Margon ?" Lady Julia asked, presently. And one of Pearl's most injudicious friends, not perceiving how utterly incapable the girl was of singing properly, of doing justice to herself just then, began wildly extolling Miss Margon's vocal powers.

"I only sing little commonplace ballads," Pearl said.

'Well, but we like commonplace ballads," the regal beauty said, putting her hand through her cousin's arm; "don't we, Cecil? Come! add your persuasions to mine, and get Miss Margon to sing to us."

“Do, Pearl,” he whispered, dropping his cousin's hand, and coming nearer to the girl, who was looking at him with all her soul in her eyes. Do, Pearl! to please me!"

She could hardly do it, but she made the effort, conquered herself, and began. A very short song; but there was a world of passion and tenderness-of love and despair and misery-in it. She rang out the last verse with a wild wailing energy that thrilled through more than one heart there'Say, what can I do for thee? Weary thee, grieve thee? Lean on thy shoulder, new burdens to add?

Weep my tears over thee, making thee sad?

Oh! hold me not! love me not! let me retrieve thee! I love thee so dear, that I can only leave thee !" "There's a challenge, Cis," Lady Julia whispered; and poor Pearl heard the whisper, and hated the whisperer. 'Take me home, papa," she said, presently. "I am tired, and I feel ill."

Tired, my child! You tired, Pearl! You don't mean it!" her father said, looking at her wonderingly.

But Pearl reiterated her request-reiterated it hastily, petulantly almost, it appeared; and so the puzzled father, who had, in common with others, fancied that things were on a very fair footing between Pearl and Mr. Sutherland, was obliged to humor her, and make preparations for their departure.

feel publicly snubbed, if you withdraw yourself so early. Pearl! What is the matter?"

And poor Pearl suffered her senses once more to be steeped in the fumes of the drug called Hope, and told him gently

"Is it in my honor, truly? How can you tell me that, when Lady Julia is here ?"

You see, they had advanced toward intimacy sufficiently for her to utter one of those veiled approaches which women are so skilled in uttering.

"Lady Julia Stodart is my cousin," he exclaimed, in a little mournful cadence. "Pearl! what have I done that you want to punish me by going away?" Then he began to sing (he took care to sing it in a whisper):

Stay with me, my darling, stay!

And, like a dream, my life shall pass away."

would, she knew, if she asked him, countermand the boat at once."

"And you'll come on board, and go on this trip with us to-morrow?" he whispered, as, late that night, he leaned over to catch her parting words, pressing her hand with a feverish clasp. "You'll come on board early? Tell me that you will."

Of course, she told him that she would come on board early the following morning-making, at the same time, some proper little reservation about "papa." And then she went off home, quite happy and light-hearted again, with all her doubts and fears respecting Cecil Sutherland melting

away before the memory of the warm words and warmer looks he had given that night. Over and over again she told herself, "He will speak out to-morrow; he must see that I love him; he can't be doubtful of me; he will speak -out to-morrow."

Meanwhile, on board the yacht the following brief colloquy was taking place between the cousins. The last guest was gone, the Countess of Boynton and her daughter, Lady Julia Stodart, were preparing to vanish down into the state sleeping-cabin set apart for them, when Cecil Sutherland said:

"Take one turn up and down with me, Ju.'

And she, thinking there was something strange in his look and manner, obeyed him, though she was very sleepy, and not too apt to accede to any demands that interfered with her own pleasures.

"What's the matter with you, Cecil ?" she said, languidly. "Is it possible that you are really spoony on that very susceptible young person ?—

'Why should we undergo the tedium of listening to congratulations that we shall not value-from people whose good wishes or bad wishes are a matter of utter indifference to us? Be satisfied, Cis; I am.”

her. She could only look at him with dumb agony, and her look was reflected in his face.

"Pearl," he muttered, "for God's sake, forgive me; say you forgive me, my own darling. Oh, Pearl! I am not such a blackguard as I appear. I loved you from the first, and I struggled against my love, but it has mastered me. Can you forgive me?"

"Yes," she murmured. "But you should have told me. Oh, you should have told me!" Then the recollection of how long, and dull, and vapid, her life would be when this love was torn out of it, flashed upon her, and she sank down on a seat, moaning: "What had I done that you should have mocked me so ?"

"Pearl! Pearl! I loved you! You can never blame me as I blame myself. But these words mean nothing. Pearl, look up; it will kill me if you are crushed."

"I am not crushed," the girl said, rising up in a sudden calm way that staggered him. "Was it her wish that I should be kept in the dark?"

She indicated Lady Julia with a look, and Cecil Sutherland nodded assent to her interrogation.

"I

"What a womanly thing to do!" she said, bitterly. wonder if I shall ever have the opportunity of paying the debt I owe her?" Then, seeing that he was looking at her anxiously, with loving concern in his eyes, she said, hastily: Mr. Sutherland, I think I must be half mad. Don't mind my words; they mean nothing, only I'm-very miserable." He would have given a year of his life, then, to fall on his knees before her and clasp her to his heart. But it would

have been worse than crime-it would have been a blunder -to do so, for Lady Julia by this time was watching them with what would have been a sneer on a less pretty face than hers. As it was, it was only a cynical smile.

"Pearl, tell me to do something, or I shall go mad!" he

The next morning, Colonel Margon and Pearl came off early, as they had been entreated to do, and they sailed out of the fair sheltered harbor with a favoring wind. Pearl was intensely happy. It seemed to her that Cecil Sutherland was softer, more tender and lover-like than ever. This manner of his made her so happy, flooding her whole soul with hope as it did, that she scarcely noticed the calmly triumphant, amused smile with which Lady Julia regarded her. "She thinks I am not patrician enough to marry her cousin," Pearl thought. However, if he thinks I am, what need I care for her opinion ?" About twelve o'clock there was a diversion effected, by the introduction of champagne, and chablis, and oysters, and the little group broke up, and rearranged itself. When quiet fell again, Pearl found that Cecil Sutherland and herself were quite apart from the others; and, "Now he will speak out," her prophetic soul told her.

"Pearl!" he began, with a voice that he vainly tried to steady, "I must tell you something now, that I ought perhaps to have told you before; my cousin, Lady Julia, and I, are engaged to be married.”

Can any one of our readers imagine the agony with which she listened to and took in the truth, the words which told her that the one whom she believed to be heart-pledged to herself, was honor-plighted to another? One must have passed through this furnace oneself, in order to comprehend how fiery it is. Poor Pearl! Not all her pure pride could save her from gasping, and betraying how deeply she was cut. Twice she tried to speak, and twice the words failed

"Tell me to

always affect the bronchial tubes in this way? do something," he repeated. "Pearl, don't hate me." "I shall never hate you; and I'll ask you to do this: Let me go home; I mean, let me be landed somewhere, as soon as possible, for I feel ill-very ill. The sea always did disagree with me.”

She wound up with a feeble attempt at concealing the truth from him, that would have been comic had it not been so intensely tragic.

way-there had been so many little subterfuges in the tone All these sentences had been spoken in such a disjointed and manner of their utterance that Lady Julia, watching the conversation from afar, had made nothing of it.

"Miss Pearl is pretty enough to turn a stronger head than Cecil's, when she puts on those little airs and graces," she of the case, turning to her mother as she spoke. observed, with an utter unconsciousness of the real bearings

And Lady Boynton put up her glass, looked at Pearl, and said, kindly :

'Yes; she is pretty; but how pale she has turned! We shall be put back' for Miss Margon before long, if I am not very much mistaken.”

And Lady Boynton was right. Before long, the yacht was put about, and Cecil Sutherland came forward, in an explanatory way, and told them that Miss Margon felt too ill to go on. They must take her back to Sandown.

Il-bred people always get seasick, and cause a fiasco," Lady Julia said, haughtily. 'I can't help it, Cecil; she is ill-bred, or she would suffer all things rather than mar a pleasure-party.”

And then Lady Julia huffed away, with a stately step, to the other side of the deck, where was an awning, and plenty of light literature, and the most comfortable of places reserved for her by a group of admiring friends.

A little cloud, no bigger than a man's hand, had come up a speck on the horizon. The wind had risen, and now, on their homeward way, the yacht was driven before it like chaff before the wind. The girl-poor Pearl-in her newborn misery, never heeded the tempest that was rising above them What did it matter whether the waves ran high or not? What did it matter whether the frail bark that was bearing them, tossed tremblingly on the crest of one wave for a moment, only to be engulfed the next in a bigger, more raging one? What did it matter that the clouds were lowering, and that even the sailors, who had run the gauntlet of many a storm, probably, were shaking their heads? What did anything matter, now that she knew that Cecil Sutherland and herself were divided?

How she loved him! Heavens above us! how she loved that man; and how utterly unworthy he, or any other man that ever lived, is of such wholesale devotion! The glory had gone from the sunshine, and the gloss had gone out of existence, for her, in those few minutes in which he told her how things were between his cousin and himself.

"I must save you both, or perish forever. I must save you both! Pearl, cling to me?"

How calm she felt now! How-running through the calm—was a vein of surprise at it, and the turn events were taking!

"You must save your cousin; she is to be your wife, you know," she said to the half-maddened man, as the yacht gave a few final frantic plunges, and then began to break up. "You must save her!" she cried. And then Cecil Sutherland found himself striking off, without either woman.

He was picked up at last by a boat, and carried to the shore, close to Sandown; and then a sympathetic crowd assembled, to watch and wait for the other hapless ones who had gone out full of life and health, and hope and happiness, in the Belle Aurore. The patient, hearty watchers were rewarded by-and-by, by the boat coming in, with the whole of the crew, and a damp and draggled Lady Boynton, and a bereaved-looking old man, whom his townsfolk had much difficulty in recognizing as Colonel Margon. And then the crowd broke up and dispersed, for they could not hopc against hope that the tide would cast up more.

After a time, tidings reached them that the waves had ren

And so the dream was wholly o'er, and she could never hope or expect to be Mrs. Cecil Sutherland. How she hated herself, poor child, for having been deficient in that so-called proper feeling which should have saved her from betraying to him how intensely dear he was to her!

"Oh, my love! my love!" she sighed to herself as she sat, silent and stony, by her father's side. Oh, more mine than hers, even now! How can I give him up to her!"

A wild wind rose up and followed them, beating them about remorselessly; and at last Lady Boynton remonstrated, not exactly with the wind for blowing, nor with Cecil for suffering it to blow, but with both the wind and Cecil, in a polite, meaningless way, that was very pitiful at this juncture. For this was no stage-storm; no little tempest in a teapot, that would simply act as an appetizer. They were in great danger. And soon they all knew it.

How differently the thought of rapidly approaching death affects us poor creatures! For my own part, I am free to confess that the mighty awfulness of it crushes all ill-feeling toward my fellow-worms out of my heart. I am oppressed with such a magnitude of terror, that I dare not do more or less than bend beneath the weight of it.

And so, this being the case, I can sympathize with the abrupt transition Pearl made, from indifference to horror. It had come upon her. Death had come upon her! Death to her and to her rival; and, oh, how infinitely dear life was,

after all!

Dumb with terror, the poor girl fell on her knees, and prayed as she had never prayed before. But an hour ago a little hour ago—and she had almost prayed for death, for annihilation, for anything that would carry her away from the consciousness of the overwhelming evil it was, that Lady Julia should rob her of Cecil Sutherland. And now they were all in peril together. She was being revenged! And, oh! how piteously she prayed for life, and time, and grace!

Was it a cloud? Was it land? Was it the end of all things? There was a crash somewhere, and she found herself on a height, looking down on a mass of white, terrified faces. They were launching a boat, and she was refusing to go in it, because all could not go. Suddenly the boat was pushed off, and the yacht was beginning to settle down. And she and Lady Julia, and Sutherland were together. What frantic words were those he uttered in those supreme moments ?

off in a wild burst, hardly knowing what they hoped to find, but longing for excitement; and when they came to the bank of sand that was the stage whereon the scene was set, they found just this :

A long and slender plank, with one living woman bound to it, and a dead one. And the living woman was Lady Julia Stodart; and the saving bonds that held her to the plank that had brought her, beaten and bruised, but in safety still, to the beach, were tresses of Pearl Margon's hair.

This was Pearl Margon's revenge. When destruction was imminent, and death was upon them, all the woman reasserted itself in her pure, brave young soul.

"I thought she was mad at first,” Ju said, when describing the scene to Cecil Sutherland, "I thought she was mad at first, when she began to clip off her great coils of hair; but when she came to me and told me, so quickly and so clearly, that binding me to the plank was the only way to save me, I thought her mad no longer, but an angel." “And so she is an angel," he said, huskily.

Cis, did you love her very much ?”

“Not so much as she loved me," he said, frankly. “But I sorrow for her more than I could have sorrowed for her, if it had been the other way."

"Ah! you're a man; there's the difference," Julia said, reflectively. "Poor Pearl! she loved you, so well, that she took the sweet revenge on you of saving me. died, instead of Pearl, what would you have done? No; Cecil, if I had don't tell me! don't tell me! Oh, Cis! if we ever have a child, let us pray that it will never enter into an engagement with a cousin for family reasons. carried so heavy a heart for a woman who might have cut I never thought to have me out, as I carry for Pearl to-day.”

There is a little grave in Sandown churchyard that is always bright with flowers. Children come there every Autumn, and lay wreaths tenderly and reverently upon it; and a stately lady guides them to it, and tells them, standing there, in a sweet voice that is both sad and loving, the solemn story of the loss of the Belle Aurore. They know it by heart already, but they like to hear it afresh every year. And they gather daisies from her grave and give them to their father, and hear from him, over and over again, but always with keen interest, what a lovely girl this was whe saved their mother's life.

So this was Pearl's revenge; and it was worthy of her.