and noblest purposes that the future may ever know of me!" His voice ceased, and in the interval of silence which followed, she heard his breath come quickly and felt him shivering as with a chill. He had possessed himself of one of her hands, which gently answered to the pressure of his own; but her lips refused to frame a single word in answer to his appeal, though her eyes-he could not see them-revealed the answer which her glad soul could not disguise. At length he looked up. "Be kind," he whispered. "Say but one word! I will understand, Alice." One word in what one word could she make him understand all that she saw in her heart? In what one word could she combine the acknowledgment of her joy and the confession of her despair? Oh that so felicitous a moment should be darkened by the grief of knowing that it could not last! Already she could hear its funeral note sounding through the silence. A voice came faintly to them; it was calling Mr. Volney for rehearsal. Then a shadow darkened the threshold of the folding doors, and Dorian Rossmore came toward the very corner where they sat. "Mr. Volney !-is this Mr. Volner?" she asked half dubiously. "Yes," he answered. "Are you ready for me, Mrs. Rossmore? I will be there immediately!" He waited until the woman withdrew, then in a hurried whisper, he added to Alice: "I can better bear your silence than a hopeless word, or a rebuke that would pain me yet more deeply. But if you would merely say that you believe my avowal as sincere, and that I need not wholly despair." She lifted her eyes to his with a sad, wistful light in them, and said brokenly: "I believe in your words-implicitly. I-I believe in them religiously, and with all my heart and soul! but oh Mr. Volney, do not-do not hope for more than this!" His only answer was to lift her hand to his lips and kiss it reverently, passionately. Then he went away. When he was quite gone, she pressed her lips to the spot where his own had rested, murmuring as she did so : "Oh, my love, my love! what grim decree of destiny is this? To know that you are mine and I am thine by what seems to be the holy covenant of God, and still to know that at the hand of Providence 'like two cleft rocks, our lives are sundered wide.' Oh, is it just, dear Heaven, that such things should be ?" She went up to her room with hot tears blinding her way; and there she knelt down in the alcove beside her bed, and prayed fervently for wisdom to see the right and for strength to offer up the sacrifice of Thayer's love if, as it seemed to her now, so bitter an obligation lay between herself and duty. Soon after she rose there came a little tap upon her door. "It is only me-Valois. May I come in just for a moment?" said the voice of her friend. "Certainly, come." She was glad there was no light to reveal her tear-stained face, and she strove to make her voice sound calm. "Where are you? Why are you in the dark? May I kneel by you?" "Of course, darling," Alice answered. "Allie," throwing her arms about the slender waist and hiding her face upon the heaving bosom of her friend, "I am very, ve-ry happy, dear! Guess what has happened." "Lieutenant Carruthers has proposed to you?" suggested Alice, as she let her hand stray tenderly over the shorn rings of jet. "No; guess again. "He has declared his love?" The shorn head nestled closer, and Valois heaved a delicious sigh. "Yes," lisped the young girl, "but that is not all; he-he kissed me twice." And so, as far As the universe spreads its flaming wall, CHAPTER XVIII THE CLAP-TRAP The fountain in the odorous garden cast up its silver spray in the gir, and kept a delicious coolness in the midst of the sultry noon. The handmaids almost invariably attended on Ione, who with her freedom of life preserved the most delicate modesty, sat at a little distance; by the feet of Glaucus lay the lyre on which he had been playing to Ione one of his Lesbian airs. The scene-the group before Arbaces was stamped by that peculiar and refined ideality of poesy which we yet, not erroneously, imagine to be the distinction of the ancients. The marble columns, the vases of flowers, the statue, white and tranquil, closing every vista; and above all the two loving forms from which a sculptor might have caught either inspiration or despair! Arbaces pausing for a moment, gazed on the pair. THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. HE curtain rose upon the garden of "Shali THE mar." Overhead stretched a canopy of starry blue, while an invisible light from behind the stage fell subtly over tropical plants, flowers and statues, swathing the scene in a tranquil radiance like that of a mid-summer night's moon. At a short distance from a miniature fountain, which had been ingeniously contrived to play forth a shining spray into the air, and whose basin was flanked with blossoming exotic plants, the Imperial Selim reclined; while about him moved his festive guests, fair maids and radiant ( 148 ) lovers; or loitered, some of them, at the spread board of fruit and wine. In the air floated soft dream-like strains of music-song whose magic measures were accompanied by the guitar; but suddenly above these another voice was So divinely breathed around That all stood hushed and wondering, Suddenly a thrill of delight ran through the audience, as through the foliage glided the Sultana Nourmahal with her beautiful features only half veiled, and her glorious hair falling like a cloak of spun gold, about her Oriental costume. As Selim and his guests gazed upon her, entranced, she rested her lute and to a subdued accompaniment her nightingale-like voice rose, first low and soft, then gradually trilling to its highest pitch of sweetness : There's a bliss beyond all that the minstrel hath told, With heart never changing, and brow never cold, Love on through all ills, and love on till they die ! One hour of a passion so sacred is worth Whole ages of heartless and wandering bliss: Never before in her life had Alice Meredith sung so well, and with such a depth of genuine feeling. When she ceased her listeners were wild in their applause of delight, while one among them felt as |