"No, subtle snake!
It is the baseness of thy selfish mind,
Full of all guile, and cunning, and deceit,
That severs us so far, and shall do ever."
"Despair shall give me strength—where is the door?
Mine eyes are dark! I cannot find it now.
O God! protect me in this awful pass!"
JOANNA BAILLIE, Tragedy of "Orra."
PART III.
SEA AND SHORE.
CHAPTER I.
It was a calm and hazy morning of Southern summer that on which I turned my face seaward from the "keep" of Beauseincourt, never, I knew, to see its time-stained walls again, save through the mirage of memory. There is an awe almost as solemn to me in a consciousness like this as that which attends the death-bed parting, and my straining eye takes in its last look of a familiar scene as it might do the ever-to-be-averted face of friendship.