CHAPTER XIV.

THE LAST






CHAPTER FIRST.

INTRODUCTION.


One bright afternoon, or rather evening, in May, two girls, with basket
in hand, were seen leaving the little seaport town in which they
resided, for the professed purpose of primrose gathering, but in reality
to enjoy the pure air of the first summer-like evening of a season,
which had been unusually cold and backward. Their way lay through bowery
lanes scented with sweet brier and hawthorn, and every now and then
glorious were the views of the beautiful ocean, which lay calmly
reposing and smiling beneath the setting sun. "How unlike that stormy,
dark, and noisy sea of but a week ago!" so said the friends to each
other, as they listened to its distant musical murmur, and heard the
waves break gently on the shingly beach.

Although we have called them friends, there was a considerable
difference in their ages. That tall and pleasing, though plain, girl in
black, was the governess of the younger. Her name was Emilie Schomberg.