passengers to embark. This was followed by a lively air from the
harps and violins on board, their tones, as they arose, becoming
intermingled with, though not marred by, the brush of the waves when
their crests rolled over--at the point where the check of the
shallows was first felt--and then thinned away up the slope of
pebbles and sand.

She turned her face landward and strained her eyes to discern, if
possible, some sign of Owen's return. Nothing was visible save the
strikingly brilliant, still landscape. The wide concave which lay
at the back of the hill in this direction was blazing with the
western light, adding an orange tint to the vivid purple of the
heather, now at the very climax of bloom, and free from the
slightest touch of the invidious brown that so soon creeps into its
shades. The light so intensified the colours that they seemed to
stand above the surface of the earth and float in mid-air like an
exhalation of red. In the minor valleys, between the hillocks and
ridges which diversified the contour of the basin, but did not
disturb its general sweep, she marked brakes of tall, heavy-stemmed
ferns, five or six feet high, in a brilliant light-green dress--a
broad riband of them with the path in their midst winding like a
stream along the little ravine that reached to the foot of the hill,
and delivered up the path to its grassy area. Among the ferns grew
holly bushes deeper in tint than any shadow about them, whilst the
whole surface of the scene was dimpled with small conical pits, and
here and there were round ponds, now dry, and half overgrown with
rushes.

The last bell of the steamer rang. Cytherea had forgotten herself,
and what she was looking for. In a fever of distress lest Owen