child. Mary could not but wonder whether this indeed were she whose
strong words had pierced and wrung her sympathies the other night, and
whether a deep life-wound could lie bleeding under those brilliant eyes
and that infantine exuberance of gayety; yet, surely, all that which
seemed so strong, so true, so real could not be gone so soon,--and it
could not be so soon consoled. Mary wondered at her, as the Anglo-Saxon
constitution, with its strong, firm intensity, its singleness of
nature, wonders at the mobile, many-sided existence of warmer races,
whose versatility of emotion on the surface is not incompatible with
the most intense persistency lower down.

Mary's was one of those indulgent and tolerant natures which seem to
form the most favorable base for the play of other minds, rather than
to be itself salient,--and something about her tender calmness always
seemed to provoke the spirit of frolic in her friend. She would laugh
at her, kiss her, gambol round her, dress her hair with fantastic
coiffures, and call her all sorts of fanciful and poetic names in
French or English,--while Mary surveyed her with a pleased and innocent
surprise, as a revelation of character altogether new and different
from anything to which she had been hitherto accustomed. She was to her
a living pantomime, and brought into her unembellished life the charms
of opera and theatre and romance.

After wearying themselves with their researches, they climbed round a
point of rock that stretched some way out into the sea, and attained to
a little kind of grotto, where the high cliffs shut out the rays of the
sun. They sat down to rest upon the rocks. A fresh breeze of declining
day was springing up, and bringing the rising tide landward,--each
several line of waves with its white crests coming up and breaking
gracefully on the hard, sparkling sand-beach at their feet.