The Rim. [June, within. Éloise went and took her place beside him, while his face brightened. He had been eating opium again, and his eyes were full of dreams. From where they stood upon the piazza they could redness, along the coast, and far in the see the creek winding, a strip of silvery distance where it met the sea, a film upon the sky, rose the dim castellated height of Blue Bluffs, like an azure mist. "There is something there that I want," said Eloise, archly, looking at the "On your peril!" he cried, with hasty Bluffs. rigor. But Eloise escaped, trailing one end of her scarf behind, looking back at him, laughing, and shaking her threatening fan as he stepped after her. And then Mr. St. George resumed his haughty silence. Éloise went down the hall after Hazel. She found her in the empty dining-room, having just set down the salver; the last light, that, stealing in, illumined all the paintings of clusters of fruit and bunches of flowers upon the white panelling, had yet a little ray to spare for the girl where she crouched with her sobs, her apron flung above her head; and when Éloise laid her hand gently on her shoulder, she sprang as if one had struck her. 46 Oh, Miss 'Loise! Miss 'Loise! I'm in such trouble!" she gasped. It did not take long for the little story to find the air. Vane and Hazel, secure of Eloise's efforts, had married. It was one of the immutable Blue - Bluffs laws that they had broken: there were no marriages allowed off the place there. Vane was expiating his offence no one knew where, and there were even rumors that he had already been sent away to the Cuban plantation of the Marlboro's, whither all refractory slaves were wont to journey. Éloise went slowly back to the drawing-room, then out upon the piazza, and with her went that bending grace that accompanied her least motion, and always reminded you of a flower swaying on its stem. Mr. Marlboro' leaned there, listening to Miss Murray's singing "There? you shall not wish twice." Then Hazel approaching, as by signal, offered Mr. Marlboro' a cup, which he declined without gesture or glance, while there gleamed in her eye a subtle look that told how easy it would have been to brew poison for this man who had such an ungodly power over her fate. "That is my little maid," said Éloise. "I have lent her to Mrs. Arles awhile, though. Is she not pretty, — Hazel?" "That is Hazel, then? A hazel!" "Yes." "And you want Vane?" very witch "I did not know she was your maid. But the offence of Vane, if overlooked, would be a breach of discipline entailing too hazardous effects. Authority should never relax. What creeps through the iron fingers once can creep again. The gentle dews distilling through the pores of the granite congeal in the first frost and rend the rock. I would have difficulty, Miss Eloise, in pardoning such an offence to you, yourself. Ah, yes, that would be impossible, by Heaven!" Éloise laughed in her charming way, and said, "But, Mr. Marlboro', would it not be an admirable lesson to your people, if Vane were sold?" "A lesson to teach them all to go and George, passing, with Miss Humphreys do likewise, eh, Marlboro'?" said St. on his arm. a "I have never sold, I never sell, slave," replied Marlboro', in his placid "Most certainly you can! most certainly you shall! he is yours!" And before Éloise could pour forth one of her multitudinous thanks, he had moved away. Marlboro's, however, was not that noble nature that spurns to beg at the moment when it grants. Directly, he had wheeled about, and with an eager air was again beside her. "And, Éloise," he said, "if in response I might have one smile, one hope' Thoughtlessly enough, Éloise turned her smiling face upon him, and gave him her hand. "And you give it to me at last, this hand, to crown my life!" he said,- for to his excited brain the trifling deed seemed the weighty event, and when he looked up Eloise still was smiling. Only for a second, though, for her processes of thought were not instantaneous, while to him it was one of Mahomet's moments holding an eternity, and she smiled while she was thinking, thinking simply of her little handmaiden's pleasure. She tried to release her hand. But Mr. Marlboro' did not know that his grasp upon it was that of a vice, for under an artificial stimulus every action is as intense as the fired fancy itself. And as she found it impossible to free it without visible violence, other thoughts visited Éloise. Why should she not give it to him? Who else cared for it? What object had her lonely life? Speak sweetly as they might, what one of her old gallants forgot her loss of wealth? Here was a man to make happy, here was a heart to rest upon, here was a slave of his own passions to set free. Why should she continue to live with Mr. St. George for her haughty master, when here was this man at her feet? Why, but that suddenly the conviction smote her that she loved the one and despised the other, that she adored the master and despised the slave? And she snatched away her hand. Just then Mr. St. George was coming down the piazza again, on his promenade, his head bent low as he spoke to the clinging little lady on his arm. Passing Eloise, as he raised his face, their eyes met. She was doing, he thought, the very thing that he had disadvised, and, as if to warn her afresh, he looked long, a derisive smile curling his proud lip. That was enough. "He knows it!" exclaimed Eloise to herself. "He believes it! He thinks I love him! He never shall be sure of it!" And turning once more, her face hung down and away, she laid her hand in Marlboro's, without a word or a glance. He bent low over it in the shadow, pressing it with his fervent lips, murmuring, "Mine! mine at last! my own!" And St. George saw the whole. Just then a little sail crept in sight from where they stood, winding down the creek at the foot of the lawn. "Oh, how delightful to be on the water to-night!" cried Laura Murray. "You have but to command," said Mr. St. George, with a certain gayety that seemed struck out like sparks against the flinty fact of the late occurrence,— and half the party trooped down the turf to the shore. The boats were afloat and laden before one knew it. Mr. Marlboro' and Eloise were just one instant too late. Laura Murray shook a triumphant handkerchief at them, and St. George feathered his oar, pausing a moment as if he would return, and then gave a great sweep and his boat fairly leaped over the water. Mr. Marlboro' did not hesitate. There was the sail they had first seen, now on the point of being lowered beneath the alder-bushes by the young hunters who had sought shore for the night. Gold The Rim. slipped from one hand to another, a word, a name, and a promise. Éloise was on board, expecting Mrs. Arles and Mrs. Houghton to follow. Marlboro' sprang upon the end, and drew in the rope behind him, waving the other ladies a farewell; the sails were stretched again, the rudder shipped, and wing and wing they went skimming down the channel, past the little fleet of wherries, ploughing the shallow current into foam and spray on their wild career. sprang [June, to her feet. He caught Éloise her hand and replaced her; his face was glitter in his eye, and the smile that so white that it shone, there was a wild absolutely terrific. brooded over her had something in it Eloise, resolutely. "I wish to rejoin my "We have gone far enough," said friends." "You are with me!" said Marlboro', proudly. She was afraid to say another word, Marlboro' is mad!" said St. George, for to oppose him now in his exultant with a whitening cheek. Marlboro', standing up, one arm about the mast, and catching the slant beam of the late-rising moon on his face, that shone awfully rapt and intent, saluted them with an ironical cheer, and dashed on. Éloise held the tiller for the moment, still pulsating with her late emotions, not above a trifling play of vanity, welcoming the exhilaration of a race, where she might half forget her trouble, and pleased with a vague anticipation of some intervention that might recall the word which even in these five dragging moments had already begun to corrode and eat into her heart like a rusting fetter. The oarsmen in the wherries bent their muscles to the strife, the boats danced over the tiny crests, the ladies sang their breeziest sea-songs to cheer them at the work. The sail-boat rounded a curve and was almost out of sight. As for "Oars never caught sails yet," muttered St. George, and he put his boat to the shore. "There, Murray, try your lazy mettle, and take my oar. me, I'm off,”—and he sprang upon the bank, sending the boat spinning off into the current again from his foot. In ten minutes a horseman went galloping by on the high-road skirting the shore, with a pace like that of the Spectre of the Storm. "Now, Mr. Marlboro'," said Eloise, "shall we not turn back, victorious? "Turn?" said Marlboro', shaking loose another fold of the linen. "I never turn! Look your last on the tiny tribe,—we shall see them no more!" rage might only work the mood to frenzy. the sea was close at hand, with its great The creek had widened almost to a river, tumbling surf. She looked at the horizon and the hill for help, but none came; destruction was before them, and on they flew. Marlboro' stood now, and steadied the tiller with his foot. upon the wings of the wind! The view"This is motion!" said he. "We fly less wind comes roaring out of the black region of the East, it fills the high heaven, it roars on to the uttermost undulation of the atmosphere, and we are a part breath, a dust-atom driven before it, of it! We are only a mote upon its Éloise, greater than it, drowns it in a vaster and yet one great happiness is flood of viewless power, can whisper to it calm!" How should Éloise contradict him? With such rude awakening, he might only snatch her in his arms and plunge down to death. Perhaps he half divined the fear. "Yes, Eloise," he said. "They are both here, life and death, at our beck! the tides divide, then they close above I can take you to my heart, one instant and only, us, and you are mine for ever and ever sealed mine beneath all this the gentle lapping of the ripples on the crystal sphere of the waters! We hear shore, we hear the tones of evening-bells swim out and melt above us, we hear the oar shake off its shower of tinkling drops,-up the jewel-strewn deeps of heaven the planets hang out their golden |