the path that I can cleave for myself, the
chances of it, the hopes of it, the risks of it, if
you will—I love all these with independence and
freedom, better than I love you. You, who are
true and good, will not tell me that I ought, so
feeling, to accept your love."

She had spoken rapidly in her excitement,
and now paused almost breathless, with her
flushed face raised to his, and her clear child-like
eyes bright with latent tears.

He looked at her for a moment, and then,
turning away, dropped his face upon his hands,
and leaned against the mantelpiece. When he
raised his head after a while, he was deadly pale,
and his face wore a look of suffering that touched
Mabel's heart.

"I am trying to do right," she said, in a softer
voice. I am grieved, sorely grieved, if I give
you pain."

"If you give me pain! No matter, Mabel;
no matter for my pain; but can nothing turn
you from this accursed project? Good God!
it drives me almost mad to think of your leaving
home, friends, everything, to cast in your lot
with a set of strolling players."

The change in her countenance, as he said the
words, was as though a mask of stone had been
placed over it.

"I think you forget, Mr. Charlewood, that
you are speaking of my father's nearest and
dearest relatives. It is useless to prolong this
interview. We only drift further and further
asunder. Good-bye, Mr. Charlewood. Forgive
me, if you can, for the sorrow I have innocently
caused you. You will forget it—and
me."

She held out her hand, but he did not take it.

"Are you so obdurate? Must we part so,
Mabel?"

"It is better. Some day—years hence, perhaps
—we may meet as friends. I shall always
be grateful for your goodness to us. Good-bye.
God bless you!"

She still held out her hand, but he did not
seem to see or heed it. In another moment the
door was gently closed, and she was gone.

PEARLS OF PRICE.

THE happy purchaser of Prince Esterhazy's
pantaloons is a man to be envied. He may sit
upon pearls, lie upon pearls, kneel upon pearls;
or, if he elect to strip the pearls from the velvet
garment, he can stock the market with them.
The outer world seems to believe that the
Esterhazy jewels were mostly diamonds. The
brilliants were certainly glittering enough to
produce quite a Blaze of Triumph. There
was the diamond-studded cartouche-box, which
brought about a thousand guineas at the
recent sale; there was the diamond in
the head of the walking-stick, seventeen
hundred guineas; and the diamond-headed
order of the Golden Fleece, four thousand
guineas; and the chain with the lion's head
diamond, ten thousand guineas; and the
diamond-hilted, scabbarded, and belted sword, seven
thousand guineas; and the gorgeous diamond
aigrette or plume, eight thousand guineas. But
the garrments which formed a background to these
glittering brilliants, were braided and broidered
with pearls, not with diamonds. The hussar
jacket, the tunic, the vest, the pantaloons, were
nearly white with these precious bits; and the
twenty-two hundred guineas given for them
were but little concerned with the velvet on
which the pearls were sewn.

A glut of pearls in the market, owing to this
grand distribution, is, we hear, to be increased
by a real pearl nursery—an application of
the new art of pisciculture to the pearl oyster
—a method of coaxing the fish to produce
pearls just in the place where men can most
easily dredge or dive for them. Mr. Markham
has within a few weeks given an
account of certain proceedings in the East,
tending to apply to the pearl oyster the same
kind of discipline which Mr. Frank Buckland
and other experimenters have applied to the
edible oyster and the salmon.

As Mr. Markham's personal familiarity with
the subject comes down to so late a date as last
summer, it possesses a value beyond that of mere
cyclopaedic knowledge. The district which he
notices is that of Tinnivelly, nearly at the
extreme southern point of India, where the Gulf
of Manaar separates the coast of the Carnatic
from Ceylon. It is believed to have been the
seat of a valuable pearl fishery from very remote
times, and is known to have been a source
of revenue to the Portuguese, Dutch, and
English authorities, who successively ruled that
part of India, employing four or five hundred
boats, and fifty or sixty thousand persons, at a
certain period every year. But the banks were
fished too often. Pearl oysters, like other
fish, become scarce if the fishery is pursued
too recklessly; and this had gone to such
a length that twenty-six years passed without
the appearance (as tested by examination) of a
sufficient number of them to make a fishery
worth while at Tinnivelly. By degrees, however,
the banks became again peopled with these
much-valued fish. The Madras government
ordered them to be carefully protected, and seven
years ago the fishing recommenced.

The fishing for pearls is a strange employment,
carried on by divers who can remain
under water during a time that would stifle
other men. The pearl-fishers belong to the
caste of Parawas, and have been Roman Catholics
ever since the early Jesuits converted them.
They age rapidly, drink hard, but their general
character is good, and they are capital boatmen
as well as divers. Travellers credit them with a
power of remaining under water for four, six, or
eight minutes; but Mr. Markham states that
the longest time for the Tinnivelly men is one
minute eight seconds. The headman of the
caste, an hereditary office, is called the Jadi
Talaven. Quite early in the year, a fleet of
boats starts off, at such an hour as to reach
the banks, cast anchor, and begin operation at