He paused—looked at me—and repeated the
famous lines of Dante on the Evening-time, with
a melody and tenderness which added a charm of
their own to the matchless beauty of the poetry
itself.

"Bah!" he cried suddenly, as the last cadence
of those noble Italian words died away on his
lips; " I make an old fool of myself, and only
weary you all! Let us shut up the window in
our bosoms and get back to the matter-of-fact
world. Percival! I sanction the admission of
the lamps. Lady Glyde — Miss Halcombe—
Eleanor, my good wife—which of you will indulge
me with a game at dominoes?"

He addressed us all; but he looked especially
at Laura. She had learnt to feel my dread of
offending him, and she  accepted his proposal.
It was more than I could have done, at that
moment. I could not have sat down at the
same table witli him, for any consideration. His
eyes seemed to reach my inmost soul through
the thickening obscurity of the twilight. His
voice trembled along every nerve in my body,
and turned me hot and cold alternately. The
mystery and terror of my dream, which had
haunted me, at intervals, all through the evening,
now oppressed my mind with an unendurable
foreboding and an unutterable awe. I saw the
white tomb again, arid the veiled woman rising
out of it, by Hartright's side. The thought of
Laura welled up like a spring in the depths of
my heart, and filled it with waters of bitterness,
never, never known to it before. I caught her
by the hand, as she passed me on her way to the
table, and kissed her as if that night was to part
us for ever. While they were all gazing at me
in astonishment, I ran out through the low
window which was open before me to the ground
—ran out to hide from them in the darkness;
to hide even from myself.

We separated, that evening, later than usual.
Towards midnight, the summer silence was
broken by the shuddering of a low, melancholy
wind among the trees. We all felt the sudden
chill in the atmosphere; but the Count was the
first to notice the stealthy rising of the wind.
He stopped while he was lighting my candle for
me, and held up his hand warningly:

"Listen!" he said. " There will be a change
to-morrow."

LIFE IN DANGER.

WE take up the pen to plead for a human life
in danger.

There is a man now living, and in the full enjoyment
of health and strength, whose life will be
sacrificed unless a certain point, now under
discussion, is rightly decided upon. The scales
are hanging at present pretty evenly; official
delay and routine in one scale—extra-weighted at
Whitehall, by back-stair influence and jobbing
(both heavy commodities): the other scale at the
Serpentine, containing reason and life and health,
but its very metal corroded with the foul gases
rising beneath it. Surely it behoves every one
who has any access to the reason scale, to
cast into it his weightiest wares in that line, and
to hang on to it with all his might, and with
all the tenacity of which he is capable.

There is something unimpressive about the
sound of "the Serpentine." We have got to
look upon that piece of water in a contemptuous
manner. It is probably because of its unbusiness-
like qualities. We see a broad sheet of
shining water, wholly devoted to amusement.
We see it covered with unimportant (and
water-logged) wherries, with ornamental fowls,
and with those over-masted toy schooners,
which seedy adults appear to get a living by
sending from one side of the river to the other.
We see people in the summer months amusing
themselves by not catching fish in these waters,
and in winter by tumbling about upon their
frozen surface. What! Attach importance to
the Serpentine—why, it is a mere trifler, a
thing that lends itself to our amusements, and
nothing more. Now, there is a class of men who
appear to be triflers on the surface, and who are
really attending to the main chance more than
many a solemn and business-like commercialist;
men who will joke and laugh with you, and who
will, in the course of a morning's chat, do an
uncommonly good stroke of business with you,
almost without your knowing it. The Serpentine
is like these jovial workers, and with its holiday
outside does an amount of business—in the
undertaking line—which would astonish you.
Beneath that broad sheet of water, with its
gimcrack wherries and its topsy-turvy water-fowl,
there are treachery, and poison, and death,
unwholesome and pestilent sewage, cramp-
engendering springs, sudden holes, and vast disused
gravel-pits, filled up with black and noisome
mud. Mud! What says the superintendent at
the receiving-house of the Royal Humane
Society: a gentleman who, living by the bank ol
the Serpentine, knows more, perhaps, about that
gay and innocuous stream than any one else
whom we can consult? He says that the mud
in the bed of the Serpentine is in some places
ten feet deep—thirteen feet and a half of water,
and ten feet of mud and slime beneath it. Mud!
Why, there is one place in these waters where
the same superintendent, sounding the depth
of mud with the poles of drags fastened one to
another, has been unable to find a bottom at
all!

The mud in the bed of the Serpentine is of so
horrible and glutinous a kind that sometimes,
when an accident has happened to a bather, the
men of the Royal Humane Society, hastening to
the spot where it has occurred, have felt on
lowering their drags the feet and legs of the
sufferer struggling violently, and striking against
their instruments. His head and body would
at such time be immersed and fixed in this
bed of sewage, into which it has been necessary
at last to plunge the drag itself in order to
rescue the drowning man. The mud, too, will
get into the air-passages at such times, and lives,
that might otherwise have been saved, have been
lost, because the lungs have been choked up