Gwynplaine started up, stretched his hands on high, and said, “I come.”

He strode across the deck, towards the side of the vessel, as if beckoned by a vision.  A smile came upon his face, such as Dea had just worn.  One step more.

“I am coming, Dea; I am coming,” he said.

There was no bulwark, the abyss of waters was before him; he strode into it, and fell.  The night was dark and heavy, the water deep.  He disappeared calmly and silently.  None saw nor heard him.  The ship sailed on, and the river flowed out to the sea.

* * * * *

ELIZABETH INCHBALD

A Simple Story

The maiden name of Mrs. Inchbald, actress, novelist, dramatist, and society favourite, was Elizabeth Simpson, and she was the daughter of a farmer living near Bury St. Edmunds, where she was born on October 15, 1753.  At the age of eighteen she ran away to London, under the influence of romantic expectations, which were realised by a sudden marriage with Joseph Inchbald, the actor.  After seventeen years on the stage, without attaining conspicuous success, Mrs. Inchbald retired, and devoted herself to the writing of novels and plays and the collection of theatrical literature.  Her first novel, written in 1791, was “A Simple Story.”  With “Nature and Art,” a tale written later, it has kept a place among the fiction that is reprinted for successive generations.  In later years Mrs. Inchbald lived quietly on her savings, retaining a flattering social position by her beauty and cleverness.  She died on August 1, 1821.

I.—­The Priest’s Ward

Dorriforth, bred at St. Omer’s in all the scholastic rigour of that college, was, by education and the solemn vows of his order, a Roman Catholic priest.  He was about thirty, and refusing to shelter himself from the temptations of the layman by the walls of a cloister, but finding that shelter in his own prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance, had lived in London near five years, when a gentleman with whom he had contracted a most sincere friendship died, and left him the sole guardian of his daughter, who was then eighteen.

It is in this place proper to remark that Mr. Milner was a member of the Church of Rome, but his daughter had been educated in her dead mother’s religion at a boarding-school for Protestants, whence she had returned with her little heart employed in all the endless pursuits of personal accomplishments, and her mind left without one ornament, except such as nature gave.

She had been visiting at Bath when her father died.  Therefore, Mr. Dorriforth, together with Miss Woodley, the middle-aged niece of the widow lady, Mrs. Horton, who kept his house, journeyed midway to meet her.  But when the carriage stopped at the inn-gate, and her name was announced, he turned pale—­something like a foreboding of disaster trembled at his heart—­and Miss Woodley was obliged to be the first to welcome his lovely charge—­lovely beyond description.