Alas for human foresight!  Alas for Fate!

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 1:  Pronounced popularly “Less der-neer.”]

SEA AND SHORE

    “No fears hath she!  Her giant form
        Majestically calm would go
    O’er wrathful surge, through blackening storm,
        ’Mid the deep darkness, white as snow! 
    So stately her bearing, so proud her array,
        The main she will traverse forever and aye! 
    Many ports shall exult in the gleam of her mast—­
        Hush! hush! thou vain dreamer, this hour is her last!”

WILSON, “Isle of Palms.”

* * * * *

        “Then hold her
    Strictly confined in sombre banishment,
    And doubt not but she will ere long, full gladly,
    Her freedom purchase at the price you name.”

* * * * *

        “No, subtle snake! 
    It is the baseness of thy selfish mind,
    Full of all guile, and cunning, and deceit,
    That severs us so far, and shall do ever.”

* * * * *

        “Despair shall give me strength—­where is the door? 
        Mine eyes are dark!  I cannot find it now. 
        O God! protect me in this awful pass!”

    JOANNA BAILLIE, Tragedy of “Orra."

PART III.

SEA AND SHORE.

CHAPTER I.

It was a calm and hazy morning of Southern summer that on which I turned my face seaward from the “keep” of Beauseincourt, never, I knew, to see its time-stained walls again, save through the mirage of memory.  There is an awe almost as solemn to me in a consciousness like this as that which attends the death-bed parting, and my straining eye takes in its last look of a familiar scene as it might do the ever-to-be-averted face of friendship.

The refrain of Poe’s even then celebrated poem was ringing through my brain on that sultry August day, I remember, like a tolling bell, as I looked my last on the gloomy abode of the La Vignes; but I only said aloud, in answer to the sympathizing glances of one who sat before me—­the gentle and quiet Marion—­who had suddenly determined to accompany me to Savannah, nerved with unwonted impulse: 

“Madame de Stael was right when she said that ‘nevermore’ was the saddest and most expressive word in the English tongue” (so harsh to her ears, usually).  “I think she called it the sweetest, too, in sound; but to me it is simply the most sorrowful, a knell of doom, and it fills my soul to-day to overflowing, for ‘never, never more’ shall I look on Beauseincourt!”

“You cannot tell, Miss Harz, what time may do; you may still return to visit us in our retirement, you and Captain Wentworth,” urged Marion, gently, leaning forward, as she spoke, to take my hand in hers.