[Footnote 6:  The raft on which Miss Lamarque and her family had found refuge had been swept by the tempest of nearly every soul that clung to it, after a terrible night of storm and rain, during which that courageous lady—­that Sybarite of society—­sustained the fainting souls of her companions by singing the grand anthems of her Church, in a voice loud, clear, and sweet as that of a dying swan.  One child was saved of the nine little ones, and the brother and sister remained almost alone on the raft.  Let it be here mentioned that, at no period of her subsequent life, a long and apparently prosperous one, could Miss Lamarque bear to hear the circumstances of the wreck alluded to.  Mr. Dunmore and his companions found a watery grave.]

CHAPTER IX.

A nervous headache, that confined me to my bed for several days, succeeded the degrading and exciting scene through which I had passed, and, as Mrs. Clayton had at the same time one of her prostrating neuralgic attacks, the services of Dinah were in active requisition.  During my own peculiar phase of suffering, the small racket of Ernie, unnoticed in hours of health, grated painfully on my ear, and I caught eagerly at the proposition of the negress to take him down-stairs for a walk and hours of play in the sunshine, privileges he did not very often obtain in these latter days.

I was much the better for having lain silently for a time, when he returned with his hands filled with flowers, his lips smelling of peppermint-drops, and his eyes, always his finest feature, dancing with delight.

He had seen Ady, he told me, with eagerness, and she had kissed him, and tied a string of beads about his neck—­red ones—­which he displayed; and “Ady had a comb in her head, and her toof was broke”—­touching one of his own front teeth lightly, so that I knew he was not pointing out any deficiency in the afore-mentioned comb.  From this description, vague as it was, I identified Ada Greene as the person intended to be described; for I too had observed the imperfection he made a point of—­a broken tooth, impairing the beauty of otherwise faultless ones.

“And who gave you the flowers, Ernie?” I asked, receiving them from his generous hands as I spoke, and raising the white roses to my nostrils to inhale their delicate breath.  “Did Ady give you these?”

“No—­Angy!” he answered, solemnly.

“Tell me about Angy, Ernie—­had she wings?”

“No wings!  Poor Angy could not fly.  She was walking in the garden with Adam and Eve, with their clothes on,” he said, earnestly.

“Mr. and Mrs. Claude Bainrothe, no doubt,” I thought, smiling at the strange mixture of the real and the ideal—­the plates of the old Bible evidently supplied the latter, from which many of his impressions were derived—­and the practical pair in question the former, quietly perambulating together.

But “Angy!” Could I doubt for one moment to whom he applied that celestial title?  The face of one of the angels in the transfiguration did, indeed, resemble Mabel’s.  I had often remarked and pondered over it.