The next day we dined at Dr. Almeida’s, and in his magnificent garden found several choice specimens of both the Victoria regia and the Rafflesia Arnoldi, the two largest flowers in the world, each bloom measuring two feet in diameter.  But the rarest of all the doctor’s treasures was the night-blooming cereus.  There were six blooms in full maturity—­four on one stalk and two on another—­creamy, waxen flowers of exquisite form, the leaves of the corolla of a pale golden hue and the petals intensely white.  The calyx rises from a long, hollow footstalk, which is formed of rough plates overlapping each other like tiles on a roof.  From the centre of this footstalk rises a bundle of filaments that encircle the style, stamens springing also from the insertion of the leaves of the corolla, lining it with delicate beauty and waving their slender forms with exquisite grace.  But the real charm of the cereus is its wondrous perfume, exhaled just at night-fall, and readily discernible over the circuit of a mile.  The peculiar odor cannot be understood by mere description, but partakes largely of that of sweet lilies, violets, the tuberose and vanilla.  After the bud appears the growth is very rapid, often two or three inches a day—­that is, in the height of the stalk, the flower expanding proportionately.  When fully grown it begins to unfold its charms as the twilight deepens into night, and reaches perfect maturity about an hour before midnight:  at three o’clock its glory is already beginning to wane, though scarcely perceptibly; but at dawn it is fading rapidly, and by sun-rise only a wilted, worthless wreck remains, good for nothing but to be “cast out and trodden under foot of men.”

FANNIE R. FEUDGE.

A PRINCESS OF THULE.

BY WILLIAM BLACK, AUTHOR OF “THE STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PHAETON.”

CHAPTER XII.

TRANSFORMATION.

Had Sheila, then, Lavender could not help asking himself, a bad temper, or any other qualities or characteristics which were apparent to other people, but not to him?  Was it possible that, after all, Ingram was right, and that he had yet to learn the nature of the girl he had married?  It would be unfair to say that he suspected something wrong about his wife—­that he fancied she had managed to conceal something—­merely because Mrs. Lavender had said that Sheila had a bad temper; but here was another person who maintained that when the days of his romance were over he would see the girl in another light.