On their return to Pekin the party visited the ruins of the famous Summer Palace, Yuen-Ming-Yuen.  The avenues were formerly adorned with porticoes, monuments and kiosques, which are now masses of ruins.  Only two enormous bronze lions, the largest castings ever made in China, remain, and these simply because the allies could not carry them away.  To have attempted it would have required the building of a dozen bridges over the streams between here and Tien-Tsin.  The chapel of the Summer Palace escaped destruction only from the fact that it was situated upon a rock so high that the flames did not reach it.  Looking at the confused ruins which are all that remain of this wonderful collection of the most admirable products of fifteen ages of civilization, of art and of industry, the count de Beauvoir says truly that no honest man can help shuddering involuntarily.  Though his sentiment of national loyalty is very strong, yet he cannot avoid exclaiming, “Let us leave this place:  let us run from this spot, where the soil burns us, the very view of which humbles us.  We came to China as the armed champions of civilization and of a religion of mercy, but the Chinese are right, a thousand times right, in calling us barbarians.”

A PRINCESS OF THULE.

By William black, author of “The strange adventures of A phaeton.”

CHAPTER XIV.

Deeper and deeper.

Next morning Sheila was busy with her preparations for departure when she heard a hansom drive up.  She looked out and saw Mr. Ingram step out; and before he had time to cross the pavement she had run round and opened the door, and stood at the top of the steps to receive him.  How often had her husband cautioned her not to forget herself in this monstrous fashion!

“Did you think I had run away?  Have you come to see me?” she said, with a bright, roseate gladness on her face which reminded him of many a pleasant morning in Borva.

“I did not think you had run away, for you see I have brought you some flowers,” he said; but there was a sort of blush in the sallow face, and perhaps the girl had some quick fancy or suspicion that he had brought this bouquet to prove that he knew everything was right, and that he expected to see her.  It was only a part of his universal kindness and thoughtfulness, she considered.

“Frank is up stairs,” she said, “getting ready some things to go to Brighton.  Will you come into the breakfast-room?  Have you had breakfast?”

“Oh, you were going to Brighton?”

“Yes,” she said; and somehow something moved her to add quickly, “but not for long, you know.  Only a few days.  It is many a time you will have told me of Brighton long ago in the Lewis, but I cannot understand a large town being beside the sea, and it will be a great surprise to me, I am sure of that.”