“Are you going to take Madam?” she asked, seeing my whip in my hand.  “Shall I ring up Pellet?”

“No, no!” I said; “I can manage well enough.  Good-night again, my darling old mother.”

Her pale, worn face smiled down upon me very tenderly as she kissed her hand to me.  I stood, as if spellbound, watching her, and she watching me, until we both laughed, though somewhat falteringly.

“How romantic you are, my boy!” she said, in a tremulous voice.

“I shall not stir till you go back to bed,” I answered, peremptorily; and as just then we heard my father calling out fretfully to ask why the door was open, and what was going on in the house, she disappeared, and I went on my way to the stables.

Madam was my favorite mare, first-rate at a gallop when she was in good temper, but apt to turn vicious now and then.  She was in good temper to-night, and pricked up her ears and whinnied when I unlocked the stable-door.  In a few minutes we were going up the Grange Road at a moderate pace till we reached the open country, and the long, white, dusty roads stretched before us, glimmering in the moonlight.  I turned for St. Martin’s, and Madam, at the first touch of my whip on her flanks, started off at a long and steady gallop.

It was a cool, quiet night in May.  A few of the larger fixed stars twinkled palely in the sky, but the smaller ones were drowned in the full moonlight.  The largest of them shone solemnly and brightly in afield of golden green just above the spot where the sun had set hours before.  The trees, standing out with a blackness and distinctness never seen by day, appeared to watch for me and look after me as I rode along, forming an avenue of silent but very stately spectators; and to my fancy, for my fancy was highly excited that night, the rustling of the young leaves upon them whispered the name of Olivia.  The hoof-beats of my mare’s feet upon the hard roads echoed the name Olivia, Olivia!

By-and-by I turned off the road to got nearer the sea, and rode along sandy lanes with banks of turf instead of hedge-rows, which were covered thickly with pale primroses, shining with the same hue as the moon above them.  As I passed the scattered cottages, here and there a dog yapped a shrill, snarling hark, and woke the birds, till they gave a sleepy twitter in their new nests.

Now and then I came in full sight of the sea, glittering in the silvery light.  I crossed the head of a gorge, and stopped for a while to gaze down it, till my flesh crept.  It was not more than a few yards in breadth, but it was of unknown depth, and the rocks stood above it with a thick, heavy blackness.  The tide was rushing into its narrow channel with a thunder which throbbed like a pulse; yet in the intervals of its pulsation I could catch the thin, prattling tinkle of a brook running merrily down the gorge to plunge headlong into the sea.  Round every spar of the crags, and over every islet of rock, the foam played ceaselessly, breaking over them like drifts of snow, forever melting, and forever forming again.