vast Past, whose feebly ebbing tide still drifts so mournfully, so solemnly, so mysteriously upon our listening souls?  Did compassionate Neptune, tenderly guarding the ruins of his own desecrated fane, once resonant with votive paeans now echoing only sea-born murmurs, refuse sepulture to Serapis, and again and again return to the golden light of land the sculptured friezes, that could find permanent rest neither upon sea not shore?

To-day the lonely woman, standing amid crumbling cornices and architraves, wondered whether the sunken pavement of the Serapeon were a melancholy symbol of her own blighted youth, never utterly lost to view, often overwhelmed by surging waves of bitterness, hate, and despair, but now and then lifted by memory to the light, and found as fresh and glowing as in the sacred bygone?  To-day buried beneath the tide of sorrow, to-morrow shining clear and imperishable?

Gazing out across the sapphire sea that mirrored a cloudless sapphire sky, Mrs. Orme’s beautiful solemn face seemed almost a part of the classic surroundings, a statue of Fate shaken from its ancient niche; and the cameo Sappho on her breast was not more faultlessly cut and polished than the features that rose above it.

A shadow fell aslant the glassy water through which was visible the glint of the submerged pavement, and turning her head, she saw the familiar countenance of her quondam physician.

“A glorious day, Dr. Plymley?”

“Glorious indeed, Madame, for a dinner at Baiae.  I hope you are feeling quite well, and bright as this delicious sunshine?  Mrs. Orme, will you allow me the favour of presenting my friend General Laurance, who requests the honour of an introduction?”

She had been unaware of the presence of his companion, who was concealed from view, and as he stepped forward and took off his hat, she drew herself up, and at last they were face to face.

How her brown eyes widened, lightened, and what a sudden whiteness fell upon her features, as if June roses had been smitten with snow!  Holding with both hands the frail fluted ivory handle of her parasol, it snapped, and the carved leopard that constituted the head fell with a ringing sound upon one of the marble blocks, thence into the sluggish water beneath; but her eyes had not moved from his,—­seemed to hold them, as with some magnetic spell.  A radiant smile parted her pale lips, and she said in her wonderfully sweet, rich, liquid tones which sank into people’s ears and hearts, as some mellow old wine creeps through the grey cells of the brain, bringing lotos dreams:  “Is the gentleman before me General Rene Laurance of America?”

“I am, Madame; and supremely happy in the accident which enables me to make an acquaintance so long and earnestly desired.  Surely the ruins amidst which we meet must be those, not of the Serapeon, but of some antique shrine of Good Fortune, and I vow a libation worthy of the boon received.”