“I can show you here quite as well.”  Taking out her Euclid, she found and explained the obstinate problem.

“Thank you!  I cannot endure mathematics, but father is bent upon my being ‘thorough,’ as he calls it.  I think it is all thorough nonsense.  Now, with you it is very different; you expect to be a teacher, and of course will have to acquire all these branches; but for my part I see no use in it.  I shall be rejoiced when this dull school-work is over.”

“Don’t say that, Cornelia; I think our school days are the happiest, and feel sad when I remember that mine are numbered.”

Here the bell announced recess over, and Cornelia moved away to her seat.  A trembling hand sought Clara’s arm.

“Is that Cornelia Graham?”

“Yes.  Is she not very handsome?”

Beulah made no answer; she only remembered that this girl was Eugene’s adopted sister, and, looking after the tall, queenly form, she longed to follow her and ask all the particulars of the storm.  Thus ended the first dreaded day at school, and, on reaching home, Beulah threw herself on her bed with a low, wailing cry.  The long-pent sorrow must have vent, and she sobbed until weariness sank her into a heavy sleep.

Far out in a billowy sea, strewed with wrecks, and hideous with the ghastly, upturned faces of floating corpses, she and Eugene were drifting—­now clinging to each other—­now tossed asunder by howling waves.  Then came a glimmering sail on the wide waste of waters; a little boat neared them, and Lilly leaned over the side and held out tiny, dimpled hands to lift them in.  They were climbing out of their watery graves, and Lilly’s long, fair curls already touched their cheeks, when a strong arm snatched Lilly back, and struck them down into the roaring gulf, and above the white faces of the drifting dead stood Mrs. Grayson, sailing away with Lilly struggling in her arms.  Eugene was sinking and Beulah could not reach him; he held up his arms imploringly toward her, and called upon her to save him, and then his head with its wealth of silken, brown locks disappeared.  She ceased to struggle; she welcomed drowning now that he had gone to rest among coral temples.  She sank down—­down.  The rigid corpses were no longer visible.  She was in an emerald palace, and myriads of rosy shells paved the floors.  At last she found Eugene reposing on a coral bank, and playing with pearls; she hastened to join him, and was just taking his hand when a horrible phantom, seizing him in its arms, bore him away, and, looking in its face, she saw that it was Mrs. Chilton.  With a wild scream of terror, Beulah awoke.  She was lying across the foot of the bed, and both hands were thrown up, grasping the post convulsively.  The room was dark, save where the moonlight crept through the curtains and fell slantingly on the picture of Hope and the Pilgrims, and by that dim light she saw a tall form standing near her.

“Were you dreaming, Beulah, that you shrieked so wildly?”