The serenity of her countenance had broken up in a fearful tempest, and her face writhed as she hurried along to overtake Felix.  Just now she dreaded to be alone, and yet the only companionship she could endure was that of the feeble cripple, whom she had learned to love, as woman can love only when all her early idols are in the dust.

“Wait for me, Felix!”

The boy stopped, turned, and limped back to meet her, for there was a strange, pleading intonation in her mournfully sweet voice.

“What is the matter, Miss Earl?  You look troubled.”

“I only want to walk with you, for I feel lonely this evening.”

“Miss Earl, have you seen Sir Roger Percival?”

“No, no; why should I see him?  Felix, my darling, my little brother! do not call me Miss Earl any longer.  Call me Edna.  Ah, child!  I am utterly alone; I must have somebody to love me.  My heart turns to you.”

She passed her arm around the boy’s shoulders and leaned against him, while he rested on his crutches and looked up at her with fond pride.

“Edna!  I have wanted to call you so since the day I first saw you.  You know very well that I love you better than every thing else in the world.  If there is any good in me, I shall have to thank you for it; if ever I am useful, it will be your work.  I am wicked still; but I never look at you without trying to be a better boy.  You do not need me—­you who are so great and gifted; whose writings everybody reads and admires; whose name is already famous.  Oh! you can not need any one, and, least of all, a poor little helpless cripple! who can only worship you, and love the sound of your voice better than all the music that ever was played!  If I thought that you, Miss Earl—­whose book all the world is talking about—­if I thought you really cared for me—­Oh, Edna!  Edna!  I believe my heart would be too big for my poor little body!”

“Felix, we need each other.  Do you suppose I would have followed you out here, if I did not prefer your society to that of others?”

“Something has happened since you sang the ‘Three Fishers’ and sat looking out of the window an hour ago.  Your face has changed.  What is it, Edna?  Can’t you trust me?”

“Yes.  I received a letter which troubles me.  It announces the feeble health of a dear and noble friend, who writes begging me to come to him, and nurse and remain with him as long as he lives.  You need not start and shiver so—­I am not going.  I shall not leave you; but it distresses me to know that he has asked an impossible thing.  Now you can understand why I did not wish to be alone.”

She leaned her cheek down on the boy’s head, and both stood silent, looking over the wide heaving waste of immemorial waters.

A glowing orange sky overarched an orange ocean, which slowly became in turn ruby, and rose, and violet, and pearly gray, powdered with a few dim stars.  As the rising waves broke along the beach, the stiffening breeze bent the spray till it streamed like silvery plumes; and the low musical murmur swelled to a monotonous moan, that seemed to come over the darkening waters like wails of the lost from some far, far “isles of the sea.”