Awed by the mysterious solemnity which ever broods over the ocean, Felix slowly repeated that dirge of Tennyson’s, “Break, break, break!” and when he commenced the last verse, Edna’s voice, low and quivering, joined his.

Out of the eastern sea, up through gauzy cloud-bars, rose the moon, round, radiant, almost full, shaking off the mists, burnishing the waves with a ghostly lustre.

The wind rose and fluttered Edna’s scarlet scarf like a pirate’s pennon, and the low moan became a deep, sullen, ominous mutter.

“There will be a gale before daylight; it is brewing down yonder at the southwest.  The wind has veered since we came out.  There! did you notice what a savage snort there was in that last gust?”

Felix pointed to the distant water-line, where now and then a bluish flash of lightning showed the teeth of the storm raging far away under southern constellations, extinguishing for a time the golden flame of Canopus.

“Yes, you must go in, Felix.  I ought not to have kept you out so long.”

Reluctantly she turned from the beach, and they had proceeded but a few yards in the direction of the house when they met Mrs. Andrews and her guest.

“Felix, my son!  Too late, too late for you!  Come in with me.  Miss Earl, as you are so fond of the beach, I hope you will show Sir Roger all its beauties.  I commit him to your care.”

She went toward the house with her boy, and as Sir Roger took Edna’s hand and bent forward, looking eagerly into her face, she saw a pained and startled expression cross his own.

“Miss Earl, did you receive a letter from me written immediately after the perusal of your book?”

“Yes, Sir Roger, and your cordial congratulations and flattering opinion were, I assure you, exceedingly gratifying, especially as you were among the first who found anything in it to praise.”

“You have no idea with what intense interest I have watched its reception at the hands of the press, and I think the shallow, flippant criticisms were almost as nauseous to me as they must have been to you.  Your book has had a fierce struggle with these self-consecrated, red-handed, high-priests of the literary Yama; but its success is now established, and I bring you news of its advent in England, where it has been republished.  You can well afford to exclaim with Drayton: 

  ’We that calumnious critic may aschew,
    That blasteth all things with his poisoned breath. 
   Detracting what laboriously we do
    Only with that which he but idly saith.’

The numerous assaults made upon you reminded me constantly of the remarks of Blackwood a year or two since:  ’Formerly critics were as scarce and formidable, and consequently as well known as mastiffs in a country parish; but now no luckless traveller can show his face in a village without finding a whole pack yelping at his heels.’  Fortunately, Miss Earl, though they show their teeth, and are evidently anxious to mangle, they are not strong enough to do much harm.  Have you answered any of these attacks?”