still. Hold close to me, and fear nothing. It
is not Loyd's arm you have to trust to, but that
of one who never knew terror!"

The waves surged up now with every heaving
of the boat, so as to reach their breasts, and,
sometimes striking on the weather-side, broke
in great sheets of water over them.

"Oh, can you save us, Harry—  can you save
us?" cried she.

"Yes, if there's aught worth saving," said
he, sternly. " It is not safety that I am thinking
of; it is what is to come after. Have I
your promise? Are you mine?"

"Oh! do not ask me this; have pity on me."

"Where is your pity for me? Be quick, or
it will be too late. Answer me—mine or his?"

"His to the last!" cried she, with a wild
shriek; and, clasping both her hands above her
head, she would have fallen had he not held her.

"One chance more. Refuse me, and I leave
you to your fate!" he cried, sternly.

She could not speak, but in the agony of her
terror she threw her arms around and clasped
him wildly. The dark dense cloud that rested on
the lake was rent asunder by a flash of lightning
at the instant, and a sound like a thousand
great guns shook the air. The wind, skimming
the sea, carried sheets of water along and almost
submerged the boat as they passed.

"Yes or no!" shouted Calvert, madly, as he
struggled to disengage himself from her grasp.

"No!" she cried, with a wild yell that rung
above all the din of the storm, and as she said it
he threw her arms wide and flung her from him.
Then, tearing off his coat, plunged into the lake.

The thick clouds as they rolled down from the
Alps to meet the wind, settled over the lake,
making a blackness almost like night, and only
broken by the white flashes of the lightning.
The thunder rolled out as it alone does in these
mountain regions, where the echoes keep on
repeating till they fill the very air with their
deafening clamour. Scarcely was Calvert a few
yards from the boat than he turned to swim
back to her, but already was she hid from his
view. The waves ran high, and the drift foam
blinded him at every instant. He shouted aloud
at the top of his voice; he screamed " Florence!
Florence!" but the din around drowned his
weak efforts, and he could not even hear his
own words. With his brain mad by excitement,
he fancied every instant that he heard his name
called, and turned, now hither, now thither, in
wild confusion. Meanwhile, the storm deepened,
and the wind smote the sea with frequent claps,
sharp and sudden as the rush of steam from
some great steam-pipe. Whether his head reeled
with the terrible uproar around, or that his
mind gave way between agony and doubt, who
can tell? He swam madly on and on, breasting
the waves with his strong chest, and lost to
almost all consciousness, save of the muscular
effort he was making—none saw him more!

The evening was approaching, the storm had
subsided, and the tall Alps shone out in all the
varied colours of rock, or herbage, or snowpeak;
and the blue lake at the foot, in its waveless
surface, repeated all their grand outlines
and all their glorious tints. The water was
covered with row-boats in every direction, sent
out to seek for Florence and her companion.
They were soon perceived to cluster round one
spot, where a dismasted boat lay half-filled with
water, and a figure, as of a girl sleeping, lay in
the stern, her head resting on the gunwale.
It was Florence, still breathing, still living, but
terror-stricken, lost to all consciousness, her
limbs stiffened with cold. She was lifted into
a boat and carried on shore.

Happier for her the long death-like sleep—
that lasted for days—than the first vague
dawn of consciousness, when her senses
returning, brought up the terrible memory of the
storm, and the last scene with Calvert. With a
heart-rending cry for mercy she would start up in
bed, and, before her cry had well subsided, would
come the consciousness that the peril was past,
and then, with a mournful sigh, would she sink
back again to try and regain sufficient self-control
to betray nothing; not even of him who
had deserted her.

Week after week rolled by, and she made but
slow progress towards recovery. There was
not, it is true, what the doctors could pronounce
to be malady—her heightened pulse
alone was feverish—but a great shock had shaken
her, and its effects remained in an utter apathy
and indifference to everything around her.

She wished to be alone—to be left in complete
solitude, and the room darkened. The merest
stir or movement in the house jarred on her
nerves and irritated her, and with this came
back paroxysms of excitement that recalled the
storm and the wreck. Sad, therefore, and
sorrowful to see as were the long hours of her
dreary apathy, they were less painful than these
intervals of acute sensibility; and between the
two her mind vibrated.

One evening, about a month after the
wreck, Emily came down to her aunt's room to
say that she had been speaking about Joseph to
Florry. " I was telling her how he was detained
at Calcutta, and could not be here before the
second mail from India; and her reply was, ' It
is quite as well. He will be less shocked when
he sees me.'"

"Has she never asked about Calvert," asked
the old lady.

"Never. Not once. I half suspect, however,
that she overheard us that evening when
we were talking of him, and wondering that he
had never been seen again. For she said afterwards,
' Do not say before me what you desire me
not to hear, for I hear frequently when I am
unable to speak, or even make a sign in reply.'"

"But it is strange that nothing should ever
be known of him."

"No, aunt. Carlo says several have been
drowned in this lake whose bodies have never
been found. He has some sort of explanation,
about deep currents that set in amongst the rocks
at the bottom, which I could not understand."

The days dragged on as before. Miss