action of a lover, since it is that which leads us to set down as such the commonest tokens of regard or interest. The thought occurs to me how Violet would interpret such an act of gallantry did she know of it; but then she shall not know of it until Lord Haig is far away and is never likely to cross our path again and his name is almost forgotten.

But I have not chronicled the words with which Lord Haig accompanied this acknowledgment of the success of my effort to solace his grief.

"How appropriately you are called Pansie!" he said. "Don't let them change your name. I shall always remember you by it,the truest little bit of Heartsease that ever dispensed its blessings, and lightened a human breast of its load of sorrow."

Papa came back to us at that instant with his overcoat on.

“Take my arm, Pansie, and come and walk; I am sure you will take a chill remaining so long in one position."

So we commenced to stroll again, and Violet and Mr. De l'Orme joined us. The conversation became general, and Lord Haig was the life of it. How well stored his mind appears to be! How general seems his knowledge of books and literature! and how noble and how generous are his sentiments contrasted with the cynicisms now and then thrown in by his friend! Papa was delighted with him, and I heard him express his astonishment to mamma before we retired to our rooms for the night, at finding such just views, such quick perception, and such clear ideas united in one such boyish person.

Papa, for his own part, was brilliant enough; Violet held her ground very ably in the conversation, for my dear Violet is no empty headed beauty; but I was satisfied to walk and listen.

I have been writing for a long while, but I have not written myself into a sleepy fit.

The moon is past her zenith, the shadows grow longer, and that "snow of deepest silence" lies everywhere. How lovely everything is! I have never observed such effects of light and shadow in the moonlight before; it lies like a radiance upon all the prominent parts of the landscape, leaving the rest in a darkness more intense by comparison. What will heaven be like, I wonder, that has no need of the sun, nor of the moon; and what will that glory of God be that exceeds the light of these? To-morrow we leave for Geneva, but can Lake Leman be half as lovely as Lucerne ?

I can answer the question fully now with which I concluded the last portion of my diary. Geneva is lovely, exquisitely lovely, but still the sacred solitude and sombre beauty of Lucerne will for ever stand apart in my memory.

We are domiciled in the hotel looking over the lake. Above the sloping vine-covered shore opposite rise the snowy Alps, and, towering from their midst their majestic monarch, Mont Blanc, lifts his dazzling crest to the blue heavens.

Lord Haig and Mr. De l'Orme are here also; they travelled with us from Lucerne, and now form quite a recognised portion of our party. Although papa seems to delight in tempting him into argument, and compelling him to defend some imaginary citadel that he attacks, Lord Haig likes best to devote himself to mamma; and there is something so delicate and so respectfully tender in the attentions that he bestows that endears him to the hearts of all of us. He must have been a dutiful and devoted son to his own mother, for nothing but experience could have given him the knowledge he seems to possess concerning the wishes and requirements of an invalid. Mamma told him so, half laughingly, one day. Her light words brought the dark shadow over his bright face that I had once before seen there. His reply and explanation were quietly, though sadly, given.

"Though my mother died suddenly at last, she had been am invalid for several years before."

This is the only time I have heard him allude to that yet unhealed sorrow since that evening at Lucerne, but then the deepest feelings only rise to the surface upon solemn occasions, and we have been a merry party since then.

Lord Haig was before papa in engaging a boat upon the lake, and he insists upon it becoming property common to all. He is nominally its captain, by right of his experience in navigating the lochs of bonnie Scotland. And then he is silent, and there comes the quick change upon lip and brow I have noticed are ever there when any chance allusion is made to the country of his birth. But papa appeals to him for some trivial information concerning the management of the sails, and a transition is effected. His fair face becomes intent and business-like in an instant as he explains and illustrates.

By-and-bye he comes to me as I sit by the vessel's side looking over into the clear blue depths of the water below, and hearing,. without remarking, the light bantering tone of converse that Violet and Mr. De l'Orme keep up between them, and he asks— "Cannot we persuade Lady Trevor out of her fear of the waterand get her to venture herself under our care?"

And I look up eagerly in reply.

"I do so wish we could. Her presence is the only earthly desire we can have in such a glorious scene as this. How lovely the lakeis! How the waters sparkle with the golden beams that fall from the heavens! Look at that beautiful, fleecy cloud sailing across

the bosom of Mont Jura! When shall we go up to the Castle of Chillon ?”

"As soon as ever you wish. To-morrow, if we can persuade Sir William and Lady Trevor. We must prepare for an absence of some little time and make the whole tour of the lake. Do you not think that excursion will tempt Lady Trevor?'

It did. Mamma could not resist it. It took us several days to complete our preparations, and at the commencement of the week all was in readiness. Mamma had some nervous misgivings just at the last, but so desirous was she of beholding the towers and dungeons of the Castle of Chillon, and so eager were we all in our importunities, that she was fain to conquer her fears. Lord Haig ran up a flag to the mast-head when she was seen approaching the shore leaning upon papa's arm, and followed by Mad'line. We all made our triumph the occasion of high jubilee. Our captain devised an easy couch underneath an awning upon deck for our dear invalid, and we sat round about her while Mr. De l'Orme read, "Lake Leman lies by Chillon's walls;

A thousand feet in depth below
Its massy waters meet and flow."

Mr. De l'Orme has a pleasant, mellow-sounding voice, and his reading is very effective, I cannot say expressive. The only time it appeared to me that he himself seemed to enter into what he was reading was when the younger brother of the prisoner dies, and Bonnivard snaps his chain with one violent wrench to get to him. I found him not;

I only stirred in this black spot;

I only lived; I only drew

The accursed breath of dungeon dew."

Then so dark grew his face, so bitter was the expression he contrived to infuse into his words, that involuntarily I shuddered and drew back from him. Lord Haig was leaning upon a heap of cordage by my side, and he whispered low in my ear, "What a little sensitive heart it is-affected by the mere echo of a distant woe."

"Hardly that," I said, hurriedly. "I was not thinking of the prisoner of Chillon then. Mr. De l'Orme drew my attention from the book to himself. Had he suffered one tithe of what Bonnivard did, I am convinced he would have hated his kind for ever more with a wild, fierce hatred that death hardly could conquer, to say nothing of his jailors and captors and all who had been instrumental in his incarceration.

Lord Haig offered me his arm, and led me away from the sound of the reader's voice to the after part of the deck.

"I am sorry you do not like my friend, Pansie."

He spoke my name deprecatingly, hesitatingly, looking down into my face half pleading for permission.

"He frightens me at times," I faltered; and I could not show displeasure at the liberty taken, for it gave me pleasure to hear my name upon his lips.

"You do not know him, or your pity would create an interest for him in your heart."

And standing there by the vessel's bulwarks, with my hand upon his arm, with the cool breezes playing familiarly amongst our hair, he gave me the outlines of the history of his friend, acquainting me with a bare narrative of facts, and leaving me to draw my own deductions thence. He has had hard times to contend with certainly; I am glad I know more about him than a casual acquaintanceship would give me, for his very faults, one cannot but admit, possess some excuse in having had so much to encourage and foster them. But looking up into the bright young face at my side I was certain that even had his life been subjected to the adverse influences that had warped his friend's the effect would have been widely dissimilar, and my heart confirmed my supposition with a wild throb. That is a noble nature that rises superior to circumstances; a base one sinks beneath them.

During that glorious voyage we called at many of the towns and villages upon the borders of the lake, spending a day and night where the scenery, or something in the associations of the place, enticed us to prolong our stay.

Instead of feeling the fatigue too great for her, mamma's health improved daily. Every day that we were on board the awning above her couch was made to serve us as a salon, and first one and then another of the gentlemen read aloud to us. From some of his treasure houses on board Lord Haig produced a copy of "La Novelle Héloïse," with which both Violet and I were unacquainted. Mamma and papa willingly listened to the re-reading of it, and afterwards we visited all the places it immortalises-Meillerie, the scene of St. Preux's visionary exile; the Castle of Chillon; Clarens, where is "le bosquet de Julie;" and Vevai, where Rousseau conceived the design of the whole story. But I have not time to tell of one-half of the beauties we saw, nor of the deeds we achieved; of our sunny, dreamy journeys by sea, nor our shorter excursions by land; of the thoughts and fancies that sprang up as we trod the scenes that genius has hallowed; how we discussed our favourite authors, and learned to know each other more perfectly by the free interchange of opinions. Mr. De l'Orme seemed transformed under the happy influence of the time.

How well I remember the very hour and spot where, standing by Lord Haig's side one evening, when a ruby light from the dying

sun flushed all the sky and waters, 1 retracted the words I had once uttered concerning his friend, and admitted that I had misjudged him.

"I remember when I was a boy," replied Lord Haig, "one day my father's gardener brought to me what appeared like a dull piece of glass. I took it, loth to offend him, though I was at a loss to perceive what his object in presenting this to me could be. He noticed my puzzled expression of face, and chuckled to himself. He was wont to devise little gifts or pleasures for me, such as lads love, and money cannot procure; but I saw nothing pleasurable in his dirty piece of glass. 'It's unco frousty lookin,' he said, 'for its been kickin' about our bit house place at hame this lang while; but dip it into water, Maister Robert, an' then tak' it intil the sun, an' ye'll see something ye don't see every day, I'm thinkin'.' I was but a wee boy then, and I had never seen a prism. This was what old McDougal had given me, a broken lustre off some old chandelier; how it had become part of their family property, goodness knows. I followed the old man's advice. I washed the glass, and held it up to the sun. Rainbow lights flashed through it like the dance of innumerable fairies, the dull bit of glass was alive with beauty. The impression made by it upon my mind was so vivid that it is alive to this day."

“And you think, figuratively, Mr. De l'Orme is like your prism?"

"I think that our first impressions of men and things are often so erroneous that we should be wise not to put faith in them. We do not know what radiance the sun may discover in what we presumed to be only a dull piece of glass. Judging De l'Orme by what I know of him, by what he has been to me, I have no fault to find with him. If he be not quite so attractive in some respects as other men I have met, I can make allowance, knowing what he has had to contend with in the past.

"What's done we partly may compute,

But know not what's resisted." "

These were the sentiments constantly heard upon the lips of Lord Haig, that caused my respect for him to grow as rapidly as my liking.

At Vevai we had an adventure, which, however, I must leave for Violet to relate.

CHAPTER VII.-VIOLET CONTINUES THE NARRATIVE.

Pansie constrains me to write for her diary a narrative of the events that preceded our final departure from Vevai, and that rendered our short sojourn there so remarkable. So, without