Page:Once a Week Volume 7.djvu/541

. 8, 1862.]

girl sat on the sunny beach of a southern shore. The deep liquid blue overhead; the glittering, heaving, false sea before; and the arid, scorching coast behind, with its scanty adornment of grizzly cactus, or fierce-bristling aloe. She was a fair English girl, with sunny hair, and full, grey eye. A guileless, loveable young face it was, as it looked up at the sound of steps approaching on the shingle.

“What, just where I left you an hour ago! Are you scorched to death? The sun is singeing your white umbrella.”

“You said you would come back, Marston, so I waited for you,” was the gentle reply to the somewhat impatiently spoken address; “but let us go in now; I am very tired.”

“Well, really, Marion, it’s your own fault; no one ever expected you to sit in the sun all this while; come in, and let us try that new song I got yesterday.”

Poor Marion was very tired; but, instead of resting in her room, as she felt very much inclined to do, in ten minutes she was at the piano, patiently working away at the song which Marston (who was not a bit tired) intended to sing that evening at a private concert.

To the practising succeeded visitors, to the visitors the table d’hôte, at which Marion’s evident fatigue attracted her aunt’s notice. She dismissed her to lie down, till it should be time to dress for the concert. As Marston lighted a candle, and gave it to her, he said, kindly:

“I believe I was very unmerciful to you this evening; I did not know you were really so tired.”

He spoke with concern; and the foolish little