front of the construction, of glass and three-sided, gave an admirable view over immense skies and an island-strewn sea.
"It's beautiful, is it not?" said Agnes, with a gentle pride in its beauty. "To me it seems quite as beautiful as the Riviera. Not that I've ever been there, of course, but gran'ma took poor Uncle John there the last year of his life, and we have a picture of it hanging in the drawing-room."
She named to Owen the different islands. "That one there is St. Maclou, and further on is the Ile des Marchants. Over there to the left is the Petite Ste. Marguerite. We can't often see the Grande Ste. Marguerite without the glasses, but Freddy will go and get them."
The boy who had given them his company the whole time, punctuating their phrases with his foolish laughs, blundered off on this errand with an expression of consequential glee. Owen and the girl were left alone.
The vast expanse of sea below them still glittered in the light of the afterglow, but the cloud-curtain of evening was drawing over the eastern sky—a dreamy, delicious cloud-curtain of a soft lilac colour, opaque and yet transparent, permitting scintillating hints of the blue day behind to pierce through. And across its surface floated filmy wreathes of a fading rose-colour, while high above the observatory trembled the first faintly-shining star.
But Owen looked only at the young girl, and she grew embarrassed beneath his gaze. He knew it was on his account that she wore that elaborate, but hopelessly provincial, Sunday frock; on his account, that before coming out she had gone upstairs to fetch her Sunday hat, instead of putting on the every-day one which hung in the hall. He knew it was on his account that she was blushing so warmly; that it was to give herself a countenance she fingered her sleeve so nervously, unhooking it at the wrist,trying
