“Do you remember,” asked Lawrence, “that child’s story of the Fisherman and his Wife? how the fisherman went down to the sea-shore, and cried out,–
’O man of the sea,
Come listen to me!
For Alice, my wife,
The plague of my life,
Has sent me to beg a boon of thee!’
The sea muttered and roared;–do you remember? There was always something impressive to me in the descriptions, in the old story, of the changes in the sea, and of the tempest that rose up, more and more fearful, as the fisherman’s wife grew more ambitious and more and more grasping in her desires, each time that the fisherman went down to the sea-shore. I believe my first impression of the sea came from that. The coming on of a storm is always associated with it. I always fancy that it is bringing with it something beside the tempest,–that there is something ruinous behind it.”
“That is more fanciful than you usually are,” said Isabella; “but, alas! I cannot remember your story, for I never read it.”
“That is where your education and Celia’s was fearfully neglected,” said Lawrence; “you were not brought up on fairy stories and Mother Goose. You have not needed the first, as Celia has; but Mother Goose would have given a tone to your way of thinking, that is certainly wanting.”
A little while afterwards, Isabella stood upon the balcony steps leading from the drawing-room. Otho was with her. The threatening clouds had driven almost every one into the house. There was distant thunder and lightning; but through the cloud-rifts, now and then, the moonlight streamed down. Isabella and Otho had been talking earnestly,–so earnestly, that they were quite unobservant of the coming storm, of the strange lurid light that hung around.
“It is strange that this should take place here!” said Isabella,–”that just here I should learn that you love me! Strange that my destiny should be completed in this spot!”
“And this spot has its strange associations with me,” said Otho, “of which I must some time speak to you. But now I can think only of the present. Now, for the first time, do I feel what life is,–now that you have promised to be mine!”