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The sapphire Lady Carwitchet wears is only an excellent imitation, and I have seen it with my own eyes is the one bearing Bogaerts's mark, the Greek Beta." Some years ago I engaged passage from Charleston, S. C., to the city of New York, in the fine packet-ship Independence, Captain Hardy. I found that we were to have a great many passengers, including a more than usual number of ladies.

You have to go to the lady, Jasper, boy, and so has Garnet, and so has Sapphire, and so have Opal and Emerald. In addition, the boys at Ardshiel are to go to a new Annex under protest, no doubt; but still it has to be. You 'll be taught by men, my bonnie Precious Stones, and we lassies will have to do with the women folk. 'Well, this is astounding, said Jasper. 'Is it true?

Even Humfrey had brought in his cloak-bag wherewithal to make himself presentable, and soon appeared, a well-knit and active figure, in a plain dark blue jerkin, with white slashes, and long hose knitted by his mother's dainty fingers, and well-preserved shoes with blue rosettes, and a flat blue velvet cap, with an exquisite black and sapphire feather in it fastened by a curious brooch.

These stones, however, stood in three rows, by four in a row, and were inserted into the breastplate itself, and they were set in ouches of gold, that were themselves inserted in the breastplate, and were so made that they might not fall out low the first three stones were a sardonyx, a topaz, and an emerald. The second row contained a carbuncle, a jasper, and a sapphire.

To our young lover's eye how divine it shone! None of the half tints of common flesh were there, but a thing all rose, lily, sapphire, and soul. His pencil dropped, his mouth opened, he was downright dazzled by the glowing, bewitching face, sparkling with fun, in the gaunt tree. Tell me, ladies, did she know, even at that age, the value of that sombre frame to her brightness?

And excepting the sapphire sky, studded with rubies, above the endless line of the Campagna, which was likewise changed into a sparkling lake, the dull green of the herbage turning to a liquid emerald tint, there was nothing to be seen, neither a hillock nor a flock nothing, indeed, but Cardinal Boccanera's black figure, erect among the tombs, and looking, as it were, enlarged as it stood out against the last purple flush of the sunset.

Regular, barren rows were the only evidences of the lentil and garlic gardens in happier days, and the location of pastures might be guessed by the skeletons that whitened the uplands. Through fringes of leafless palm trees, stone-rimmed pools, like splashes of quicksilver or facets of sapphire, reflected the sky.

A turn of the road discloses a glimpse of the mountain lake, a sheet of sapphire sparkling in the morning sun, but retrospective thoughts in this instance convey pain as well as pleasure, for "mounting ambition" has for once "o'erleapt itself," and failure counterbalances success.

Perhaps the most disconcerting characteristic of that complex affair, the human organism, is the lack of continuity of its moods. The soul, so called, is as sensitive to physical conditions as a barometer: affected by lack of sleep, by smells and sounds, by food, by the weather whether a day be sapphire or obsidian. And the resolutions arising from one mood are thwarted by the actions of the next.

My naughty, naughty boy! Mr. Acton, this is my son, Lord Carwitchet!" I broke off short in the midst of my polite acknowledgments to stare blankly at her. The sapphire was gone! A great gilt cross, with a Scotch pebble like an acid drop, was her sole decoration. "I had to put my pendant away," she explained confidentially; "the clasp had got broken somehow." I didn't believe a word.