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Edna took up the Candle and searched the rooms, but as

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A NOVEL.

BY AUGUSTA J. EVANS WILSON,

AUTHOR OF

"INFELICE," "BEULAH," "MACARIA," ETC.

Whatever of the best he can
whatever of the highest he

"Ah! the rule is—a true wife in her husband's house is his servant :
it is in his heart that she is queen.
conceive, it is her part to be;
can hope, it is hers to promise; all that is dark in him
she must purge into purity; all that is failing in
him she must strengthen into truth; from her,
through all the world's clamour, he must
win his praise; in her, through all the
world's warfare, he must find his
peace."-JOHN RUSKIN.

WILLIAM

WAKEFIELD:

NICHOLSON AND SONS.

LONDON: SIMPKIN MARSHALL AND CO. KENT AND Co.

S. D. EWINS AND Co., PATERNOSTER Row

251. g. 739.

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ST. ELMO

CHAPTER I.

EDNA EARL AND THE DUEL.

E stood and measured the earth: and the everlasting moun

HE tains were scattered, and the perpetual hills did bow."

These words of the prophet upon Shigionoth were sung by a sweet, happy, childish voice, and to a strange, wild, anomalous tune-solemn as the Hebrew chant of Deborah, and fully as triumphant.

A slender girl of twelve years' growth steadied a pail of water on her head, with both dimpled arms thrown up, in ancient classic Caryatides attitude, and, pausing a moment beside the spring, stood fronting the great golden dawn-watching for the first level ray of the coming sun, and chanting the prayer of Habakkuk. Behind her in silent grandeur towered the huge outline of Lookout Mountain, shrouded at summit in grey mist; while centre and base showed dense masses of foliage, dim and purplish in the distance-a stern, cowled monk of the Cumberland brotherhood. Low hills clustered on either side, but immediately in front stretched a wooded plain, and across this the child looked at the flushed sky, rapidly brightening into fiery and blinding radiance. Until her wild song waked echoes among the far-off rocks the holy hush of early morning had rested like a benediction upon the scene, as though nature laid her broad finger over her great lips, and waited in reverent silence the advent of the sun. Morning among the mountains possessed witchery and glories which filled the heart of the girl with adoration, and called from her lips rude but exultant anthems of praise. The young face, lifted toward the cloudless east, might have served as a model for a pictured Syriac priestess-one of Baalbec's vestals, ministering in the olden time in that wondrous and grand temple at Heliopolis.

The large black eyes held a singular fascination in their mild, sparkling depths, now full of tender loving light and childish gladness; and the flexible, red lips curled in lines of orthodox Greek

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