“At least he can have no idea of the cause, and that is some comfort, for he is too honorable to open my letters.”

But just here a doubt flashed into her mind.

“How do I know that he is honorable?  Can any man be worthy of trust who holds nothing sacred, and sneers at all religions?  No; he has no conscience; and yet—­”

She sighed and went back to her Ms., and though for a while St. Elmo Murray’s mocking eyes seemed to glitter on the pages, her thoughts ere long were anchored once more with the olive-crowned priestess in the temple at Sais.

CHAPTER XIV.

If the seers of geology are correct in assuming that the age of the human race is coincident with that of the alluvial stratum, from eighty to one hundred centuries, are not domestic traditions and household customs the great arteries in which beat the social life of humanity, linking the race in homogeneity?  Roman women suffered no first day of May pass without celebrating the festival of Bona Dea; and two thousand years later, girls who know as little of the manners and customs of ancient Italy, as of the municipal regulations of fabulous “Manoa,” lie down to sleep on the last day of April, and kissing the fond, maternal face that bends above their pillows, eagerly repeat: 

“You must wake and call me early, call me early, mother dear:  To-morrow’ll be the happiest time of all the glad new-year; Of all the glad new-year, mother, the maddest, merriest day, For I’m to be Queen o’ the May, mother; I’m to be Queen o’ the May.”

For a fortnight Edna had been busily engaged in writing colloquies and speeches for the Sabbath-school children of the village, and in attending the rehearsals for the perfection of the various parts.  Assisted by Mr. Hammond and the ladies of his congregation, she had prepared a varied programme, and was almost as much interested in the success of the youthful orators, as the superintendent of the school, or the parents of the children.  The day was propitious—­ clear, balmy, all that could be asked of the blue-eyed month—­and as the festival was to be celebrated in a beautiful grove of elms and chestnuts, almost in sight of Le Bocage, Edna went over very early to aid in arranging the tables, decking the platforms with flowers, and training one juvenile Demosthenes, whose elocution was as unpromising as that of his Greek model.

Despite her patient teaching this boy’s awkwardness threatened to spoil everything, and as she watched the nervous wringing of his hands and desperate shuffling of his feet, she was tempted to give him up in despair.  The dew hung heavily on grass and foliage, and the matin carol of the birds still swelled through the leafy aisles of the grove, when she took the trembling boy to a secluded spot, directed him to stand on a mossy log, where two lizards lay blinking, and repeat his speech.

He stammered most unsatisfactorily through it, and, intent on his improvement, Edna climbed upon a stump and delivered his speech for him, gesticulating and emphasizing just as she wished him to do.  As the last words of the peroration passed her lips, and while she stood on the stump, a sudden clapping of hands startled her, and Gordon Leigh’s cheerful voice exclaimed: