The Quest of the Golden Girl: A Romance

t railway-station some twenty miles away. For the last three or four miles the road ran along the extreme precipitous verge of cliffs th

rakes, the driver's soothing calls to his horses, and the long burnished horn trailing wild music behind us, like invisible banners of aerial brass,-oh, it stirred the dullest blood amongst us thus as it were to tear down the sky towards the white roofs of Yellowsands, glittering here and there among the clouds of trees which filled the little valley almost to the sea's edg

sort of person, and didn't take me for a Sunday-school treat,-for presently I found myself in a charming little corner bedroom, whence I could survey the whole extent of the little colony of pleasure. The Golden Fortune was curiously situated, perched at the extreme sea-end of a little horse-shoe bay hollowed out between two headlands, the points of which approached each other so closely that the river Sly had but a few yards of rocky channel through which to pour itself into the sea. The Golden Fortune, therefore, backed by towering woodlands, looked out to sea at one side, across to the breakwater headland on another, and on its land side commanded a complete view of the gay little haven, with its white houses built terr

dawn to d

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reams and the gentle surging of the sea, the rippling of leaves, the soft restless whisper of women's gowns, and the music of their vowelled voices. It was here I found myself sitting at sunset, alone, but so completely under the

ny thoughts or feelings, beyond a consciousness of heavenly harmony with my surroundings,

he twilight, and then a woman's voice rose like a silver bird on the air. It was a ga

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but love

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and fears a

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s applause; and I thus attracted the attention of another who sat n

id, turning to me with a pleasant smile, and thus

-maids?" I hadn't, but the fantastic name struck my fancy. It was, he explained, the name given to a favourite buffet at the Hotel Aphrodite, which was

course,