The excessive heat had wilted these flowers of loveliness and faded their bright hues.

Their uncurled ringlets hung dangling down their cheeks, whose roses were heightened to an unbecoming crimson, or withered to a sickly pallor; their gossamer drapery, deprived of its delicate stiffening, flapped like the loose sails of a vessel wet by the spray.

Here and there was a blooming maiden, still as fair and cool as if sprinkled with dew, round whom the atmosphere seemed refreshed as by the sparkling of a _jet d'eau_.

These, like myself, were novices, who had brought with them the dewy innocence of life's morning hours; but they had not, like me, heard the hissing of the adder among their roses.
"Be calm,--be courageous," said Ernest, in a scarcely audible tone, as bending down he gave the fan into my hand; "the arrow rebounds from an impenetrable surface." As we turned to leave the church, I felt my hand drawn round the arm of Richard Clyde.

How he had cleft the living mass so quickly I could not tell; but he had made his way where an arrow could hardly penetrate.