CHAPTER XXXI
A day or two after, Madame de Frontignac and Mary went out to gather shells and seaweed on the beach. It was four o’clock; and the afternoon sun was hanging in the sultry sky of July with a hot and vaporous stillness. The whole air was full of blue haze, that softened the outlines of objects without hiding them. The sea lay like so much glass; every ship and boat was double; every line, and rope, and spar had its counterpart; and it seemed hard to say which was the most real, the under or the upper world. Madame de Frontignac and Mary had brought along a little basket, which they were filling with shells and sea-mosses. The former was in high spirits. She ran, and shouted, and exclaimed, and wondered at each new marvel thrown out upon the shore, with the abandon o
