A Little Gipsy Lass by Gordon Stables

Frank Antony Blake had gone! He had been summoned away suddenly -- it is ever thus that sorrows come -- to visit the sickbed of his mother. And this was the first dark cloud that had arisen on the horizon of Lotty's young life. It was sweet for her to know next evening by telegram that her hero's dear mother was better, and that a letter would follow. But -- ah! -- Antony had gone, and somehow everything was so changed now all about and around her.

It was springtime. Spring, indeed, was in its first fresh glory. The sea she loved, the sea out yonder stretching away and away to the illimitable north, may have lost none of its beauty -- the blue of its waves when the sun had climbed the mountains, its opal and silver-gray on that cloud-streaked noon, its emerald streaks where sky's blue mixed with the yellow of half-hidden sandbanks, the pearl where the billows broke lazily over the brown-black of weed-capped rocks, its ineffable glory of sunset or moonlight clear gleaming. No, the sea must be the same, and yet it awakened less response, less sympathy, in the heart of the little gipsy lass.