She beckoned to her maid and turned away abruptly, anxious to put an end to an interview which had been trying to both of them. Her face was grave and down-cast as she walked, and more than once she sighed heavily. She had never been formally betrothed to Macneillie, but there had been a private engagement between them, and she had spoken quite truly when she said that his care during her girlhood had shielded her from many perils. Her love for him had been very real; she had struggled long against the opposition of her parents, but at last her strength had failed, and little by little she had yielded to the influence which by degrees had paralysed her powers of loving.
“Poor Hugh,” she thought to herself, remorsefully. “He is terribly cut up. But I was never good enough for him. Sir Roderick and the low level will suit me much better.”
After he was left alone, Macneillie did not move for some minutes. He just leant on the iron fence with clenched hands and set face, despair in his heart. The voices of the two children to the right fell on his ear, mingling strangely with his miserable thoughts.
“I shall lose her! I shall lose her!” cried the boy in a tragic voice.
“How came you to let go of the string?” asked his small companion.
“I had forgotten all about it; I was thinking of those people. Hurrah! the wind is shifting; she is coming nearer. I do believe I could reach her with my stick.”
Macneillie watched the boy’s strenuous efforts to recapture the tiny craft, which seemed almost within his reach, yet somehow always eluded him. Suddenly, at the very moment when his stick had touched the boat, he lost his balance and fell headlong over the low foot-rail into the water.
Macneillie had hurried to the rescue before Evereld’s cry of terror had reached Fraulein Ellerbeck. He lifted out the dripping boy and laid him on the path, and Ralph, recovering from the shock and rubbing his wet eyelashes, looked up to find a grave face bending over him and to meet the inquiry of the kindest blue-grey eyes he had ever seen.
“None the worse for your bath, I hope?” said Macneillie, smiling a little.
“No, thank you,” said Ralph, struggling to his feet and looking very much like Johnnie Head-in-air when “with hooks the two strong men hooked poor Johnnie out again.”