How little could she conceive that, wounded in the right hand by the explosion of a friend's fowling-piece when shooting, he was confined at first to bed, and then to his room at Craigmhor; that he was thus unable to write to or communicate with her; and that thus, too, probably she would never see him again, for by the evening of the third day the arrangements for the departure of Ellinor and herself were finally completed.
'Would that I could peep into our future, Mary,' said Ellinor, tearfully, on their last evening in their old home.
'Ah! the future is indeed a mystery to us,' said Mary; 'but blessed be God for all His gifts!' she added, in a broken voice, as she thought of the legend over the old doorway, through which they would pass no more.
Many relics were packed and sent to the manse, there to be kept till better times came; everything else was left in care of the still absent Dr. Wodrow, to be sold for their behoof; but, for reasons to be given, strange to say, nothing was sold.
Though the apparently strange conduct of Captain Colville in teaching her to love him, and exciting brilliant hopes in her heart only to let them fade, had so deeply mortified Mary that already his image was passing out of her busy thoughts, or seemed as only something to be forgotten as soon as possible, she was not without strong though vague hope of the future for Ellinor and herself; but hope has often been likened to the mirage of the desert, and as being often quite as illusory.
Ellinor, we have said, had thanked heaven for her escape from what must have proved a great and perilous esclandre; yet by one of those idiosyncracies of the female heart she also thanked heaven that London was to be the place of their exile; Sir Redmond was there, no doubt, and she felt assured that he loved her still. Mighty though the modern Babylon was—and of that mightiness she had not the slightest conception—they might meet again; and even, if not, it would be pleasant to walk in the same streets where he walked or rode; to breathe the same air that was breathed by him: to be in the same place where he was.
So she had, to enliven the path before her, a little element of romance that was unknown to, and denied to the poor but more practical Mary; and to her, foolish girl, it seemed that perhaps the dear old tale might conclude, after all, with wedding bells and vows of wedded love.
Why she should have indulged in these dreams it is difficult to say. Days upon days had passed, and, like Colville, the impassioned baronet, with whom she had been on the point of sharing her future, gave no sign, and she could make none. But she was yet to learn that; all the fine old Grandisonian notions of honour and delicacy towards woman held by our grandfathers were exploded, or else deemed absolutely antediluvian and absurd.'
Now she longed to be gone—gone even from Birkwoodbrae. 'She wanted to see life' (she thought), 'as poets and painters and young ladies picture it—a sort of misty, delicious paradisiacal existence of excitement, unfailing amusement, and perpetual delight.'
The old peace of mind was gone; she wished to leave all connected with it behind; and, poor girl, she little knew what was before her—it might be of penury, struggle, and despair!