The latter, well aware of the time when Mary Wellwood was generally abroad among her poor people, or otherwise employed, had sent his valet, John Gaiters—a well-trained rascal—with a beautiful bouquet and a perfumed note to Ellinor.
In the note he urged her by every means in her power to preserve secrecy close as the grave concerning the terms on which they were, lest his expectations might be destroyed, and with them her own; and then he pressed her to meet him at a certain point near the Linn on the May, at a given time, when he would tell her more.
This missive was curiously and most warily worded to be the production of one who professed to be such an ardent lover. It did not bear even his signature, but only his initials mysteriously twisted into a species of monogram. To one more worldly wise or less foolish than Ellinor, some doubts would have been inspired by its tenor alone, but she had none, and simply felt joy and tumult in her breast.
She clasped the golden locket round her neck, and with brightness spreading over her sweet face, contemplated herself in a hand mirror, while indulging in daydreams of her future as Lady Sleath, being driven in a splendid carriage to Buckingham Palace, or down St. James's Street, with bare shoulders in broad daylight, with a train some yards long and diamonds in profusion, to be presented at the drawing-room in the gloomy old palace of the Tudors, surrounded by handsome fellows in snowy uniforms, who murmured compliments about her beauty.
Had 'dear Redmond' not described to her, too, something of the life they would lead together? Returning from Tyburnian and Belgravian balls at 6 a.m., breakfasting at mid-day, and then going for 'a spin' in the Row, where cavaliers would surround her, or canter by her side and beg for waltzes at Lady A.'s and the Countess of B.'s. Then dress again for a flower fête at the Botanical Gardens; for pigeon-shooting at Hurlingham (wherever that was—poor Ellinor had not the ghost of an idea!) Sunday at the Zoo, and a dinner at the 'Star and Garter,' or it might be at the 'Trafalgar' in Greenwich, which she supposed to be one of H.M. ships.
Suddenly, amid visions such as these, unheard or unannounced, Robert Wodrow stood before her, hat in hand, and in his eyes, keen and dark grey, a brooding light that boded evil to some one!
He was pale almost to ghastliness, and her eyes drooped, as if a weight oppressed their full white lids when they met his fixed gaze. However, he took her proffered hand mechanically, and then she tried to talk gaily, not knowing what she said; but the talk proved a miserable failure.
How he longed to take her in his arms once again; to kiss her glossy brown hair, her damask cheek, her rosy lips; to implore her to love him still and share his humble future! But no; it would be more cowardly to take any advantage then of any passing remorse she might feel; and better was it, perhaps, that she should marry this other man, if he really loved her, and forget—if she could—that there was such a poor fellow as Robert Wodrow in the secluded world she would leave behind her; and he said something of this to her in faltering accents, and for a time the heart of Ellinor faltered too—but for a time only.
The new vision was too bright to fade quickly away!
'I am eating my heart out with sorrow and uncertainty—I am sick of suspense, Ellinor,' he said, after a pause; 'our happy meetings, our walks, our talks, our plans for the future—are they all as nothing to you now, Ellinor?'