The Baron Rolandsburg was—as Sleath had been in her eyes apparently—the possessor of all she had wished for, and learned to worship—position, rank, riches, and luxury; but neither could love her as poor Bob had done! And now Ellinor was—when too late for the sake of the latter—changed from a somewhat selfish and frivolous girl into a woman of thought, and one capable of much endurance and self-sacrifice.
Through Sir Redmond Sleath her pride had received a severe shock; she had long since come to loathe the very idea of him; as for his name, it never escaped Mary or Mrs. Deroubigne, and her soul sickened when she thought of all she had sacrificed for his unworthy sake, and of the horrible pitfall he had prepared for her.
But why recall these things now, she thought, as she resumed her pencil.
The deep red tints of the golden sun, setting amid fiery haze beyond the Elbe and the tiny hills of Hanover, lay in all their richness on the creek, on the villa and its flowers and shrubs: on Altona in the background, with all its rows of poplars and pointed roofs; and Ellinor often paused in her work, and, wooed by the lap, lap, lapping and murmur of the tide, sank into a kind of dream.
The present fled—the past returned.
She no longer saw the rows of lofty poplars, the long Palmaille, and the great church of Altona, or the house on the hill where Dumourier dwelt. She was back in the old summer garden of Birkwoodbrae, with the fragrance of its roses and honeysuckle around her; she heard the familiar hoot of Mary's pet owl—the owl that Robert Wodrow had risked his life to secure; she heard again the murmur of the May and the song of the thrush mingling with the rustle of the silver birches that shadowed the roof under which her parents died.
So, lulled by the beauty of the evening, by the warmth of the sunshine, and the murmuring wavelets of the glorious river, she dropped asleep.
She could not have sat thus above twenty minutes when she was suddenly awakened by the flow of water over her ankles, and, starting up, found herself surrounded by water—water on all sides, and water between her and the shore, which was nearly a quarter of a mile distant, but seemed to be much further off, the once dry sands being now covered by the incoming flood-tide—a tide that flowed with exceeding violence and fury.
A half-stifled shriek escaped her, and she started to her feet. Her easel had been swept away; she attempted to run shorewards; but as the water deepened and rose to her knees she uttered a despairing cry, and rushed back to the sandy knoll on which she had planted her chair, and over which the encroaching water was rising and deepening with every inward flow of the waves.
She was lost!