CHAPTER VII.
THE DAUGHTER OF NOX.
'And you have actually found us out—here? How strange!' exclaimed Ellinor, blushing deeply with pleasure and surprise.
'Through my appreciative friend—appreciative in art, I mean—who bought your charming landscape, the view of that dear old—what is it?—Linn—Linn of the May—yes, darling,' replied Sleath—Sleath the slimy, with the china-blue eyes and Mephistophelian smile, as he twirled out his tawny moustache, and regarded the girl with a passionate expression rippling over his face. 'Après moi le deluge! you will think, perhaps; but now, darling Ellinor, that I have found you at last, we must not part again.'
Ere leaving Birkwoodbrae Ellinor had felt mortified, even insulted, on finding that Sir Redmond, after the night of the frustrated elopement, made no sign that he remembered her existence; but the moment she saw him the barriers she had mentally raised between them fell at once, and she no more sought, as she had done of late, to erase him from her heart.
Poor foolish Ellinor!
'I had ever a hope,' said Sleath, caressing her, 'that I would come upon you suddenly again, and take you by surprise with the earnestness and passion of my love; and, Ellinor, the time has come—thank heaven, the time has come!'
And he cast his eyes upward and sighed sentimentally to the ceiling.
'An age seems to have elapsed since that night,' he added.
'I was at the appointed place,' said Ellinor, softly, and colouring deeply.
'So was I,' said Sir Redmond.