Yet under different influences and happier auspices, and amid new scenes, both sisters regained the old glow of health and beauty they had possessed each in her own degree in former days at pleasant Birkwoodbrae.
Meanwhile with Ellinor, as the conviction of her own sudden selfishness and folly grew strong in her heart, and the now odious image of Sir Redmond Sleath faded out of it, the memory of Robert Wodrow and of other days took their place there; but what would that avail either of them now?
The sisters ceased their duet suddenly, when Jack the fox-terrier, who had been nestling against Mary's skirts, started up to greet with many a yelp of delight the young officer who fed him so often with biscuits and chocolate creams.
'Pardon my interrupting a song so sweet,' said he, in good English, 'but my purpose must be my excuse,' he added, with a military salute, for the Baron Rolandsburg—a visitor of Mrs. Deroubigne's—belonged to the Uhlans, and, like all Prussian officers, was seldom or never seen out of uniform, the green laced with gold of the dashing Lancers.
He was a fair-haired and handsome man, barely thirty years of age, and in his fifteenth year had the glory of being the first Prussian to enter Paris, for he it was who galloped his horse amid scowling and assembled thousands through the Arc de Triomphe after winning the iron cross at Sedan; and now he had brought 'for Madame Deroubigne' and her two young ladies, tickets for a most exclusive fancy ball, to be given in the Theatre of Hamburg, which is one of the largest in Germany; for, though there are many public ball-rooms in that pleasure-loving city, they are never patronised by the upper classes.
The baron had been the sisters' escort to all 'the lions' of Hamburg—to the churches, the stately and crowded Börse, to Rœdings Museum, the tomb of Klopstock, the great garden kept by a Scotsman at Wandsbeck, overlooked by the house of Tycho Brahe, and they had lingered again and again on the summit of the Stintfang, from whence there is such an extensive view of the harbour, the Elbe, and the opposite coast of Hanover, and his hand had often assisted Ellinor in her sketches of the Vierlanders in their picturesque costume and of their boats laden with glowing fruit, flowers, and vegetables.
Mrs. Deroubigne deemed there was no harm in all this. It amused the girls, drew them from their own sad thoughts, and so far as she could see the admiration and attention of the young baron were pretty equally divided between them, or if he had a preference it was for Mary, as it seemed ere long.
But the tickets for the fancy ball—a ball of a kind so peculiarly flattering to female vanity and taste in costume and so forth—seemed to crown all his previous good offices and kindness, and they accepted them with a genuine delight that quite flattered him.
Bouquets (selected by those pretty Vierlander flower girls, whose picturesque caps and embroidered bodices make them quite a feature in Hamburg), gloves, music, even a fan or two, had come from the Baron Rolandsburg, but always at appropriate times, with reference to a stall at the opera or an afternoon dance.
There was no reason why Mary should not accept such gifts; yet she would rather that they did not come, as their acceptance seemed a kind of treason to him who was then so far, far away.