Ellinor lay awake in an agony of mind till morning dawned, when she opened the eyelet port of her cabin, and looked out. The fog was less thick, and a gasp of joy escaped her on seeing a boat with several men in it approaching. She shrieked to them for succour, and waved her handkerchief. On this they paused on their oars, and seemed to confer with each other, but, instead of drawing nearer, they laughed, kissed their hands to her in mockery, resumed their pulling, and vanished into the mist.
Had any boat's crew actually boarded the yacht to make inquiries, Sleath was quite prepared to assert that the lady on board was his demented wife.
With the fog resting on the Elbe, she could see nothing of the land, and as the cutter might—she thought—have shifted her position in the night—she knew not where she was. Altona, she thought, might be miles away, yet it was only a rifle-shot distant. But for its extreme protraction, she might, at times, have thought she was in a dream, and that all her mental misery was but a provoking and ghastly phantasmagoria.
Days had elapsed now since her separation from Mary and Mrs. Deroubigne. They must, she knew, deem her dead—drowned—and might have gone away, she knew not where.
Torn in this outrageous fashion from the society of the only persons she loved on earth! Exiled from happiness, doomed to probable disgrace and misconstruction of conduct.
Her whole soul was wrapped up in one idea—escape! But how was she to achieve it, out of that accursed vessel, unless she cast herself headlong into the river? She certainly shrank from self-destruction, and hoped that something—'that vague something, the forlorn hope of the desperate'—might intervene to save and set her free.
Sir Redmond's persistent love-making could draw no response from her.
This enraged him; he ground his teeth, while longing to take her in his arms, and kiss her whether she would or not; yet he dared not attempt to molest her when he was sober and in daylight; something in the girl's purity and disgust of him repressed him. He dissembled, and said, submissively,
'With your love, Ellinor—in offering mine—I would be a very different man from what I have been.'
'Your love!' she muttered, in a low voice of scorn.