Yet once she could not resist toying with some of them—the Dijon roses especially, and with their odour across the tide of memory there stole gently and subtly a memory of the past.
Who has not some association of this kind?
Ellinor's were of happy years at Birkwoodbrae and Robert Wodrow, and a torrent of tears came with the memory, and a kind of lethargic despair came over her as the little hope that dawned upon her began to die again—the hope that Sleath had relented and really meant to relinquish his persecution and restore her to her friends.
CHAPTER XI.
IN HAMBURG STILL.
Ellinor was altogether unlike any other girl on whom the evil eyes of Herr Wyburg had rested, in Hamburg at least. Her face was so clearly cut, with pride in its contour, a dreamy thought its eyes, and something almost angelic in its purity—as Tennyson has it,
'A sight to make an old man young.'
The three days' unexpected absence of Sir Redmond rather alarmed Herr Wyburg. He knew not how to account for it, and mightily, with all his ruffianism, dreaded the gendarmes; thus he was genuinely glad when, in the dusk of the third day, the baronet presented himself at his house and inquired for his charge.
'She is silent and dull as usual, and anxious for the address of a lady friend,' replied Wyburg. 'I don't understand all this,' he added, in a growling tone; 'have you made a fool of this girl or of yourself?'
'Of myself as yet, I think,' replied Sleath, with an oath.