The duke suddenly drew back a double door, revealing another cabin beyond, where we saw two ladies seated together, half embraced, and near a table lighted by a lamp.
"Ernestine—Gabrielle!" cried the count. He sprang forward, and, with a mingled cry of surprise and joy, his daughters threw their arms around him.
The keen blue eyes of the gallant Bernard glistened, and with much good feeling he softly closed the door upon this tender scene.
CHAPTER XLI.
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP ANNA CATHARINA.
As I ascended to the upper deck my heart was full of joy, at the thought that Ernestine, whom I had considered all but lost to me for ever, was so suddenly restored; that her father was with us, and that we were now all together sailing quietly on the Danish waters, and far from the rival he had proposed—that Count Kœningheim, whom—though he was a brave and honest fellow—I cordially wished at the bottom of the Red Sea.
The first sentiment that Ernestine had awakened within me returned with renewed force; the sound of her voice—one glimpse of that well-remembered form—had recalled it all, as it were, from the depth of my heart, and I felt that I loved her as she deserved to be loved. But the count, her father!—the thought of him gave me an unpleasant twinge. What would he, a Catholic, an Imperialist, a noble and high military officer under that ambitious Emperor who had bestowed upon him so many princely gifts, think of me loving his daughter; for I was but a poor soldier of fortune—a captain of musketeers, under the unfortunate King of Denmark.
My heart sank at the comparison; but I reflected that the count was brave, generous, and not indisposed to love me: that he, too, had probably left our Scottish hills, a poor cavalier with no other inheritance than his sword: and that my birth and blood were perhaps as good as his own. My heart rose again at these thoughts, and now I looked towards the shore.
The wind had changed. We were lying a westward course, and had run about fifteen Danish miles; the lights of the burning town had disappeared upon our larboard quarter, and we were now off the mouth of the bay of Kiel; the glassy sea and the level shores within it, lay sleeping in the moonlight, in the cold white lustre of which our sails shone like new-fallen snow. Here and there, to mark a promontory or a shoal, a great beacon of coals or other fuel was blazing on the summit of a cairn or an ancient tower, and shedding a long and tremulous line of light upon the heaving water.
As we passed the mouth of the Kielerfiord, we saw afar off the capital of Holstein, with its spires; for the pure blue of the northern sky made all beneath it, distinct to us, as at noonday, and what a change of scene was that quiet shore, with its gentle slopes, its thatched farm-houses and green islets, its clumps of waving trees and glassy water, all steeped in the silver splendour of a full autumnal moon, when compared to the carnage and the horrors I had witnessed a few hours before!