CHAPTER III.
THE ROSE LEAVES.
This discovery was of great importance to me. It gave me a decided interest in the eyes of Ernestine; it afforded me, also, a decided right to be her guardian; and I felt that, with confidence, I could now state my hopes to the count—and to herself—for I was her kinsman, and, save Ian and her father, the only one she possessed in Germany or Denmark.
The long explanatory conversations Ian and I had with Ernestine and Gabrielle, afforded us the best opportunity for the most charming intimacy; and I was frequently amused when Ian, with true Celtic enthusiasm and pride, and moreover with very perplexing accuracy, traced for them their pedigree on his fingers; shewing how they were descended from Aonghais Dhu of the Clan Ivor, an irritable individual who was slain in a cearnach with the Clan Laiwe; leaving by a daughter of the Clan Chai, a son, Alaster Mhor Mhic Aonghais, who, with his six brothers, closed a turbulent life at the battle of Druim-na'-Coub; leaving a son, Duncan Mhic Alaster Mhor, Mhic Aongbais, by his wife, a daughter of M'Gillichattan Mhor, who had carried a foray once to the Clachnacuddan of Inverness, where he departed this life, in the good old Highland fashion, with a yard of cold iron in his body; and so on would Ian run for twenty generations, the patronymics increasing with each, until, among the barbarous names and guttural sobriquets, the sisters became lost in surprise. Like every Highlander, Ian carried about in his own memory the pedigree his ancestry up to the times of King Donald VI., and further back perhaps; and, if Ian's memory failed him, the memory—or perhaps invention—of his sergeant and foster-brother, never did; and so they would sit and trace back their progenitors until they became lost in the dark ages of Highland antiquity.
Ernestine heard all this mighty muster-roll with quiet astonishment, but Gabrielle with evident pleasure. She liked the society of Ian, in whom she discovered some resemblance to her father; and admired his blunt decisive manner, and that gallant and authoritative air which declared him the Celtic chief of a long descended line of free and roving warriors.
A few evenings after the discovery so fortunately made by means of that blessed old missal, we were seated near the same place, and Ernestine was feeding the golden fish with crumbs from her white hands, while Ian, Gabrielle, and the old Baron Fœyœ, were promenading on a terrace, where four brass cannon faced the Guldborg Sound. Again the sun was setting; its orb, glowing through the softening haze which floated over the woodlands of the isle, seemed to rest at the horizon; and again its fiery rays played on the glistening leaves of the tall poplars, that overtopped the old garden wall.
I was conversing with Ernestine, and thinking, as I hung over her, that I had never seen a more winning face, or graceful contour of head and neck; there was something antique and Roman in their beauty which made her seem divine, when viewed through that bright medium by which a lover sees every thing that appertains to his mistress. Since the discovery of our relationship our intimacy had greatly increased, and I had prevailed on her to accept from me a number of those pretty trifles which the taste and attention of men have invented to please and flatter women. My means for procuring these at the small Danish town of Nyekiöbing were very limited, and on the day in question I had just invested my last rixdollars* on the purchase of a ring, which, after some hesitation, she accepted.
* A rixdollar was worth about forty shillings Scots.
"It is very beautiful!" said she, smiling, as she placed it on a tiny finger of her dimpled hand; "and I will take it from you—as my cousin."
"Will you not receive it from me, dear Ernestine, as one who would fain be something more?"
"It is charming," she added, wholly occupied with her new ring) "and the manner in which you bestow a gift trebles its value. How I do wish, cousin Philip, that we had discovered our relationship before my father left us for the isle of Fehmarn!"