She gradually subsided into a calm but profound state of melancholy, and begged to be removed from Nyekiöbing, that she might enter a German convent; but the sea around us was yet closed by the frozen waves of the field-ice. Ernestine and I could alone see into the depths of her heart; and even Ernestine knew not that I had overheard their secret.
As for Ian Dhu, I thought he was blind not to perceive, when he approached Gabrielle, how her blue eyes sparkled, how her fair cheek flushed, and then waxed deadly pale, while her voice trembled when she answered him; but about the middle of the month a courier came from the king requiring his presence at Assens, and he left us by the port of Skielbye, where the ice had partly left an open passage between the floes.
Ernestine was pleased to see him depart; but after that event the mild eyes of Gabrielle became more sad, and her cheek more blanched. Deep thoughts preyed like deathly weariness or an incurable sorrow upon her soul. It was the "worm in the bud."
Poor Gabrielle!—like a young flower deprived of sunshine and air, was withering away; and I feared the unhappy girl would die—though people never die of love.
But a crisis was at hand.
CHAPTER V.
THE DOGGER.
By the end of March a great and unexpected change came over the weather. The wind, which had long blown from the chill north, now came softly and mildly from the west, but still the atmosphere was cold; for though the vast field-ice floated away from, the Guldborg sound, and the dark blue water rolled freely between the isles, their shores were covered with a pure white mantle of deep and dazzling snow.
Hearing that an expedition led by Christian IV. was about to be made against the Imperialists, and that a king's ship had been seen off the coast, I rode one day beyond Skielbye towards the mouth of the Sound, to see her, as I looked anxiously for the return of Ian.
On leaving Ernestine, I thought she seemed more sad than usual, and that her voice trembled when I bade her adieu. This might all have been fancy; but I could not expel such fancies from my head, and again and again they recurred to me, as I spurred a stout Holstein troop-horse (which Baron Fœyœ had lent me) along the frozen beach.