The man she had loved—who fully, as far as manner and almost words went, had answered her love for him, had meant nothing, but pour passer le temps. He had been, he thought perhaps, only kind, friendly, cousinly, while she—great Heavens!—had been on the point of laying her affectionate heart at his feet.
Oh, what humiliation was hers!
In explanation of the lateness of their return, they had been a long walk, the loiterers said, away below Roslin Chapel; but said nothing of what the walk had somewhat suddenly evolved.
When the gloaming was considerably advanced, and, though a ruddy sunset lingered in the north-west, there was no moon in the sky, where the evening star shone brilliantly, they had wandered down the river-side—its current flowing like molten silver when seen between and under the dark, overshadowing, and weird-like trees—to where, on the summit of its high and grassy knoll, the beautiful chapel of Roslin towered up between them and the sky-line—the solemn scene, as Scott has preserved it, of one of the most thrilling and poetical of all family presages of death and war; a legend deduced from the tomb-fires of the Norsemen, and, doubtless, transplanted from our stormy Northern Isles to the sylvan valley of the Esk by that old Prince of Orkney, whose bride, Rosabelle, perished, and when the chapel seemed filled with flame.
'O'er Roslin all that dreary night,
A wondrous blaze was seen to gleam!
'Twas broader than the watchfire's light,
And redder than the bright moonbeam.
Even as Roland was quoting these lines to Annot Drummond a wonderful but natural effect took place.
'Look, Roland,' cried she with a thrill of real terror; 'look, the chapel is on fire!'
'Oh, impossible,' said he, still intent on gazing on her sweet face.
'But look—look—it is!'
Whether she thought so or not Annot was evidently startled and discomposed, while Roland certainly was not without momentary astonishment. A row of red lights appeared through the branches of the dark trees high above where he and Annot stood. It was the last light of the orange and blood-red set sun gleaming though the double row of chapel windows—the rich red light that is peculiar to Scottish sunsets, and the phenomenon it produced had a powerful effect upon the vision and minds of the beholders—even on the volatile and unimaginative Annot, who, before the light faded out, was not slow to understand and to utilize the situation in her own way.