"O, Mr. Hardinge, Mr. Hardinge, we shall perish most miserably; we shall certainly be drowned! Mamma, my poor mamma, I shall never see her more!"
Though striving to reassure her I was, for a time, completely bewildered by anxiety for what she must suffer by a terror of the sudden fate that might come upon her; and I was haunted by morbid visions of her, the brilliant Estelle, a drowned and sodden corpse, the sport of the waves--of myself I never thought--tossing unburied in the deep, or, it might be, cast mutilated on the shore; and she looked so beautiful and helpless as she clung to me now, clasping my right arm with all her energy, her head half reclined upon my shoulder, and the passing spray mingling with her tears upon her cheek. "The drowning man is said to be confronted by a ghostly panorama of his whole life." It may be so generally; but then I had only the horror of losing Estelle, whom I loved so tenderly. We were now together and alone, so completely, suddenly, and terribly alone, it might be for life or for death--the former short indeed, and the latter swift and sudden, if the boat upset, or we were washed out of it into the sea; and yet in that time of peril she possessed more than ever for me that wondrous and undefinable charm and allurement which every man finds in the woman he loves, and in her only.
"God spare us and help us!" she exclaimed. "Mr. Hardinge, I am filled with unutterable fear;" and then she added, unconsciously quoting some poet, "I find the thought of death, to one near death, most dreadful!"
"With you, Estelle, love might make it indeed a joy to die!" I exclaimed, with a gush of enthusiasm and tenderness that, but for the terrible situation, had been melodramatic.
"I did not think that you loved me so," said she, after a little pause; and my arm now encircled her waist, while something of an invocation to heaven rose to my lips, and I repeated,
"Not think that I loved you! Do not be coquettishly unwilling to admit what you must know, that since that last happy night in London you have never been absent from my thoughts; and here, Estelle, dear, dear Estelle, when menaced by a grave amid these waters, I tell you that I loved you from the first moment that I knew you! Death stares us in the face, but tell me truly that you--that you--"
"Love you in return? I do, indeed, dear Harry!" she sobbed, and then her beloved face, chilled and damp with tears and spray, came close to mine.
"God bless you, O my darling, for this avowal!" said I in a thick voice, and even the terrors of our position could not damp the glow of my joy.
In all my waking dreams of her had Estelle seemed beautiful; but never so much so as now, when I seemed on the eve of losing her for ever, and my own life, too; when each successive wave that rolled in inky blackness towards us might tear her from my clasp! How easily under some circumstances do we learn the language of passion! and now, while clasping her fast with one arm, as with both of hers she clung to me, I pressed her to my breast, and told her again and again how fondly I loved her, while--as it were in a dream, a portion of a nightmare--our boat, now filling fast with water, was tossed madly to and fro. And like a dream, too, it seemed, the fact that I had her all to myself--for life or death, as it were--this brilliant creature so loved by many, so prized by all, and hitherto apparently so unattainable; she who, by a look, a glance, a smile, by a flirt of her fan, by the dropping of a glove, or the gift of a flower, selected with point from her bouquet, had held my soul in thrall by all the delicious trifles that make up the sum and glory of love to the lover who is young. And where were we now? Alone on the dark, and ere long it was the midnight, sea! Alone, and with me; I who had so long eyed her lovingly and longingly, even as Schön Rohtrant, the German king's daughter, was gazed at and loved by the handsome page, who dared not to touch or kiss her till he gathered courage one day, as the ballad tells us, when they were under a shady old oak.
"If God spares us to see her," said Lady Estelle, "what will mamma think of this terrible fiasco of ours?"