"God above!" thought he, "life is terrible. I have made it terrible. I am afraid. What can I do? Run away? No, no; I must wait. Can any harm come to me? No, none! None, none.... There they were, both of them, she and her father. I am really afraid. Oh! if it must come, great God! only let it come quickly!"
Then he fancied his eyes had deceived him; that it had not been those two. Impossible! And yet he knew that they were there. Terror throbbed in his breast with vehement heart-beating, and he now only marvelled that he could have looked at the boat with the boys at all, while Sir Archibald and Eva were walking down on the shore: Would it not be upset?—That was what he had been thinking of the boat.
III.
A whole fortnight of broiling summer days slipped by; and he waited, always too weary to make the smallest effort to induce Frank to quit the place. It might perhaps have cost him no more than a single word. But he never spoke the word—waiting, and gradually falling under a spell of waiting, as though he were looking for the mysterious outcome of an interesting dénouement. Had they already met anywhere? Would they meet? And if they should, would anything come of it? One thing inevitably follows another, thought he, nothing can ever be done to check their course.
Westhove was in the habit of remaining a great deal indoors, leading a quiet life between his gloomy thoughts and his favourite gymnastics, not troubling himself about the summer crowd outside on the terrace and the shore. Thus the fortnight passed without his becoming aware of the vicinity of the woman whom Van Maeren dreaded. Not a suspicion of premonition thrilled through Frank's mild melancholy; he had gone on breathing the fresh sea air without perceiving any fragrance in the atmosphere that could suggest her presence. He did not discern the prints of her little shoes on the level strand below the villa, nor the tilt of her parasol passing under his eyes, as he sat calmly smoking with his feet on the railings. And they must often have gazed at the selfsame packet steaming into the narrow harbour, like a coloured silhouette cut out of a print, with its little sails and flag of smoke, but their eyes were unconscious how nearly they must be crossing each other, out there over the sea.
After these two scorching weeks there came a dull, grey, sunless day, with heavy rain stored in the driving black clouds, like swollen water-skins.
Frank had gone for a walk on the shore, by the edge of the wailing, fretting sea; the basket-chairs had been carried higher up, and were closely packed and almost unoccupied. There was scarcely any one out. A dismal sighing wind swept the waters; it was an autumn day full of the desolation of departed summer joys. And as he walked on, his ears filled with the moaning breeze, he saw her coming towards him with waving skirts and fluttering ribbons, and—Great Heaven! it was she!
It was as though a mass of rock had been suddenly cast at his breast with a giant's throw, and he lay crushed and breathless beneath. A surge of mingled joy and anguish struggled through his pulses, thrilled his nerves, mounted to his brain. He involuntarily stood still, and almost unconsciously exclaimed, in a tone inaudible, indeed, at any distance, and drowned in the wind:
"Eva! My God! Eva!"