She stayed out a long while. It was so sunny and warm it seemed like a summer instead of an autumn day. The sea-gulls sported joyously above the surface of the water, now and then a silvery fish leaped up in the sunshine, its scales shining in beautiful rainbow hues, and shedding the crystal drops of spray from its body like a shower of diamonds, and the curlew's call echoed over the sea. How she had loved these things in the gay and careless girlhood that began to seem so far away in the past.
"That was Bonnibel Vere," she said to herself, "the girl that never knew a sorrow. I am Bonnibel Dane, whose life must lie forever in the shadow!"
She turned her course homeward, and as she stepped upon the shore she picked out a little blue sea-flower that grew in a crevice of the rock, and stood still a moment looking out over the blue expanse of ocean, and repeating some pretty lines she had always loved:
"'Tis sweet to sit midst a merry throng
In the woods, and hear the wild-bird's song;
But sweeter far is the ceaseless dirge,
The music low of the moaning surge;
It frets and foams on the shell-strewn shore,
Forever and ever, and evermore.
I crave no flower from the wood or field,
No rare exotic that hot-beds yield;
Give me the weeds that wildly cling,
On the barren rocks their shelter fling;
Those are the flowers beloved by me—
They grow in the depths of the deep blue sea!"
A sudden voice and step broke on her fancied solitude. She turned quickly and found herself face to face with the wandering sibyl, Wild Madge.
The half-crazed creature was, as usual, bare-headed, her white locks streaming in the air, her frayed and tattered finery waving fantastically about her lean, lithe figure. She looked at Bonnibel with a hideous leer of triumph.
"Ah maiden!" she cried—"said I not truly that the bitter waters of sorrow were about to flow over you? You will not mock the old woman's predictions now."
Bonnibel stood silent, gazing in terrified silence at the croaking old raven.
"Where is the gay young lover now?" cried Wild Madge laughing wildly. "The summer lover who went away before the summer waned? Is he false, or is he dead, maiden, that he is not here to shelter that bonny head from the storms of sorrow?"