CHAPTER XXI.
A PERILOUS SAIL.
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting,
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar.
Wordsworth.
By this the storm grew loud apace,
The water wraith was shrieking,
And in the scowl of heaven each face
Grew dark as they were speaking.
Campbell.
There was a bright moon that evening, and Colonel Rolleston and his daughter were crossing the lake. A yacht passed them, sailing rapidly before the wind. Some one on board took his hat off.
"Who was that?" asked Cecil.
"It was very like Lascelles," said the Colonel. "I wonder what he is doing up here."
Cecil's colour rose. The name of Lascelles suggested Bertie. She knew they usually hunted in couples, and her busy mind was alive with conjecture. She wondered if the same idea had occurred to her father. She thought he looked a shade grimmer; but he smoked his cigar in silence, and a few more pulls from the sinewy arm of the boatman shot them into Lyndon's Landing. And then it all seemed to Cecil as if the same scene had been enacted in a previous state of existence. Where before had she seen his dark figure thrown out just so by the moonlight? Certainly not in a dream. Could one's life be repeated? She almost felt, by an exertion of memory, she might tell what was coining next.