Sometimes she was seized with the thought of a ship appearing suddenly upon the horizon; the Leopoldine hastening home. Then she would suddenly make an irreflected movement to rise, and rush to look out at the ocean, to see whether it were true.
But she would fall back. Alas! where was this Leopoldine now? Where could she be? Out afar, at that awful distance of Iceland, forsaken, crushed, and lost.
All ended by a never-fading vision appearing to her—an empty, sea-tossed wreck, slowly and gently rocked by the silent gray and rose-streaked sea; almost with soft mockery, in the midst of the vast calm of deadened waters.
CHAPTER VIII—THE FALSE ALARM
Two o'clock in the morning.
It was at night, especially, that she kept attentive to approaching footsteps; at the slightest rumour or unaccustomed noise her temples vibrated; by dint of being strained to outward things, they had become fearfully sensitive.
Two o'clock in the morning. On this night as on others, with her hands clasped and her eyes wide open in the dark, she listened to the wind, sweeping in never-ending tumult over the heath.
Suddenly a man's footsteps hurried along the path! At this hour who would pass now? She drew herself up, stirred to the very soul, her heart ceasing to beat.
Some one stopped before the door, and came up the small stone steps.