Blanden's heart beat violently when the roof of the homely inn gleamed forth beneath the trees.
How often had he been there lately; but only sorrow for the dangerously sick girl then had filled his mind; to-day it was the anxious anticipation of a half longed-for, half-dreaded meeting that caused his spirit to be in such a state of vacillation.
In the hope of encountering her on the forest paths, in the Wolfs-schlucht, or upon the Fuchs-spitze, he wandered along the shaded walks, but his hopes had been in vain.
Arrived at the summit, he directed his glance towards the little fisherman's-cottage; the attic window, usually covered with curtains, stood open, and the afternoon sun streamed in with all its force. Eva had left the sick room.
All around was silence, all seemed to be dead! What should he do? To seek the Regierungsräthin, and ask her about her daughter, was to him the most unwelcome course, because in that lady's eyes he must appear like a criminal, and he would not expose himself to her reproachful glance.
It seemed best to contrive to get a little note conveyed to the daughter's hands, and to invite her to a walk to the Fuchs-spitze; half-witted Kätchen might serve as an unsuspected messenger.
Thus the two friends sat in undecided consultation. The more slanting rays of the sun fell through the tops of the oaks. Alternating in light and shade, the ocean waves played in manifold colours; it was as though a broken rainbow had sunk down into them; here they appeared light green, there deep blue, alternating with violet and reddish tints. A black bank of clouds hung in the west, swallowing up the setting sun more and more, but yonder, where lighter fleecy clouds broke away in smaller portions, it enframed the orb of day in a glowing triumphal portal that cast its radiant reflection into the billows.
The sunset was premature, and a sensation of evil portent lay over land and sea. The surf broke more impetuously down below, it was the last echo of a distant storm that beneath the heavy clouds of night winged its flight seawards.
How strange was the chattering of the waves upon the shore, and their varied dance. The one dashes upward like a spring of life in vernal green, while the next, heavy as a blue-black monster of the night, rushes over it, and in the whirling foam the lights of the evening sky are blended in a nosegay of tints, which the one wave offers to the other, and which the recipient scatters ruthlessly in the breakers which expire upon the sand of the shore.
There, see--a boat leaves the strand, and floats over the foam in the surf.