"Don't those crows flying often look like a lady's veil floating and fluttering against the blue?" said Lady Louisa. "I like to watch the flight of birds. 'Oh, had I the wings of a dove!'"
"What would you do?" asked Dr. Brunton.
"I should be pretty frequently absent from Birns Castle."
"Should you?"
"Yes, but a railway-train does equally well, only it is a fussier way of traveling than merely spreading one's wings would be. I am not at all romantic. Good-bye," she suddenly said, flinging a bright glance at him, and running down the narrow winding path that led to the side of the stream.
"Oh, stay," he cried in a tone of entreaty—"stay only a moment!" But she heard as if she heard not, and running on crossed a little rustic wooden bridge below the fall, when she turned round and waved her hand to him, still standing where she had left him: then she disappeared through a gate and went up the gardens to the castle.
"When or how is this to end?" he said to himself.
Going away from her presence into the little sordid houses where disease and sickness were rife, he felt as if he had dropped from heaven to earth, from paradise to purgatory. When in heaven and paradise every obstacle to his wishes vanished, and he was lapped in elysium; but when he returned to earth and purgatory, the idea of marrying Lady Louisa seemed the most wild and improbable dream.
He went home and wrote to Lady Louisa, enclosing his photograph—had she not almost asked for it?—and as he did it he felt that according as it should turn out he was committing an act either of great folly or great wisdom. He did not sleep, thinking of it and continually balancing the probabilities of the case; but even if he had been sleepier than he was, the roar of the wind, which rose almost to a tempest, would have prevented sleep.
In the morning a messenger came to let him know that his patient at the lodge had died suddenly during the night. It has been recorded that the soul of the Lord Protector Cromwell passed away in the midst of a tempest; but it was not remarked at the time, nor has it been noticed since, except on this page, that Bell Thomson breathed her last when the fury of the wind was at its height. Whether the one fact was significant, and the other insignificant, I do not know.