Colville of the Guards, Volume 1 (of 3)

CHAPTER XI.

IN THE CONSERVATORY.

In an atmosphere of drooping acacias, little palms, curious ferns, cacti, and other exotics in tubs and pots, where the light was subdued by the greenery overhead and around, and where the plashing of a beautiful bronze fountain alone broke the stillness, for in the nook of that great conservatory to which Sir Redmond Sleath had successfully drawn Ellinor alone, the music of the band and the merry voices of the garden party were scarcely heard, they were seated together on a blue velvet lounge; and he, having possessed himself of her fan, was slowly fanning her, while he hung admiringly over her—a process to which she submitted with a soft, dreamy smile in her speaking hazel eyes; while with every motion of the fan the ripples of her fine dark hair were blown slightly to and fro.

Certainly a short intimacy had put these two on terms of familiarity, for he said, as he ceased to fan her, and settled down on the lounge by her side, with one arm, casually, as it were, thrown along the back thereof,

'I am not a stranger to you now.'

His voice was pleasantly modulated as he stooped over her, and looked down on her drooping eyelashes.

'Oh, no—not now,' replied Ellinor.

'I am so happy to hear you admit this.'

'Why?'

Ellinor felt her question to be foolish, as it was a leading one.

'Can you ask me?' said Sir Redmond, in a still lower voice, and venturing; to touch—just to pat—her hand; 'there are many persons whom we may know for years, and yet find them somehow strangers, but it is not so with you and I.'

He now took her hand in his, and saw that it was delicately white—for she had drawn a glove off—and felt soft as velvet; he saw, too, that her white-veined eyelids with their long lashes drooped under his earnest gaze, and that her red lips quivered. Was he actually influencing her already? He could scarcely believe it, even with all his unparalleled assurance.

She glanced nervously round her.

'Do not be alarmed, dear girl—darling Ellinor, let me say,' whispered Sleath, in his most honeyed accents, for who was to call him to account for his impertinence, if impertinence it really was? 'I shall be content to wait—to wait and win your love, if you will but let me hope. Some day—say one day you will listen to me, and I shall tell you more freely, more boldly how I love you—how I shall make you my own!'

Ellinor trembled as she listened to these stilted phrases that came so glibly from his tongue—how often he had said them to others she little knew; and—even Robert Wodrow apart—she had never played with a man's heart as Sleath was now playing with hers.

He said much more, running on in the same inflated style, feeling quite a zest in the, to him, well-nigh worn-out game of love-making; and Ellinor listened. She was far from being a fool, yet she failed to realise that his tones were very second-hand indeed, and that the real expression of his blue eyes, if triumphant, was also false.

Her voice trembled so that she made no response, and the flowers in the breast of her dress rose and fell with the quickened beating of her fluttered and, we are sorry to say, happy heart.

A conviction troubled her, nevertheless, and would not be put aside—that he would master her and compel her to love him blindly by the mere force of his—practised—will, and she strove to resist it.

'You are over-confident, though flattering me, Sir Redmond,' said she, a little defiantly at last.

'And what does that prove?'

'That you are not, perhaps, what you really profess to be—in love.'

'With you?'

'Yes,' she replied, in a breathless voice.

'Have you ere this learned what love is?'

'I know what it should be like—timid and diffident,' she replied, uneasily, as her thoughts flashed sorrowfully to poor studious Robert Wodrow.

'You fear I do not love you?' he asked, reproachfully.

'I do not fear it.'

'Look into my eyes.'

She did look, and her own lowered, for she saw that which so often passes for love with the unthinking or unwary—deep and burning passion; and again she glanced nervously around her, but felt impelled to remain where she was. Sir Redmond detected the motion, and, misconstruing it, said, with a contemptuous smile that was too subtle for her to perceive,

'You and that—a—Mr. Robert Wodrow were sweethearts, as it is called, when you were children, I have heard.'

'Indeed!'

'Well?'

'The very reason, if true, that we should wish to be no more to each other,' replied Ellinor, with some annoyance, remembering certain angry and bitter speeches of Robert's when last they met and parted, and some of his dark looks within the last hour.

Sir Redmond was radiant at this response. She drew on her gloves, and was about to rise, when he detained her, and, drawing her suddenly towards him, boldly kissed her, not once, but twice!

She grew very pale, and drew back, and felt as if about to weep.

'Why do you shrink from me, Ellinor?' he asked, with tenderness, while detaining her hands.

'I do not shrink; but—but all this has been so sudden.'

'Listen to me, dearest—dearest Ellinor. With all your artistic tastes, you must of course appreciate pretty things?'

'I do,' she replied, tremblingly, not knowing what was coming next.

'Do you admire this?' he asked, drawing from a pocket and unclasping a scarlet morocco case, on the blue satin lining of which there reposed a necklace of virgin gold, with a locket attached, studded with coral and diamonds, both miracles of the jeweller's art.

'It is lovely!' exclaimed the girl.

'I am glad you like it, for it is yours.'

'Mine!' said the girl, in a breathless voice, as she felt herself grow pale, and recognised the costliness of the jewel, but scarcely knowing what she did or what she said, while a curious mixture of dumb joy in her new lover and remorse for the former one seized her.

She heard hurried and passionate words poured into her ear; she felt the firm, warm clasp of Sir Redmond's hands on hers as he begged permission to clasp the necklet round her slender throat, while yieldingly she turned towards him, and deftly—he was not unused to episodes such as this—as he touched her soft, white skin, he clasped it on, his eyes glowing with fire and animation as he bent over her sweet little face.

The latter was pale rather than flushed, and her mobile lips were quivering as he pressed his to them, pursuing his advantage with all the courage, skill, and tact his past rascally experience had given him; while the force of his sudden love, if it scared, also delighted Ellinor, though the upbraiding and set visage of Robert Wodrow seemed to rise between them.

'One day I shall see the family diamonds of the house of Sleath sparkling on your brow and bosom, love,' said he, kissing her eyes, as gravely as if the said house of Sleath had come in with the European rabble of the Conqueror. 'And you promise to be mine, Ellinor?' he added, pressing her close to him.

'Yes,' she replied, in a scarcely audible whisper.

'There are some men who can love several women in succession—or imagine they do so. I am not one of these, believe me, darling! I have never—could never have done that. You, Ellinor, are the first love of my heart—my first and only one!'

How he talked, this man who knew well what passion was, but never loved, and the girl was too truthful generally herself to doubt; so her heart throbbed as his honeyed words fell on her willing ear.

'And so, love, we shall soon be made one now,' he whispered, with another caress.

After a time she said, timidly and blushingly,

'You will tell—you will talk with Dr. Wodrow about all this, Redmond?'

'How delicious to hear my name on your lips! But—Dr. Wodrow—why—is he a relation?'

'Why then—what then?'

'He is a kind of guardian; papa, on his deathbed, bequeathed Mary and me to his care.'

'Consult him—impossible!' said Sir Redmond, whose face darkened. 'Why should we condescend to consult that old pump with the Sabbath-day face, when our own hearts agree? Besides, if my uncle, from whom I have great expectations, knew that I had married a Scotch girl—he has such curious prejudices——'

'Your uncle?' queried Ellinor, timidly.

'I have, unfortunately, an old and strangely-tempered relation in that degree. He is dying under an incurable disease, and probably cannot live out this winter—certainly not next spring. I am the heir to all his estates, and it is his fancy that I should marry into a family of title—'

'Otherwise?'

'I shall lose every shilling—every one!'

'Poor man! If the end is so near, surely we can wait, Redmond—nay, of course, we must wait,' she added, coyly and fondly.

'I cannot wait, my love for you will not permit me, yet I am, though well enough off, not so rich that I can afford to lose a great inheritance. Could we—can we—but keep our marriage from his knowledge? But we will talk of all this another time, darling. I am too hasty, too impetuous, with you. People are coming this way. Take my arm; let us go!'

And he led her out into the sunlighted lawn in such a state of bewilderment that but for the chain and locket, of which, to avoid explanations, she divested herself, she would have deemed the whole episode a dream.

So 'the song was sung, the tale was told, and the heart was given away.'

Ellinor, on rejoining her friends, looked about her, and felt somewhat of a relief that she could nowhere see Robert Wodrow, who, as we have said, had abruptly taken his departure, and even amid the splendour of Sir Redmond's proposal—for a splendid one it seemed to poor Ellinor—an emotion of reproach for unloyalty to Robert Wodrow, the first and early lover of her girlish life, rose up in her mind.

While her soul was yet loaded with the memory of that, to her, most naturally great episode in the conservatory, on which all her future life was to turn, we may wonder what she would have thought had she overheard a few bantering words that passed between Sir Redmond Sleath and the Honourable Blanche Galloway as they were looking towards her and evidently talking about her, while Mrs. Wodrow, who was near, strained her ears to listen.

'A wife, you say? No, my dear Miss Galloway; I can't afford such a luxury in these times, and consequently cannot be a marrying man, unless——'

'Unless what?'

'I found one facile enough to have me, and with the necessary amount of acreage, coalpits, money in the Funds, or elsewhere.'

'If so, why are you so attentive in that absurd quarter, where there is no money certainly?' asked the lady, pointing to Ellinor with her fan.

'Why, indeed!' thought Mrs. Wodrow, exasperated about her son Robert.

Sir Redmond paused.

'Why?' asked the young lady again, categorically.

'Pour passer le temps,' replied Sir Redmond, with one of his insolent smiles, as he twirled out the ends of his tawny moustachios.

Mrs. Wodrow did not hear his answer, though she saw the expression of his face; and at this reply Miss Galloway smiled triumphantly and disdainfully while slowly fanning herself.

CHAPTER XII.

AFTER THOUGHTS.

There are generally two distinct sets of people at every country entertainment carrying out the principle of 'pig-iron that looks down on tenpenny nails;' but Lady Dunkeld's garden-party was voted a charming gathering. She had a special skill for assorting her guests, and did so accordingly, though some of our dramatis personæ assorted themselves; and the result was so far harmony, apparently—we say apparently, for it was not universal.

Thus Blanche Galloway was displeased with the manner in which Leslie Colville hovered about Mary Wellwood, while Colville, and more especially Robert Wodrow, were both displeased by the conspicuous absence of Sir Redmond and Ellinor. Robert knew not where they had been, and somehow never thought of looking in the conservatories, and probably would not have done so had the idea occurred to him.

He had not been near her all day, and he was now, more than ever, beginning to realise bitterly that the girl he had loved so well all these years past, and who, he certainly thought, loved him, was going out of his life as completely as if she had never existed. Yet he could not relinquish her without another effort—another last appeal; though he quitted the gaieties of Craigmhor early with a sore and swollen heart.

The evening was far advanced when the sisters returned to Birkwoodbrae.

There was a letter lying on the dining-room table addressed to Ellinor in the familiar handwriting of Robert Wodrow. Why did he write to her now when he lived so close by, as a hedge only separated Birkwoodbrae from the glebe? unless to tell her what he dared not trust his lips to do; and her heart foreboded this.

The letter lay almost beneath her hand white and glaring in the last flush of the sunset; but, until Elspat had retired and Mary had followed on some household matter intent, she did not trust herself to open it.

Then when there was no one by to observe her, she slowly opened the letter of the lover who too truly feared he had been supplanted by another.

Line after line—though it was brief—the words were loving and tender, but ended in bitterness and upbraiding; passion made them eloquent, and they burned into the heart of the girl as the eyes and voice of Robert haunted her; but she felt besotted by this new and showy admirer, he was so different from homely, honest, Robert Wodrow—so different from any man she had ever met before; and why should Robert, who was only her friend—her old playmate, she strove to think, but with much sophistry, attempt to compete with him and control her movements.

'I must give you up, Robert,' she half whispered to herself; and then the idea occurred to her, 'would she have done so had she never met Sir Redmond Sleath?'

The letter had a postscript:—

'My darling, the windows of your room face mine over the orchard wall. If you have not cast me utterly out of your heart, for pity sake give me some sign then to-morrow—place a vase of flowers upon your window-sill, and I shall know the token.'

But Robert Wodrow next day, from earliest dawn till morn was long past, looked and watched in vain for the sign, but none was given to him; for though the heart of Ellinor Wellwood was wrung within her, she was too completely under a new and baleful influence now, and the old love was fast being forgotten.

To do her a little justice, we must admit that her first impulse had been to accord the poor fellow the token for which his soul thirsted.

A vase of flowers, sent to her but that morning from Sir Redmond by the hands of his valet, was on the mantelpiece. She put her hands towards it mechanically, as if she would have placed it on her window sill in obedience to that pitiful letter; but strange to say the flowers were all dead—already dead and withered!

Why was this?

Something superstitious crept over the girl's heart as she looked on them; she turned away—and the token was not given.

Robert, we have said, watched with aching heart and aching eyes in vain. Had the postscript escaped her notice? It might be so; and to this straw, like a drowning man, he clung. So the day passed on; and Ellinor began to think she had done wisely in not raising hopes only to crush them, and gave herself up to thoughts of Sir Redmond, and the secret contemplation of his beautiful gift.

Sir Redmond had poured into her ear much of love, of passion, of admiration, and so forth, certainly; but even to Ellinor's unsophisticated mind his proposal of marriage seemed a strange one.

Each sister had ample food for her own thoughts. Mary was rehearsing over and over again the cutting of the initials on the tree, and the manner of Colville to herself. If he really was engaged to Blanche Galloway (of which she had no positive proof), it was not flattering to either of them; yet the expression of his eyes seemed ever sweet, candid, and honest; and she gave fully her confidence to Ellinor.

The latter, who had never a secret to keep from her sister before, felt with shame and compunction that she had one now—one of vast importance to them both; but Sir Redmond had bound her to secrecy for a little time, and she could but trust; so fondly she thought over that scene in the conservatory—his proposal, a dazzling one, for would she not one day be Lady Sleath, proud, wealthy, and independent of all the world?

Even her parents, who were lying in their graves, with all their love of her, had never in their proudest and most exultant moments pictured for either of their children a future like this!

So she seemed to live in an enchanted world, out of which the figure of Robert Wodrow faded. 'Once in our lives,' says a writer, 'Paradise opens for all of us out of the dull earth, and moments, golden with the light of romance, shine upon us with a radiance like unto no other radiance of time, and we do not stay to count the cost of the bitter desolation that follows. For Eve herself would scarcely have surrendered one memory of Eden for all the joys to be found upon earth.'

Colville, when in the solitude of his own room, overlooking the woods of Craigmhor, was full of his own thoughts, some of which were not very pleasant, as he was dissatisfied with himself. He had a little plan he wished to carry out, as we shall show in time, and he felt perhaps that he was acting foolishly. He had come from London with the Dunkeld family, who evidently expected more from him in regard to Blanche than he had yet evinced, and the rumour of their engagement was a false one.

He had also come with his mind inspired with doubt, indifference, even prejudice against some of those he had met, the Wellwood sisters in particular; and, instead of finding them objectionable in any way, they were far more refined than himself, the 'curled pet' of many a Belgravian drawing-room.

Many a fair face in these regions was forgotten now, and his thoughts were all of Mary Wellwood—more than he dared acknowledge to himself. Though he had seen so little of her, he felt—was it the result of some magnetic affinity?—as if he had known her all his life; as if a full knowledge of her character had suddenly crept into his heart, and yet this was impossible just then.

'Mary Wellwood!' he murmured to himself.

He had heard of Colonel Wellwood's daughters in London more than once, from one who should have befriended them, but always omitted to do so, and whose views and opinions of two friendless girls were ever slighting and hostile; and now that he met and knew them, Colville despised himself for some of the thoughts in which he had first indulged concerning them, and the more tenderly he thought of Mary the more reproachful of himself he grew.

He had made no declaration—no; he was neither so rash nor so foolish as that yet, with all his romance, if the object of her regard was Mr. Robert Wodrow.

Of her feelings towards himself he could not form the slightest idea, and her manner was a source of perplexity. One moment she was frank, genial, and without restraint; but the next, if he became in the least degree tender, she grew retiring, distant, and cold; and, though he knew it not, this bearing was born of the rumours concerning Blanche Galloway, and he was all unaware how local gossip had mixed up his name with that of this young lady.

On one occasion he suspected that Mary avoided him, and once she seemed nearly to dislike him; thus he was pleased that he had not too formally committed himself, and so, until he could put the matter 'to the touch, to win or lose it all,' he would but torment himself with doubts and fears in the way usual to all lovers; but ere the time came, events were to occur which, though in some measure caused by himself, the bitter issue of them he could never have foreseen.

The two chief episodes of the garden-party were of course well known to the two ladies at Craigmhor, as Mademoiselle Rosette had two bright and sharp French eyes in her head, and knew perfectly well how to use them.

'I don't like the conduct of Sir Redmond, of course, Blanche,' said Lady Dunkeld, 'and have no wish that he should involve himself with an obscure girl whom he met in our house.'

'I believe it to be all nothing more than a mere coquetterie de salon,' said Lord Dunkeld. 'Sleath is not a marrying man.'

'And Captain Colville's conduct with the other sister, wandering away into remote parts of the ground; I suppose that was a coquetterie de salon too, mamma,' said Blanche, her eyes sparkling with anger, while she shrugged her shoulders, and briskly used her dark blue and bronzy green fan of peacocks' feathers.

'What—how?'

'They strolled away from everyone together, and were absent ever so long.'

'This is intolerable; but men will be men, you see, Blanche. If Miss Wellwood had been a married lady it would not have mattered so much. I think when a young man is attached to a married lady it keeps him out of harm's way,' said Lady Dunkeld; 'however, we must take some decided measures with Miss Wellwood, and with Captain Colville too.'

'Dear mamma!' cooed Miss Blanche Galloway, and she laughed that worldly little laugh of hers, which was so indicative of her character.

The result of all this was that, when Mary and Ellinor called ceremoniously shortly after the garden-party, Lady Dunkeld, who was seated at one of the drawing-room windows, on seeing them approach, rose hastily and retired.

'No one was at home.'

Next day the sisters were scarcely noticed by Lady Dunkeld and her daughter at church.

Other persons were not slow to remark this, and the surmises thereon—though the two girls knew nothing about them—were the reverse of pleasant or flattering.

Mary observed the absence of Captain Colville, who was not in the Dunkeld pew; and on the following day she felt a keen pang on learning that he was gone for a few days to shoot with Lord Dunkeld in the Forest of Alyth.

So he had gone without paying her a farewell visit, thought Mary.

'He is to return in a fortnight,' said her informant, Mrs. Wodrow, near whose chair Mary was seated on a tabourette in the cosy manse parlour, making up a gala-cap for the old lady; and near her crouched Jack, watching the process.

The parlour was a pretty apartment, neither morning-room nor boudoir, though somewhat of both, with many indications of a woman's presence.

Rare old china was disposed in odd nooks, and china bowls with roses freshly gathered from the garden; and the furniture, if old-fashioned, and pertaining to the early days of Mrs. Wodrow's homecoming to the manse as a young wedded wife, was all polished to perfection. On a shelf was an imposing row of the 'Wodrow Society's' religious publications, including 'The Last Words of My Lady Coltness,' 'Of My Lady Anne Elcho,' the life of the gallant Covenanter, Sergeant John Nisbet of Hardhill, and so forth.

'Apropos of Captain Colville,' said the old lady, looking down on her young friend, 'I hope you have not lost your heart to him, Mary?'

'I should think not,' replied Mary, stoutly, but colouring so deeply, nevertheless, that Mrs. Wodrow could see how the crimson suffused even her delicate neck.

'That is well, Mary; mischief enough has been wrought among us already,' resumed Mrs. Wodrow, her benign old face becoming cloudy.

Mary knew to what she referred, but seemed, or affected to seem, wholly intent on the cap; and Mrs. Wodrow looked admiringly and affectionately down on her dimpled wrists and little white hands.

'I do wish I had something nice and fresh for trimming!' she exclaimed, as she twirled round the cap for inspection. 'I think these rosebuds will do with this spray of ivy,' she added, searching a flower-box, and putting her head meditatively on one side.

'Then, Mrs. Wodrow,' she exclaimed, 'if I fail to please you, you must be a dreadful coquette, you old dear!'

'Thanks, pet Mary; when did you ever fail to please me?' said the old lady, caressing the girl's head, and adding, anxiously, 'You do not look well, Mary; where were you this morning? Not in the clachan, I hope, as I hear there is scarlatina there.'

'I have no fear; I took a kind message from Robert about a sick baby. I fear it is dying, and God pity the poor mother, the only light of whose life is likely to go out in darkness.'

'You have a tender heart, Mary. Robert, poor Robert; you know he has failed to pass, Mary?'

'Yes; I am so sorry, and so is Ellinor.'

'Ellinor may well be,' said Mrs. Wodrow, with some asperity.

'Why?' asked Mary, her colour deepening again.

'Because her fair face has come between him and his wits, poor fellow, and I shouldn't wonder if we lose him altogether.'

'Lose him!' repeated Mary, in a breathless voice; 'how?'

'He seems desperate and says that rather than slave for another session at college he will go for a soldier.'

'Oh, never, never think of such a thing!'

'He and Ellinor seem to have quarrelled.'

'Quarrelled—surely not! About what or who?'

'That man Sir Redmond Sleath, and his attentions to her.'

'They will make up this quarrel as they have made up others long ago,' said poor Mary, cheerfully, as she little knew to what a crisis the baronet's admiration for her sister was coming—nay, had come. She knew nothing of the scene in the conservatory and other minor scenes, of the present of jewellery, of utterances and promises. She believed the whole affair was only a lovers' quarrel, stimulated by jealousy on Robert's part, and vanity on that of Ellinor; and meantime she sympathised with Mrs. Wodrow, and would have done so with Robert had he been there, but he was fully and painfully occupied elsewhere at that precise time.

'As children—as boy and girl, they may have quarrelled, Mary; but this affair will be a serious one for both, for Robert especially. His studies are neglected, his appetite is gone, and he looks the ghost of himself.'

Mary knew not what more to urge, as she had seen, with some anxiety, Sir Redmond's admiration of her sister, and said, after a pause,

'I wonder what manner of man Sir Redmond is?'

'Judging by the little I saw of him at the garden-party—where the mischief seems to have been done—not a good man, Mary dear—not a good man, though a handsome one in his way, and to a young girl, I doubt not, fascinating. Yet I would rather see my daughter dead, if I had one, than married to a man with eyes so cold, so cruel and shifty.'

'But who is thinking of marriage?' said Mary, with a slight laugh, little knowing that it was a contingency as remote from the thoughts of Sir Redmond as her own.

'And I don't think that Captain Colville—for all that Dr. Wodrow seems to like him so much—can be good in every way if he has such a friend or companion as Sir Redmond Sleath,' said the old lady, shaking her head.

These provoking words haunted Mary for weeks after, as the tormenting fragment of a song or air will haunt us—not because we like it, though it will recur again and again. Then he had gone without the formality of a farewell visit. Had the Dunkeld ladies aught to do with that? Mary's heart foreboded that they had.

Mrs. Wodrow was full of indignation at the worry and humiliation undergone by her son, and even the doctor was not disinclined to inveigh against garden-parties and such-like gatherings, as his ancestor did against theatres—'those seminaries of idleness, looseness, and sin,' as he termed them in Analecta Scotica.

The peaceful current of the sisters' life—the life they led at bonnie Birkwoodbrae, was soon to be roughly disturbed now, and events were to occur which they could never have foreseen.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE LAST APPEAL.

Robert Wodrow, on the afternoon referred to in our last chapter, was, we have said, engaged elsewhere than at the manse, and yet he was not very far away.

Incidents trivial at the time had now recurred with convincing and accumulating force to his feverish mind on one hand; on the other, he feared that he might have been too hasty in his condemnation, and too summary in his suspicions, in quitting the party at Craigmhor as he had done; yet where were these two all the time he had missed them, and what was the subject of their discourse while he had been lingering amid the gay groups in the sunshine, and was grotesquely tortured by the music of the band?

And the token he had prayed for had not been accorded! How he loathed the little world in which he lived; how he longed to eschew everyone there, and get far away from the Birks of Invermay, for to see Ellinor among these with another, and that other 'the slimy Sleath,' as he thought, would drive him mad.

To think of Ellinor—to meet and hang about her; to anticipate her every wish and want, so far as lay in his humble power, had been for years—in the intervals of his hard studies—the daily occupation of Robert Wodrow's life; and now all this was at an end; his 'occupation,' like Othello's, seemed gone.

Knowing that Mary was at the manse, he thought he would find Ellinor at home alone, and he was right, so he ventured near Birkwoodbrae to make a 'last appeal;' and yet even in this he had been, to a certain extent, interfered with by his rival.

The latter, well aware of the time when Mary Wellwood was generally abroad among her poor people, or otherwise employed, had sent his valet, John Gaiters—a well-trained rascal—with a beautiful bouquet and a perfumed note to Ellinor.

In the note he urged her by every means in her power to preserve secrecy close as the grave concerning the terms on which they were, lest his expectations might be destroyed, and with them her own; and then he pressed her to meet him at a certain point near the Linn on the May, at a given time, when he would tell her more.

This missive was curiously and most warily worded to be the production of one who professed to be such an ardent lover. It did not bear even his signature, but only his initials mysteriously twisted into a species of monogram. To one more worldly wise or less foolish than Ellinor, some doubts would have been inspired by its tenor alone, but she had none, and simply felt joy and tumult in her breast.

She clasped the golden locket round her neck, and with brightness spreading over her sweet face, contemplated herself in a hand mirror, while indulging in daydreams of her future as Lady Sleath, being driven in a splendid carriage to Buckingham Palace, or down St. James's Street, with bare shoulders in broad daylight, with a train some yards long and diamonds in profusion, to be presented at the drawing-room in the gloomy old palace of the Tudors, surrounded by handsome fellows in snowy uniforms, who murmured compliments about her beauty.

Had 'dear Redmond' not described to her, too, something of the life they would lead together? Returning from Tyburnian and Belgravian balls at 6 a.m., breakfasting at mid-day, and then going for 'a spin' in the Row, where cavaliers would surround her, or canter by her side and beg for waltzes at Lady A.'s and the Countess of B.'s. Then dress again for a flower fête at the Botanical Gardens; for pigeon-shooting at Hurlingham (wherever that was—poor Ellinor had not the ghost of an idea!) Sunday at the Zoo, and a dinner at the 'Star and Garter,' or it might be at the 'Trafalgar' in Greenwich, which she supposed to be one of H.M. ships.

Suddenly, amid visions such as these, unheard or unannounced, Robert Wodrow stood before her, hat in hand, and in his eyes, keen and dark grey, a brooding light that boded evil to some one!

He was pale almost to ghastliness, and her eyes drooped, as if a weight oppressed their full white lids when they met his fixed gaze. However, he took her proffered hand mechanically, and then she tried to talk gaily, not knowing what she said; but the talk proved a miserable failure.

How he longed to take her in his arms once again; to kiss her glossy brown hair, her damask cheek, her rosy lips; to implore her to love him still and share his humble future! But no; it would be more cowardly to take any advantage then of any passing remorse she might feel; and better was it, perhaps, that she should marry this other man, if he really loved her, and forget—if she could—that there was such a poor fellow as Robert Wodrow in the secluded world she would leave behind her; and he said something of this to her in faltering accents, and for a time the heart of Ellinor faltered too—but for a time only.

The new vision was too bright to fade quickly away!

'I am eating my heart out with sorrow and uncertainty—I am sick of suspense, Ellinor,' he said, after a pause; 'our happy meetings, our walks, our talks, our plans for the future—are they all as nothing to you now, Ellinor?'

'That is it, Robert,' she said, making a prodigious effort to be calm and cool; 'you see, Robert, we have been so much together.'

'All our days, Ellinor!'

'Too much so—yes, all our days; so it never struck me that—that——'

'What, darling?'

'You cared for me in that way.'

'Indeed! Your doubts come too late.'

'Or I might have learned to care too,' she said, with confusion.

'You did love me, and care for me too, before that fellow Sleath came among us,' said Robert, gloomily; for it seemed hard indeed that, after the happiness of their boyhood and girlhood, after all the budding hopes of riper years, under this man's new and hateful influence, she made light of him and his love—mocked him, it seemed, laughed at him for being so foolish to care for her 'in that way,' as she phrased it.

'Robert,' said she, after a pause, 'why be so angry about a little flirtation?'

She spoke deprecatingly, and her face wore a sickly smile.

'To flirt was never your wont, and I have read that the essence of flirting is that it is a stolen pleasure, the future results of which cannot be foreseen.'

'It would be tame between such old friends as you and I, Robert.'

'Tame indeed—and unnatural,' said he, huskily.

His eyes, which hitherto had been fixed upon her colourless face, now fell upon the ornament she was wearing—an ornament he had never seen before; and from its apparent value his heart too surely foreboded who the donor was; yet he disdained to refer to it, though he said, upbraidingly,

'Oh, Ellinor, how I have loved, and still love you, is known only to Heaven and myself; yet never again shall my hand touch yours; never again my arm go round you; never more shall my lips touch yours, though yearning—oh, God only knows how intensely—longing to do so once again—only once again!'

She evinced no sign of a truce in this position, and was devoutly hoping that Robert Wodrow would adopt some other rôle than that of lover.

'Robert,' she said, nervously, 'are we not friends?'

'No.'

'Can we not be friends again?'

'Friends! How can you ask me? It was, you well know, always understood,' he continued, making an effort to be calm, 'that when I could afford to marry, you, Ellinor, would be my wife. Why take all my love and give me back not an atom now?'

She accorded no answer.

'You have ceased to be true to me. I have known and felt it for weeks past,' he continued, 'and yet I cannot regain my freedom of heart.'

Her head was weary, but her heart was beating wildly and painfully; and Robert's eyes, as he surveyed her with all their sadness of expression, were expressive of the fondest love.

Never before had these two spoken or confronted each other with bitterness of heart until now, and each felt that for the other all was over, and that the tender past, 'the grace of a day that was dead,' would never come again.

'Robert, I have always hated the idea of being poor,' urged Ellinor, as if to extenuate herself, 'and with you, a young, struggling, country practitioner, supposing the summit of your ambition won, I should never be otherwise. Pardon me,' she added, recalling the Alnaschar visions his visit had interrupted, 'if I speak unkindly.'

'Say, rather, cruelly, and you will be nearer the truth, Ellinor Wellwood; yet I am sorry for you.'

'Be not so, Robert. I repeat that I would never be happy poor—now,' she added, involuntarily.

'You have made that discovery since this interloper came!'

She was silent, but her silence was assent, and he took it as such.

'Not happy even at dear old Birkwoodbrae or the home I meant to provide close by it?' he said, reproachfully.

'Be reasonable, Robert; happen what may, we can always be dear friends.'

'Friends—again!' he exclaimed, sternly; 'you and I, Ellinor?'

Then his manner changed, for the greatness of his love made him very humble, and he said,

'Do you know what you are doing—do you fully think of it even? You cannot love this man, Ellinor, whom, I suppose, you are going to marry, as you loved me.'

'Marriage, Robert!' said she, blushing deeply now; 'how fast your thoughts run.'

'How?'

'If that is to be, it is in the future, of course—but just now——'

She paused with some confusion, as she thought of the injunctions laid by Sleath upon her.

'You cannot love him?'

'Perhaps not quite exactly yet, Robert,' replied Ellinor, not knowing really what to say, and feeling some shame at the part she was acting; 'but think of his position, and the place he can give me—a poor, almost penniless, girl—in society.'

'And in that place you expect to be happy?'

'I shall have substantial grounds for happiness, and I think, Robert dear, you wish me well.'

'Heaven knows I do, though you are learning fast to forget. Search your heart, Ellinor,' he continued, piteously; 'think over our past, darling—of our mutually anticipated future, in which each seemed to see only the other. Against reason, hope, and all I hear I cannot forget, and hence I love you—love you still, Ellinor.'

He stretched out his hands to her, and his eyes grew very dim.

For a moment she was tempted to throw herself upon his loving breast, and there sob out her remorse and seek his forgiveness; but the demons of pride and ambition ruled her heart too strongly now, and she withheld or crushed the emotions of pity and generosity that so fleetly inspired her.

When that emotion came again they were far apart, and it came too late—too late!

How this last meeting might have ended it is difficult to say; but Robert Wodrow, thinking it was useless to protract the agony he felt, pressed his tremulous lips to her right hand, and, without trusting himself to look again in her face, swiftly withdrew, and quitted the house.

Poor Robert! She was indeed sorry for him—sorry that the old friendly relations, as she strove to deem them now, should be broken up. 'They had been such chums'—Robert, more justly, deemed it 'lovers'—in the dear past time that would never—could never—come again!

Better a thousand times, if it was to be, that they parted now, and that it was over—all over and done with, thought Ellinor, after a time.

Amid all this there was a strange and conflicting—a mysterious foreboding in her mind, that by casting off the honest love of Robert Wodrow she might be entailing future misery on herself.

The last appeal had been made, and, though in vain, young Wodrow did not regret that he had made it, but he feared that Ellinor might be following a shadow and missing the substance. So true it is that 'the golden moments in the stream of life rush past us, and we see nothing but sand; that angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone.'

CHAPTER XIV.

GRETCHEN AND FAUST.

'And you have quarrelled with poor Robert?' said Mary, somewhat reproachfully, to her sister.

'Nay—not quarrelled, exactly,' replied Ellinor.

'What, then?'

'Agreed to part.'

'After—all; oh, Ellinor!'

'All what?'

'Well, you know what I mean.'

'We have always been in the habit of calling each other by our Christian names, and by pet names, too, such as Robbie and Ellie—a bad system—and—and—in fact, you know, Mary, we regarded each other rather as brother and sister than as—as——'

'Lovers—and in this new view of the situation you are no doubt influenced by Sir Redmond Sleath?'

'Perhaps,' replied Ellinor, doggedly, as she watched the hands of the clock.

'If he means honourably—and he dare not mean otherwise—you are perhaps worldly-wise. But poor Robert!'

The exclamation, though uttered low, found an echo in the heart of Ellinor. Yet she was inexorably intent on keeping her invited appointment, of which Mary had not, of course, the least suspicion.

'I do not like Sir Redmond,' said Mary, with a tone of decision.

'Why?' asked Ellinor, changing colour.

'He never looks me straight in the face, and at times, with all his insouciance, he can do nothing but tug out his moustache, as if to show off his white, useless hands. He certainly has hung about you, Ellinor, more than I—considering our friendless and lonely position—have quite relished.'

'Not perhaps more than Captain Colville has hung about you, Mary,' retorted Ellinor, softly; 'and I may as well admit that Sir Redmond always speaks to me of his love, and has asked me to love him in return.'

'He has done this?' exclaimed Mary, growing pale.

'Yes,' replied Ellinor, kissing her sister, perhaps to hide her own face.

'Has he asked you to be his wife?'

The look of unrest—sorrowful unrest—she had detected more than once in Ellinor's face crept over it now. The latter cast her sweet eyes down and made no reply, as in this important matter she was as yet tongue-tied.

'Be wary—be wary, pet Ellinor, for it has been truly said that common-sense and honesty bear so small a proportion to folly and knavery that human life at least is but a paltry province.'

'Is this out of one of Dr. Wodrow's sermons?' asked Ellinor, with some annoyance. 'Surely I am the best judge of what is for my own happiness.'

'Perhaps; but remember the proverb,' said Mary, thinking of the absent Colville and fading hopes. 'Happiness is like an echo which answers to the call, but does not come.'

'What an old croaker it is!' said Ellinor, as she laughingly kissed her sister again and slipped away from her.

She re-read Sir Redmond Sleath's letter—the first love-letter she had ever received, if we except the sorrowful and upbraiding epistle from Robert Wodrow. It seemed orthodox enough, as it began 'My darling,' but had no genuine signature, and there was very little devotion expressed in it, and was brief and curt.

Perhaps Sir Redmond disliked letter-writing—most men do; but there seemed something wanting in this letter—something she could not define, and the lack of which she felt and sighed over. Were Mary's words of warning affecting her? It almost seemed so; but she put the document carefully away in the most secret recess of her desk, and hastened to hold the meeting it solicited—and like the Gretchen of Goethe hastening to meet Faust, took her way to the trysting-place near the Linn, and long after in Ellinor's mind was the sound of the May, as it poured over the steep cascade, associated with this meeting and all the pain it caused her.

When she arrived, Sir Redmond was not there, and was ungallantly late in keeping his appointment; but he and Lord Dunkeld had lately betaken themselves to wiling away the evenings at écarté, though the baronet had a way of turning a king that would have made the fortune of anyone compelled to pluck wealthy pigeons. He came just when Ellinor was very much disposed to pout, and framed the most humble of apologies, as he was resolved to lose no time in carrying out his nefarious plans in absence of the Guardsman, who seemed to have—he knew not why, unless for evil schemes of his own—a mysterious interest in these two girls, of one of whom he stood somehow rather in awe.

Pressing Ellinor close to his heart, with her face nestled in his neck, he told her why he had asked for this meeting, and what he had now to propose for their own happiness, and that to deceive his wealthy uncle, from whom their marriage must be kept a secret—there could be no public ceremony—no notice in the newspapers, more than all!

'Dare you trust yourself to me, darling Ellinor, and marry me privately; and then—then, before spring comes, assuredly—'

'My heart recoils from such treachery to Mary—from all this secrecy; is it—can it be necessary?' asked the girl, weeping.

'Most necessary for our future, if it is to be a brilliant one, as I have no doubt you wish,' he continued, caressing her, and then added, with a sophistry that would have been plain to anyone less simple or less easily deluded than Ellinor, 'I am quite prepared to acknowledge our marriage to all the world, provided it does not, as it must not, reach my uncle's ears.'

'I have heard that trusting to Providence in the shape of elderly relations is often fatal,' said Ellinor, with a sickly smile.

'I shall get a special licence, if that will satisfy you, Ellinor darling!' he urged, ignorant of the fact that in Scotland such a document was unknown, and that there the Archbishop of Canterbury had no more power than 'General Booth.'

He left nothing unsaid to play upon her weakness, but it was long before he could obtain a half silent consent from her, and, ere he did so, more than once an ugly gleam came into his eyes.

Though not unhandsome, the face of Sir Redmond was not always a pleasant one to look upon. A certain force about it there was, and those who watched it felt that its owner was not a man to be trifled with in anything that touched his self-interest or his evil purposes; that he was a man ready for emergencies and heedless of obstacles if he had an end in view.

Like a character recently described by a novelist, 'his great weapon was his inflexible will, aided by the reputation he had achieved of never allowing himself to be defeated. I need not say that he held women in the most supreme contempt, and openly expressed his opinion that every woman had her price. The only merit he assumed was in knowing the exact article of barter each had set her heart on.'

Such was the pleasant personage who had supplanted Robert Wodrow, and even while he was softly caressing the girl and subjecting her to his endearments, he was thinking of the time to come—the time when she would find herself separated from her loving sister, her only tie on earth—alone in the world, penniless and in his power, her character and position utterly lost, and when none would believe her most solemn protestations of innocence; then would be his hour of supreme triumph, when, like a bruised and wounded bird, she would come fluttering to him for succour and protection, and when he might be generous, and make her over to 'that yahoo, Robert Wodrow.'

'I shall have a splendid house in which to enshrine you when the time comes and I am free,' continued the tempter; 'you, my darling, have known no home but this sequestered one—apart from all the world—a world of which you know nothing.'

'And poor Mary—how can I leave her?'

'Nor need you do so—once we are away and have been made one we shall send for her; it will only be the matter of a post or two. I shall so love and cherish you both,' urged Sleath, half laughing in his mind at the conviction that she would never see Mary again until—well, until he was tired of her. 'Courage, little one, and you will be Lady Sleath—it is a second edition of the miller's lovely daughter.'

'I am not quite so humble as she was,' said Ellinor, making a little moue.

'Nor I so exalted as the "gracious Duncan." To-morrow night, then, dearest Ellinor, at this hour—nine o'clock, I shall await you with a hired carriage at the corner of the lane below Birkwoodbrae, and a short drive will take us to the station, where we shall get the up train for London and the south!'

Ellinor answered only by her tears, and the silently-accorded kiss that gave consent, and went shudderingly back to her home, feeling as if she was hovering on the verge of an abyss.

And she was so in more ways than one!

CHAPTER XV.

HOW FAUST SUCCEEDED.

The day, an eventful one, indeed, to Ellinor—wore on; the 'to-morrow night' of Sir Redmond's arrangements had become 'to-night,' and the hour of nine seemed to be approaching swiftly.

Mary's warnings to Ellinor to 'be wary' recurred to the latter persistently and reproachfully, yet she never wavered or swerved from her purpose, though with reference to marriage there came to her memory the words of a writer who says it is a solemn thing when you come to think of it, that if you make a mistake in the matter you are in for it, and nothing can pull you out again.

Ellinor's ambition was, as we have shown, dazzled on one hand, while love and novelty lured her on the other. Her heart was wrung by the duplicity with which she was treating her sister, and the contemplation of what that sister's emotions would be when she was missed; but Sleath's brilliant promises and visions of the future that was before them, deadened the sense of the present for a time.

She wrote a farewell letter to Mary, which the latter would in time find on her toilet table.

'The first step is taken now, I cannot retrace it,' thought Ellinor, as she closed this letter, a very incoherent and blurred one; 'and now to begone—to steal away without seeing darling Mary, whom I could not look in the face.'

Nervously and hurriedly she went through her drawers and repositories, selecting and thrusting into a hand-bag those articles which she thought were necessary for her journey or flight. Now and then something turned up which reminded her of happy past hours, of Mary's love, and their parents' memory; she gazed with tear-blinded eyes on some faded photographs, and kissed them passionately as if she could neither look on them long enough nor part with them.

At last her assortment was made, and, fearful of meeting Mary, she threw on her hat and cloak, grasped her bag, slipped softly from the house by a back way, and passing through the old doorway with the date and legend on its lintel, went quickly towards the place of meeting, with her heart beating wildly, painfully, and all her pulses tingling.

The anxiety—the craving that had possessed her at times to get away from the reproachful eyes of Robert Wodrow and the upbraiding speeches of his mother, was about to be relieved now; for under the mal-influence of Sleath the girl's nature seemed to have been changed, but the last words Mrs. Wodrow had said to her were in her memory then:—

'You took the love of my boy—the one deep love of his life it seemed to be—made a plaything of his heart, and then cast it aside to break and wither, it may be to die!'

Anyone who saw Ellinor at this juncture would have found a curious rigidity in the usually soft outline of her sweet face, and a perplexed and troubled expression in her hazel eyes as she walked onward, feeling it was not yet too late to return.

But she had passed her word, plighted her troth, given her promise to this man, and why should she not redeem her pledge? She was leaving a homely and dull, a grey and sequestered, if perfectly peaceful life, for the new and brilliant one to be shared with him, who loved her so well, and she would fulfil her contract.

Some—no doubt many—there would be who might have no pity for the rash imprudence of a motherless girl yielding to the temptation given her and eloping thus; and her name, her story, and her transgression, in many a false version, might be bandied from lip to lip, a conviction that galled and fretted her naturally proud spirit; but the consciousness of all this was inferior to a sense of what she knew Mary would feel, on finding herself deceived thus and left alone—alone to face the scandal, gossip, esclandre, and reprehension to which her act would give rise; and the knowledge gave Ellinor acute mental agony.

She had been that morning at the churchyard, as if to bid her parents farewell in spirit, and saw the last chaplets that she and Mary had woven lying on their graves, all withered now, and she had marvelled when flowers from her hands would be laid there again.

All was still around her now; she could hear, however, the voice of Mary's tame owl in its nest in the garden wall, and the rush of the May over its rocky bed.

When might she hear that familiar sound in the sweet moonlight again? Ay, Ellinor, when?

Perfectly cool and audacious Sir Redmond Sleath was at the appointed place betimes, and though an intrigue or adventure of this kind was nothing new to him, his heart was certainly beating faster than usual under his well-cut coat as he quitted the hired brougham at the end of the lane which diverged from the highway towards Birkwoodbrae.

The moon, a sickly and slender one, was waning, and the chill, pale light of its crescent cast the shadows of the tall silver birches across the pathway as he picked his way forward to where the outline of the house at Birkwoodbrae came before him, with its grey walls and windows half covered by masses of monthly roses and Virginia creepers. The house and all around it seemed still as the grave. He had come betimes, we say, and was thus at his post a little before Ellinor came forth to meet him.