“By Jove!” said Du Meresq, “it is lucky it was only you.  Well, let us be off now, and shut up, there’s a good fellow.”

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.

A deep, calm satisfaction stole over her as Bertie helped her from the boat, and his eyes sought hers under the stars.  She heeded not that Colonel Rolleston’s greeting was apparently cool and formal, nothing signified—­life had suddenly become intense again.  What could ruffle the golden content of the present?  Happiness is a great beautifier, and as she sprang to shore, her graceful figure so undulating and spirited, and her soul beaming warm in her radiant eyes, he wondered that he could ever have thought Bluebell more beautiful.  She often recurred to him hereafter just as she stood that night, shrouded in a crimson Colleen Bawn, under cover of which her hand remained so long in his.

Du Meresq did not stay very late.  Both he and Cecil were quiet and dreamy.  To be in the same room again was quite happiness enough for the present.  Mrs. Rolleston also was entirely satisfied, diverted her husband’s attention with creature comforts, and made no effort to detain Bertie.  Given a love affair, and a certain interest in it, the most unscheming nature becomes Macchiavellian in tact and policy.

And Du Meresq unmoored a canoe and paddled himself off, unwitting of a young, desolate face pressed against an upper casement.  From thence she had watched him waiting for Cecil at the landing, and, with eyes sharpened by anxiety, had detected their happiness in meeting.  She could not go down to receive confirmation of what required none.  Better receive the coup de grace from his own lips than to undergo gradual vivisection while looking helplessly on.