CHAPTER II.

ELLINOR.

Sir Redmond Sleath had no pity for the suspense and agony of mind now endured by Mary; and as for Dewsnap and Ringbolt, they knew nothing about her.

During the days just mentioned the clanging of the ship's bell from time to time, and the din of fog horns from vessels passing with less than half-steam up, informed Ellinor that the fog still rested on the river; yet every morning she heard the rasping of the holystones as the deck was cleaned, and the mysterious cry of 'soak and send'—the order to pass the wet swabs along.

The terror she had undergone, the subsequent affronts, unblushing and terrible—for such she deemed Sleath's love-making—and the uncertain future, all throbbed in hot and wretched thought wildly through her heart, till at last, when the yacht was fairly under way, fainting-fits and the torment of sea-sickness made reflection, fear, and regret alike impossible, for a kind of delirium came upon her, and she grew oblivious of her surroundings; but we are anticipating.

'The girl may die on our hands, if this sort of thing goes on,' said Dewsnap, 'and that might prove deuced awkward for us all.'

'I have thought of that, sir,' said Ringbolt; 'but one may as well whistle psalms to the taff-rail——'

'As attempt to move me—you are right, Mr. Ringbolt,' interrupted Sleath; 'but there is no dying in the case.'

'Why not send her ashore——?' began Dewsnap.

'And relinquish her? Not if I know it.'

'I mean to the boarding-house of the old Frau Wyburg, near the Bleichen Canal—you know the place.'

'Few rascals in Hamburg don't. She would keep her safe enough for me—it is not a bad idea; but I shall try my luck with her again before resorting to
that
.'

At the cruelty Dewsnap's suggestion involved, even Ringbolt shook his head dissentingly, and said,

'Whatever you do, steer clear of her husband—the Herr Wyburg, as he calls himself—he is a dangerous and a shady party—worse than the devil himself.'

'You know Hamburg, then, Mr. Ringbolt?'

'Rather!' replied the other, with a wink that inferred a great deal.

If this affair of Ellinor's abduction found its way into any of the social weeklies, it might form a very awkward thing for her; but neither for Sir Redmond or his friend, Mr. Adolphus Dewsnap, as both were now rather out of the social 'scratch race.'

'A pleasant story for the fair Blanche to hear,' surmised Sleath, as he laughingly made up a cigarette.

'Who is she?' asked Dewsnap.

'The daughter of Lord Dunkeld.'

'He is, of course, a topsawyer,' said Dewsnap, superciliously, as, notwithstanding his wealth, he had been rather ignored in society, 'and speaks in the House, I suppose?'

'Yes.'

'But I have never heard of a word he said.'

'Likely enough—he never gets beyond "Hear, hear!" He is a Scots' representative peer.'

'With a family tree, of course. D—n'm, I would rather have a good gooseberry-bush!'

The little state-room or cabin occupied by Ellinor she saw had evidently and recently been used by ladies before. In the drawers of the dressing-glass were hair-pins, an old kid glove, a broken jet bracelet, and other etcetera.

The door had a bolt on the inside.

One night she found, to her terror, that this had been removed!

Her heart grew sick within her; but, with the assistance of her attendant, she contrived to barricade the door most efficiently by placing a chair between it and her bed, on which, without undressing, she lay down with her temples throbbing like every other pulse with terror.

All grew still in the cutter, and not a sound was heard but the ripples that ran alongside as she strained at her anchor—so very still that Ellinor was about to sleep, when a sound startled her, and she sprang up in dismay.

Some one without was attempting to force her door. Who that some one was she doubted not; but, after a time, finding himself completely baffled, with a half-suppressed malediction, he went away.

Ellinor lay awake in an agony of mind till morning dawned, when she opened the eyelet port of her cabin, and looked out. The fog was less thick, and a gasp of joy escaped her on seeing a boat with several men in it approaching. She shrieked to them for succour, and waved her handkerchief. On this they paused on their oars, and seemed to confer with each other, but, instead of drawing nearer, they laughed, kissed their hands to her in mockery, resumed their pulling, and vanished into the mist.

Had any boat's crew actually boarded the yacht to make inquiries, Sleath was quite prepared to assert that the lady on board was his demented wife.

With the fog resting on the Elbe, she could see nothing of the land, and as the cutter might—she thought—have shifted her position in the night—she knew not where she was. Altona, she thought, might be miles away, yet it was only a rifle-shot distant. But for its extreme protraction, she might, at times, have thought she was in a dream, and that all her mental misery was but a provoking and ghastly phantasmagoria.

Days had elapsed now since her separation from Mary and Mrs. Deroubigne. They must, she knew, deem her dead—drowned—and might have gone away, she knew not where.

Torn in this outrageous fashion from the society of the only persons she loved on earth! Exiled from happiness, doomed to probable disgrace and misconstruction of conduct.

Her whole soul was wrapped up in one idea—escape! But how was she to achieve it, out of that accursed vessel, unless she cast herself headlong into the river? She certainly shrank from self-destruction, and hoped that something—'that vague something, the forlorn hope of the desperate'—might intervene to save and set her free.

Sir Redmond's persistent love-making could draw no response from her.

This enraged him; he ground his teeth, while longing to take her in his arms, and kiss her whether she would or not; yet he dared not attempt to molest her when he was sober and in daylight; something in the girl's purity and disgust of him repressed him. He dissembled, and said, submissively,

'With your love, Ellinor—in offering mine—I would be a very different man from what I have been.'

'Your love!' she muttered, in a low voice of scorn.

'Yes.'

'Dare you offer it again to me after all I know?'

'What a little tragedy spit-fire it is! Well, it is perhaps too much to ask you to love me, so I will only crave permission to love you.'

'Insult on insult! Oh, this is intolerable!' exclaimed Ellinor, covering her face with her hands. 'It is useless to remind a man like you of his marriage.'

Sleath's eyes gleamed dangerously. He and Ellinor were alone in the saloon, as Dewsnap and the sailing-master were smoking on deck, and the companion-way was kept bolted to prevent any attempt at escape.

'What did I know of life, of the world, or of human nature when I met that artful woman with the absurd name, Fubsby, and took vows—if vows they were—for a life-time. Married! Well, even if I were so legally—which I don't quite admit—what then? In the society in which we move—'

'We?'

'Dewsnap and I—flirtation forms the great occupation—even accomplishment—of married life on the part of those who are bound by it. You have much to learn yet, my simple little Ellinor.'

'Do you call this conduct of yours flirtation—this illegal and punishable abduction of me—and insulting, loathly love-making?'

'Loathly—an unpleasant phrase to use. Instead of the wretched life you lead at Paddington, I can give you one well worth living,' said he, as if he addressed a girl at a bar or a buffet, and in ignorance of all that had passed since he had discovered their residence in St. Mary's Terrace; 'and in turn, Ellinor, you will learn that a faithful old lover is not to be despised.'

'I have already learned that,' said Ellinor, her tears beginning to fall hotly as she thought of Robert Wodrow.

'I am glad to hear you say so,' said Sleath, thinking of himself, 'and to find that after all you cannot forget a man who has once loved you—and loves you so fondly still, in spite of the coldness you manifest and the obliquy you heap upon him. How grand it is to forgive!' he continued, attempting to take her hand. 'The literary bear Samuel Johnson never seemed so wretched as a man and a moralist, than when he gloried in loving a
good hater
.'

Ellinor prevented him from capturing her hand by shudderingly retreating to the other end of the saloon. The contrast between the two men—the one who had sought, and still sought, to ensnare, and he whom she had wronged—who loved her so well, and had found, as she thought, a grave in that far away land, burned itself into her heart and brain with growing intensity, and wringing her hands, his name escaped her in a low voice.

'Robert—oh, Robert!'

Would time ever heal—ever conquer her reproachful heart-wound?

Fury gathered in the heart of Sleath.

'So,' said he, 'our mutual friend, Mr. Robert Wodrow, was not born to be hanged, if the newspaper accounts were true, by Jove; ha! ha!'

'Sir?' said Ellinor, scarcely understanding his brutal jest.

'Cheated the gallows—that is all.'

In that speech he revealed the underlying brutality of his nature—of the parvenu—the son of the foundling; and, in his wrath, he followed it up by another home-thrust.

'What will be said of you—what thought, when it becomes known that you have been alone, cruising on board this yacht with us—with
me
?'

He saw without pity the start, the pained flush and pallor that crossed her face by turns, as he coarsely put into words the fear that had been hovering in her own mind.

She tried to reply to his cruel mockery; her white lips unclosed, and then shut again, for her voice died away upon them.

With all his love-making, never once did Sleath's heart—or what passed for that organ—really soften towards the helpless girl, and times there were when he regarded her as a wolf might have done. He still made a mockery of the 'cousin story,' as he called it, and, though Ellinor on one occasion condescended to partially explain it, he did not, and could not, believe it to be anything else than some cunning scheme of Colville; and as that individual, whom he hated, was now in India, he had nothing to fear from him, and only hoped he might soon get 'knocked on the head.'

At times there was something—what shall we call it?—almost savage in the admiration and exultation with which this man regarded the creature who was so entirely at his mercy, and who had been brought to him as flotsam from the sea!

He keenly relished, too, in one sense, all
blasé
as he was, the air of resistance with which she repulsed him; her bearing was so different and apart from that of most of the conventional girls he had generally met—not that he much affected the society of ladies generally.

But he regarded them chiefly as a means of excitement—like champagne, an unruly horse, or a close run at
écarté
, and, so far as Ellinor was concerned, he had a firm desire to prove that his will was the stronger of the two.

At last he left her and went on deck. She stretched out her arms on the saloon table, and bowed her head on them in a kind of dumb despair, as she thought over all the degrading speeches to which she had been subjected.

'Oh,' thought she, 'that I could bury my hot face among the cool, dewy roses that bloom at Birkwoodbrae! There I think I should get well—get well—get strong and be myself again perhaps.'

But instead, she was fated to get worse, for the moment the fog lifted, sail was made on the yacht, and—as stated in the beginning of this chapter—the horrors of sea-sickness assailed her, and she lay prostrate in the little cabin.

She had often been afraid to eat or drink, lest what she partook of might be drugged; she had read or heard of such things; but she was past all such reflections or considerations now.

There was something daring and lawless in the conduct of Sir Redmond with reference to the whole affair; but of that, too, she was—for the present time—oblivious.