Cecil was ashamed to confess how many she had read already.  “You must go by that boat to-morrow night, I suppose?” said she, meditatively.

“Yes; no help for it.  But as I shall send my papers in at once, most probably I can get leave till I am gazetted out.”

“Oh!  I wish that mauvais quart-d’heure with papa were over,” sighed Cecil.  “All to-morrow in suspense!”

“Cecil,” said Du Meresq, in his most persuasive tones, “it is better to be prepared for the worst.  I know you are true as steel, and far firmer than most girls.  Promise that you will marry me,—­with his consent, if possible; if not, without.”

They had landed just before, and were walking up to the house.  What presentiment checked the unqualified pledge he would have imposed on her?

“I promise,” she cried, “to marry no one else while you are alive.”

CHAPTER XXIII.

LOLA’S BIRTHDAY.

  She is not fair to outward view,
    As many maidens be;
  Her loveliness I never knew
    Until she smiled on me. 
  Oh! then I saw her eye was bright,
  A well of love—­a spring of light
                —­Hartley Coleridge.

Mrs. Rolleston had passed a terrible day of anxiety.  The sudden rising of the wind so soon after their departure first aroused her alarm, which, as the utmost limit of the time they were to be away passed, became augmented tenfold.  The absence of the Colonel, who had gone inland, at first a relief, now increased her desperation, for there was no one to make an effort for their preservation or to ascertain their fate.  She and Bluebell, who suffered scarcely less, could only rush to the boatmen for either consolation or assistance.  They got little of the former, for with the usual propensity of the lower classes to make the worst of everything, they expressed a decided opinion that the canoe so overladen could not have weathered the squall.

“But they might have put in somewhere,” cried Bluebell, seeing Mrs. Rolleston speechless with consternation.

“How far would they be got, ma’am?”

“They must have been gone nearly an hour before the wind began to howl.”

“Then they’d be nigh the black rocks, and no place to land closer than Coonwood, unless they turned back and got on to Sheep Island.”

“Oh! go and see!” cried Mrs. Rolleston, beside herself with terror, palling out her purse in answer to the mute unwillingness on the man’s face.

“It won’t be no manner of use; but if it will be a satisfaction to you, ma’am,” looking expressively at the purse, “and my mate will come with me, I’ll go out for them.  They ought to come down ’ansome,” he muttered, “if I finds the bodies.”