Did Sheila really
love this terrible thing, with its strange voice talking in the night,
or did she not secretly dread it and shudder at it when she sang
of all that old sadness? There was ringing in his ears the "Wail of
Dunevegan" as he listened for a while to the melancholy plashing
of the waves all around the lonely shores; and there was a cry of
"Dunevegan, oh! Dunevegan, oh!" weaving itself curiously with those
wild pictures of Sheila in London which were still floating before his
imagination.
He walked away around the coast, seeing almost nothing of the objects
around him, but conscious of the solemn majesty of the mountains and
the stillness of the throbbing stars. He could have called aloud,
"Sheila! Sheila!" but that all the place seemed associated with her
presence; and might he not turn suddenly to find her figure standing
by him, with her face grown wild and pale as it was in the ballad,
and a piteous and awful look in her eyes? Did the figure accuse him?
He scarcely dared look round, lest there should be a phantom Sheila
appealing to him for compassion, and complaining against him with her
speechless eyes for a wrong that he could not understand. He fled from
her, but he knew she was there; and all the love in his heart went out
to her as if beseeching her to go away and forsake him, and forgive
him the injury of which she seemed to accuse him.
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