And Hugh Ingelow was near, and she
loved Hugh. Oh, if she had never refused him--bravest, noblest heart
that ever beat! the most generous gentleman the Creator ever made!
Alone Mollie sat--alone, but lonely no longer; for yonder, drifting
lazily into the setting tide, the sunset glowing above and around it,
floated the snow-white skift. In the amber mist fluttered the banner
of blue--the banner of hope--and there, lounging easily, with his face
turned to her, was the man she loved, handsome Hugh! her beloved--her
darling!
"And, oh! that I were by his side," Mollie exclaimed, in her rhapsody,
"never, never to leave it again."
Solitude and imprisonment had done this willful child some good, you
see. They had taught her to think--to know herself. She never could be
the same crude, madcap Mollie again.
The last, low, yellow gleam died out of the sunset--slowly crept up
the twilight, palely, gemmed with stars. A round, red moon showed its
crimson disk above the silvery horizon line, whitening as it arose,
until it trailed a flood of crystal radiance over the purple bosom of
the sleeping sea.
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