Sometimes she was seized with the thought of a ship appearing suddenly
upon the horizon: the _Leopoldine_ hastening home. Then she would
suddenly make an instinctive movement to rise, and rush to look out at
the ocean, to see whether it were true.
But she would fall back. Alas! where was this _Leopoldine_ now? Where
could she be? Out afar, at that awful distance of Iceland,--forsaken,
crushed, and lost.
All ended by a never-fading vision appearing to her,--an empty,
sea-tossed wreck, slowly and gently rocked by the silent gray and
rose-streaked sea; almost with soft mockery, in the midst of the vast
calm of deadened waters.
Two o'clock in the morning.
It was at night especially that she kept attentive to approaching
footsteps; at the slightest rumor or unaccustomed noise her temples
vibrated: by dint of being strained to outward things, they had become
fearfully sensitive.
Two o'clock in the morning. On this night as on others, with her hands
clasped and her eyes wide open in the dark, she listened to the wind
sweeping in never-ending tumult over the heath.
Suddenly a man's footsteps hurried along the path! At this hour who
would pass now? She drew herself up, stirred to the very soul, her
heart ceasing to beat.
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