Thus he went on drawing the meshes closer about his feet, while the moonlight shone on the sea, and poor Meredith wrote his book, and Lauderdale, as sleepless as his charge, anxiously pondered the new state of affairs. At home that same moon suggested Colin to more minds than one in the peaceful country over which the March winds were blowing. Miss Matty thought of him, looking out over the Wodensbourne avenue, where the great trees stood stately in the moonlight with a glory on their heads. She was so late because she had been at a ball, where her cousin Harry had made himself highly disagreeable, and where, prompted by his sulky looks, she had carried a little flirtation a hair’s-breadth too far--which was not a comfortable consciousness. Why she should think of Colin under such circumstances it would be hard to say; but the thoughts of a young woman at three o’clock in the morning are not expected to be logical. She thought of him with a shadow of the same feeling that made the Psalmist long for the wings of a dove; though, if Miss Matty had but known it, her reception--could she have made her escape to her former worshipper at that moment--would have been of a disappointing character. And about the same time the Mistress woke out of her quiet sleep, and saw the broad, white flood of light streaming through the little square window of the room in which Colin was born. Her fancy was busy enough about him night and day; and she fancied she could see, as clear as in a picture, the ship speeding on, with perhaps its white wings spread over the glistening sea, and the moon stealing in at the cabin window, and caressing her boy, who must be fast asleep, resting and gathering strength, with new life breathing in upon him in every breath of favourable wind that crisped the sleeping sea. Such was the vision that came to the mind of the Mistress when she woke in the “dead of night,” and saw the moonlight at her window. “God bless my Colin,” she said to herself, as she closed her tender eyes; and in the meantime Colin, thinking nothing of his old love, and not very much of his home, was busily engaged in weaving for himself another tangle in the varied web of existence--although none of the people most interested in him--except Lauderdale, who saw a faint shadow of the future--had the least idea that this night at sea was of any moment in his life. He did not know it himself, though he was conscious of a certain thrill of pleasant excitement and youthful awe, half voluntary, half real. And so the new scene got arranged for this new act of the wonderful drama; and all the marvellous, delicate influences of Providence and will, poising and balancing each other, began to form and shape the further outlines of his life. CHAPTER XXIX.