"'Too much.'
"I felt the blood rush into my face with very shame at this hasty admission. When I ventured to look up, a faint wave of color was dying out from his face, leaving it grave and pale. Was he condemning me already? That moment Mr. Dennison came through the front door, looking cool and tranquil in his dress of pure linen, which was scarcely whiter than his hair.
"'Come,' he said, in jovial good humor, 'throw by your books, and let us have breakfast.'
"I was glad to see him,—grateful that he had released me from the thraldom of those eyes.
"We rode out that day. A waterfall some eight miles off was almost the only point of interest that I had not visited, and there our ride terminated. A colored groom always rode after us, but his presence was no check upon conversation, and sometimes he loitered behind so far that we lost sight of him altogether. In fact, our whole excursion was one long tête-à-tête.
"Lawrence had been grave and preoccupied all the way, but when we quitted our horses and went down to the fall, his spirits rose, and he looked around upon the scene with animation. The cataract, for it was little more, leaped through a chasm between two precipices, formed by a vast rock, which some convulsion of nature had split asunder. Down this chasm the crystal waters plunged nearly a hundred feet, like a stream of shooting diamonds, covering the sides of each precipice with fleeces of emerald-green moss. From these mosses sprung ferns that waved like ten thousand plumes in the current of air that blew coolly down the ravine, keeping every thing in graceful motion. Young trees added their luxuriance to the scene, crowning the summit of the rocks like a diadem, and a host of clustering vines fell over the edge of the precipice, streaming downwards like banners on a battlement, and sometimes sweeping out with the current.
"We entered the ravine first, and stood within the very spray of the cataract; for the stream widened out directly after it left the chasm, and went rioting off among boulders and broken rocks, across which a plank bridge had been flung, which commanded a full view of the fall. We stood a while enjoying the view, and then moved up a footpath that ran along the right-hand precipice, from which we could look down the ravine, and attain an entirely different view from the one we had left. The path was broken and abrupt, but this was scarcely an objection to us. There was something exhilarating in the exercise, and I rather liked the vigorous climbing after so long a ride on horseback; even with the obstruction of a long skirt flung over one arm, it was scarcely fatiguing. We had nearly reached the top of the precipice, I had taken Mr. Lawrence's arm, for he insisted that I must be out of breath, and I was protesting against his assertion, when a large dog rushed out of the undergrowth, which grew thickly on that side of the path, as if frightened at something, and made a plunge directly against me.
"My arm was torn from its support, I staggered—reeled on the verge of the precipice, flung out my arms, and plunged down—down—down into chaos. I had neither struck the earth nor water, something hard and firm girded my body. My face was smothered in green, damp leaves, and my hair already dripped with falling spray.
"I heard the roar and rush of waters all around me, and through it a fierce cry as of some one in agony. I attempted to move, but the branches that supported me swayed downward, and with a desperate spring I caught at the stem of a wild vine, which clung to and spread over the face of the precipice, twisting itself in with the young tree, which but for that would have broken under my weight. Looking upward through the blinding mist, I saw a white face bending over the precipice, and heard a voice hoarse with terror calling upon me to hold firmly and keep still.
"I did hold firmly, but the trembling of my frame shook the tree and clinging shrubs with a dangerous vibration, and it seemed to me that their roots were slowly tearing out from the soil which held them in the cleft of the rock. This shook me with an awful terror; I tried to close my eyes and be still, but that was impossible. I saw the blue sky bending so calm and quiet above me. I saw the quivering greenness that clothed the rocky face of the precipice, and ten thousand tiny white flowers trembling through it so close that my face almost touched them. The fall, like a sheet of melted glass, rolled and plunged so near, that it seemed ready to leap upon me. My appalled eyes turned shuddering from a vast whirlpool of foam that rioted thirty feet beneath me, shooting forward, curving over, and plunging down great watery hollows, then leaping suddenly upward, as if maddened that their prey had not fallen at once into the white caldron of their wrath.