When they had taken their places, Katharine turned to Clifford, who was looking radiantly happy, and she said:
"Row quickly, row quickly, Professor Thornton. I want to get away from here."
"Do you dislike the great caravanserai so much?" he said. "Well, you have only to turn round, and there you have the Jutenheim mountains in all their glory. Are they not beautiful?"
She looked at the snow-capped mountains; but for the moment their beauty scarcely reached her. She was thinking of that voice. When had she heard it? And where?
"The mountains, the mountains of Norway!" cried Clifford. "Ah, I've always loved the North, and each time I come I love it more passionately, and this time——"
No one was listening to him. Gerda and Ejnar were busy trying to see what was in the bottom of the lake, and Katharine seemed lost in her own thoughts. Suddenly she remembered where she had heard that voice. It was Mrs Stanhope's. The words rushed to her lips; she glanced at Clifford, saw and felt his happiness, and was silent. But now she knew why the sound of that voice had aroused feelings of apprehension and anxiety, and an instinctive desire to ward off harm both from the man and the boy.
For directly she heard it, she had been eager to hurry Clifford away, and relieved that Alan had gone on with Jens.
[CHAPTER X.]
So they rowed across the lake, he remembering nothing except the joy of being with her, and she trying to forget that any discord of unrest had broken in upon the harmonies of her heart. They landed on swampy ground, and made their way over rare beautiful mosses, ling, and low growth of bilberry and cloudberry. Ejnar and Gerda became lost to all human emotions, and gave themselves up to the joys of their profession. Long after all the rest of the little company had met on the rocky main road to the Saeters, the two botanists lingered in that fairyland swamp. At last Jens and Alan were sent back to find them, and in due time they reappeared, with a rapt expression on their faces and many treasures in their wallets. The country grew wilder and grimmer as the pilgrims mounted higher. The road, or track, was very rough, scarcely fit for a cariole or stol-kjaerre, and the Swedish mathematical Professor felt anxiously concerned about the comfort and safety of the little Swedish artist, who was a bad walker, and who therefore preferred to jolt along in the gig. But she did not mind. She laughed at his fears, and whispered to Katharine with her pretty English accent:
"My lover is afraid for my safeness!"