"Ay, my little truant," said he, advancing to meet her. "So you tired of your solitary contemplation, after all."
"I found this fair lady roaming among the rocks, and ventured to escort her to the party," said the gentleman, bowing politely, as he delivered Florence to the care of her father.
"Thank you, thank you, sir," returned Major Howard, casting a scrutinizing glance toward the young man as he turned away.
"My daughter, what do you think of this scene?" he asked, turning to her.
The glowing happiness, which lighted her features with almost supernatural beauty, astonished him.
"That I have never seen aught so awfully grand and majestic before," returned she, in a tone of wild enthusiasm.
"Does it surpass Niagara?"
"Infinitely," answered she. "Niagara is grand, but it is a single, solitary grandeur. Here, our vision encompasses a boundless expanse of dread, terrific sublimities; a sea of towering Alpine summits on every hand, with fearfully-yawning gulfs and chasms; tremendous precipices, over whose dizzy edges, as we look down, and down, and down into the abysmal depths of bright green valleys, starred over with tiny white cottages, and graced with winding rivers and waving fields of grain, we mark the dark straight lines of unnumbered railways, with their flying trains of cars; countless sheets of water flashing like molten silver; the spires and domes of numerous hamlets, villages, and cities; and, far in the distance, the broad Atlantic's dark blue surface, jotted over with white gleaming sails. O, father, father!" she exclaimed, almost wild with her emotions of awe and admiration, "is there in all the world a spectacle to equal that which feasts our vision now?"
"It is a grand scene," said the father, participating in his daughter's vivid enjoyment. "Look far on those blue summits that bound the prospect to the west and north. Those singularly-formed peaks you notice are called Camel's Rump and Mansfield mountains."
"Would I might forever dwell here!" exclaimed Florence, her eyes roaming in every direction, as though her soul could never drink its fill of the sublimity around.