Perhaps other delights than the scenery would afford rose in bright anticipation, and caused her to utter this strange, wild wish.
"You forget the awful winters, Florence, when you would perish beneath the sky-piled snows," said her father.
"O, I would not mind them!" she answered. "I'd have a little habitation, hidden down among the rocks, where I could sit by a cosey fire and listen to the billowy blasts that swept over my home in the clouds."
"Alone, Florence?" asked her father. "Would you dwell alone in a place so wild with terrors?"
"O, no!" said she quickly. "I would have one companion."
"And who should that be?"
"The one I loved best on earth," replied she, turning her clear eyes on her father's face.
"And that is"——he paused, and added, interrogatively, "Rufus Malcome?"
Florence started. Her features suddenly lost their glowing light, and darkened into a contemptuous frown.
"Don't breathe that name here!" she exclaimed, almost fiercely. "It is not worthy to be spoken in the air of God's own taintless purity."