"Hardly from a tyrant."
"If you are thinking of tyrants, it may be so. Say the tyrant dies?"
"The prison-gates are unlocked and out comes a skeleton. But why will you talk of skeletons! The very name of mountain seems life in comparison with any other subject."
"I assure you," said Vernon, with the fervour of a man lighting on an actual truth in his conversation with a young lady, "it's not the first time I have thought you would be at home in the Alps. You would walk and climb as well as you dance."
She liked to hear Clara Middleton talked of, and of her having been thought of, and giving him friendly eyes, barely noticing that he was in a glow, she said: "If you speak so encouragingly I shall fancy we are near an ascent."
"I wish we were," said he.
"We can realize it by dwelling on it, don't you think?"
"We can begin climbing."
"Oh!" she squeezed herself shadowily.
"Which mountain shall it be?" said Vernon, in the right real earnest tone.