"I have indeed spoken too far, and it is better that we should not meet again," he said, in a voice quite as low and almost as broken as her own. "I understand you, now: forgive me if I have caused you pain in making the discovery; and good-bye!"
He wrung the young girl's hand almost painfully and was turning away.
"You are going now? Shall I not see you again?" she asked.
"No matter—I do not know—I cannot tell. I may see you at the house before I leave. If not, and we never meet again, God bless you, Margaret Hayley, the only woman I have ever loved!"
He stooped suddenly and kissed her hand, then turned, drew his hat over his brow and walked rapidly up the road towards the Crawford. Margaret, oppressed by some strange feeling, could not speak. She could only look back and catch a last glimpse of him as he turned a bend in the road; then sink her face in her hands and sob aloud as if she had buried a second love not less dear than the first.
When she returned to the house, half an hour after, Horace Townsend was already gone—flying away towards Littleton with four horses. Captain Hector Coles was in a better humor, being already advised of the fact, than he had exhibited at any time during the previous week. Mrs. Burton Hayley, when his going away was mentioned, made some appropriate remarks on the rashness of any person exposing himself as the young man had done the day before, unless he was fully prepared for death and judgment, and remarked that she was rather glad that so wild a person was not going over to the Glen with them. In both these opinions Captain Coles fully coincided. Margaret spoke of the departure as a very matter-of-course affair indeed, and did not even see the glance by which the gallant Captain intended to convey his full recollection of the scene on the top of Mount Willard.
Next day that trio, with a dozen of others, went on to the Glen House for the carriage-ascent of Mount Washington.
And with that announcement and a single scene following, concludes the somewhat long connection held by the White Mountains, their scenery and summer incidents, with the fortunes of the various personages figuring prominently in this life-history.
That scene was a very brief one and took place three days after the departure from the Crawford, when Margaret Hayley, her mother and Captain Hector Coles, had made the ascent of Washington from the Glen House by carriage and stood beside the High Altar that has before been mentioned. When Mrs. Burton Hayley was signalizing her arrival at the top by repeating certain passages from the big book on the carved stand, which she seemed to have an idea fitted that elevated point in her summer wanderings, and which probably might have done so if she had quoted them with any thing approaching to correctness. When Margaret Hayley, breathing the same air that Horace Townsend had breathed a few days before, and aware that she was doing so, joined to the rapt emotions of the place and the hour, something of the sad glory of human love and grief, stretching out her mental hands to God whose awful majesty stood before her and around her in the great peak lifting itself to heaven, and praying that out of darkness might some day come light, as once it had done on that other and more awful peak of Sinai. When Captain Hector Coles, above all such considerations and with a keen eye to his personal "main chances", fancied that another declaration beside the High Altar on Washington would not only be a "good thing to do" but a proceeding much more likely to meet with a favorable response than if ventured on ground of less altitude.