"True; besides we can come back by the sands."
He did not reply. I took his arm; we traversed the house, and went down the steep path, which had seen some of our first walks in the pleasant lanes and meadows of Leigh.
"Only think," I observed after a while, "I have brought the flowers you gave me. They will be quite withered by the time we are home again."
Cornelius stopped abruptly, and held me back.
"Mind that stone," he said, "you might have hurt yourself. Why did you not look before you?"
"Because I feel as if I trod on air," I replied gaily, "and when one feels so, it seems quite ridiculous to trouble one's self with stones, &c. I don't know when I have been in a mood so light and happy. I feel as if this green lane need have no end or turning, and this pleasant day no sunset."
He did not answer. My flights of fancy won no response from his graver mood; the dazzling brightness of the deep blue sky, the green freshness of the fields, seemed lost upon him, lost the charm and sweetness of the day. But even his unusual seriousness could not subdue the buoyancy and life which I felt rising within me. My blood flowed, as it only flows in youth or in spring, light, warm and rapid, making of every sensation a brief delight, of every aspect and change of nature an exquisite enjoyment, tempered with that under-current of subtle pain which runs through over-wrought emotions, and subdues at their very highest pitch the sweetest and purest joys of mortal sense. I walked on, like one in a dream, scarcely heeding where we went. At length Cornelius stopped, and said:
"Shall we not rest here awhile?"
We stood in that green and lonely nook, by the banks of the quiet stream where we had once lingered through the hours of a summer noon. It so chanced that though we had since then often passed by the spot, we had never made it our resting-place. The thought of once more spending here an hour or two was pleasant. I took off my bonnet and suspended it from the branches of the willow; I sat again beneath it; Cornelius unconsciously took the very attitude in which I remembered him—half reclining on the bank, with his brow resting on the palm of his hand. The same bending trees above, with their glimpses of blue sky; the same clear stream flowing on, with its silent world below, and its green wilderness beyond; the same murmur of low and broken sounds around us; the same sweet sense of freshness and solitude made past weeks seem like one unbroken summer day. I felt that sitting there, I could forget how quickly pass on hours, how rapid is the course of time.
"Daisy!" suddenly said Cornelius, looking up, "how is it you do not ask me what I had to tell you last night?"