“You knew it when you were young, Mossgray,” said Lilias, “and it is beside you still.”
She still felt this as something strangely gladdening; to dwell in one place a lifetime; to appropriate it all; to have friendships with its hills and its rivers; to feel that it was home.
“Yes,” said Mossgray, looking back at his old house as it lay in the shade, from which the slanting light of the western sun had nearly passed away, “yes, it is a happiness—it is a pleasant thread, this river, on which to hang the memories of one’s life; there was no water, Lilias, in your Cumberland glen?”
“Only a brook,” was the answer, “and we used to sit and watch it, for its way was too steep to follow—and sometimes—”
Ah, that climbing sorrow! how it returned and returned again!
“But you have travelled,” said Mossgray, gently leading her from this painful recollection; “you have scarcely gone so far as I have, but you have seen many places:—let me hear of your wanderings, Lilias.”
“Have you been far away, Mossgray?”
“Very far,” said Mossgray, with a mournful smile, “and my furthest journey was a very sad one; I went to seek a dear friend, and I found him not—that was in India.”
“In India!” A flush of sudden light came over the face which turned to him so earnestly.
“Yes. Are you interested in that great world, Lilias?”