So Clement found her when, for her sake, he tore himself away from the witchery of the marvellous scene.
"I come!" he cried to her from a distance. "It is fortunate that you did not go with me. The path above is so narrow that the smallest slip would cost a life! How unfathomably deep it plunged, and roared and sprang up in clouds of spray, till one's senses were lost! Feel how sprinkled I am with the fine water-spray!--but what is the matter with you? You are as cold as ice, and your lips tremble. Come--I was wrong to leave you in the chilly air--God forbid that it should have made you ill!"
She remained obstinately silent, and permitted herself to be led back to the house. The rector's wife was alarmed. The girl's sweet, delicate features were strangely disturbed. They hastened to give her a warm draught and to put her in her bed, without learning more from her than that she was not well.
And ill, indeed, she was--and so ill, that she longed for it all to be over. She hated the life that showed itself so hostile to her. In bitter, God-forgotten thinking she lay, and of her own will broke the last threads which bound her to mankind. "I will go out to morrow," she said, darkly, to herself; "he shall lead me himself to the cliff where a false step costs a life--and my death will not cost him much! Why should he for ever bear the burden which he has laid on himself out of mere compassion?"
Ever stronger the unholy determination twined itself about her heart. What had become of the old bright, loving courage in this short month of concealed sorrow? She even thought on the consequences of her sin without horror, and said, defyingly, to herself, "They will manage to become reconciled to it as they have become reconciled to my remaining blind, and he will be freed from that picture of misery that destroys all his pleasure in that beautiful world he loves so much." That was ever the last thought when a feeling of uncertainty rose within her.
In the room next to hers, only separated from it by a thin partition, sat the rector and his wife. Clement was still loitering about under the trees without, unable to tear himself from the stars, and the mountains, and the muffled music of the waterfall.
"I feel very uneasy," said the rector's wife, "at Mary's being so sad and reserved; the slightest occurrence agitates her. If it lasts she will be quite worn out. I wish you would talk to her, and try to persuade her not to take what cannot be altered so deeply to heart."
"I am afraid that I should speak in vain," said the rector. "If what she has already been taught, and the love of her parents, and our daily care of her, have not spoken to her heart, mere human words will be of no avail. If she had learned humility before God, she would have submitted to his will, which has left her so much to be thankful for, with gratitude instead of murmuring."
"But he has taken much from her."
"Ay, indeed! but not all, or for ever! That is my hope and my prayer. The power of loving, and of looking on all as worthless compared to the love of God and man, seems to have gone from her; but it returns when we return to God! As she now is she longs not for him, she hugs her discontent and hatred too closely to her heart--but her heart is too true to bear this miserable companionship much longer; then when it is free from discontent, God will enter into it, and love will find its old place again, and then she will have an inward light to guide her, though night may still hang before her eyes."