"But it is true ?" he said, looking searchingly at me.
"Nobody knows it, Hugh," I said. "Not my mother nor my father."
The silence fell again and again became painful. The others of our party were well in advance. - We caught no glimpse of them yet.
"We will be friends, Mr. Marshall?" - I said anxiously.
"Yes, we will be friends, Daisy; but I cannot be a friend near you. I cannot see you any longer. I shall be a wreck now, I suppose. You might have made me - anything !"
"You will make yourself a noble name and place in the world," I said, laying my hand on his arm. "The name and the place of a servant of God. Won't you, Hugh? Then you will come to true joy, and honour - the joy and honour that God gives. Let me have the joy of knowing that! I have done so much mischief, - let me know that the mischief is mended."
"What mischief have you done?" he asked, with his voice roughened by feeling.
"I did not know what I was leading you - and others - into."
"You led to nothing; except as the breath of a rose leads one to stretch out one's hand for it," he answered. "The rose has as much design!"
He turned aside hastily, stooped for a little twig that lay on the roadside, and began assiduously breaking it up. And the silence was not interrupted again, till we came in sight of our friends in advance of us, leisurely walking to let us come up. Then Hugh and I plunged into conversation; but what it was about I have not the least remembrance. It lasted though, till we joined company with the rest of our party, and the talk became general. Still I do not know what we talked about. I had a feeling of thunder in the air, though the very stillness of sunlight beauty was on the smooth water and the hilly shore; and I saw clouds rising and gathering, even though Mont Blanc as we returned that evening showed rosy hues to its very summit in the clear heaven. I can hardly tell how, my mother's manner or something in it, made me sure both of the clouds and the thunder. It was full of grace, tact and spirit, to such a point of admiration. Yet I read in it, yes, and in that very grace and spirit, a certain state of the nervous powers which told of excitement at work, or a fund of determination gathering; the electric forces massing somewhere; and this luminous play only foretold the lightning.