“Is there no way in which I can serve you?” he replied with a sort of nonchalant hauteur,
“Yes; by never mentioning this little circumstance again. I but did for your son what I would do for any fellow-creature. It was a mere act of humanity, I assure you.”
Mr. Harley, quite taken aback, chilled, and withal deeply hurt, rose at once, and with a stately bow and a cold “good-night,” parted from the rescuer of his child, the young hero, with whom five minutes before he would have divided his fortune. Tired and indifferent, Ashley flung himself upon his bed, and slept soundly till late in the morning; then rose with a headache, made a light breakfast, and hurried down to Table-Rock with his sister, who had been up since daybreak, impatiently awaiting his appearance.
Ashley was long lost in that first contemplation of the grand scene before him; his soul seemed born to a new life—a new world of beauty, and power, and dread, overwhelming sublimity.
The day was wondrously beautiful, and floods of sunlight were mingling with the waters, and pouring over that stupendous precipice; into the darkest deeps fell the fearless, glad sunbeams, sounding like golden plummets those terrible abysses. There hung the rainbow, and Ellen, as she gazed, remarked a wild-bird, who seemed sporting in the spray, pass through the illuminated arch, and become glorified in its midst; and it seemed to her like an innocent, confiding spirit, coming near to the might and grandeur of Deity, through the beautiful gateway of love.
Ashley was at length roused from his trance of high-wrought rapture, by feeling a small, timid hand laid on his arm, and turned to see Master Fred standing at his side, with a faint glow on his cheek, and an affectionate pleasure shining in his sunken eye. The lad, to-day something of an invalid, was accompanied and half-supported by a servant. Ashley felt an instinctive attraction toward this child, who was a fine, intelligent boy, by the way, and talked with him more kindly and familiarly than he had ever felt disposed to converse with the elder Harley.
On leaving the rock, the Ashleys overtook Mr. Harley with his wife and daughter. Juliet blushed painfully, as her eye met that of William, but he bowed and smiled, as she bade the brother and sister, “Good-morning.” Mr. Harley merely lifted his hat, but Mrs. Harley, who had been so absorbed the evening previous by her intense anxiety for her son, as almost to forget his brave rescuer, now, dropping the arm of her husband, and grasping the hand of the young student, poured the whole story of her boundless gratitude, of her deep, immeasurable joy, into his not willing ear. But after all, the blessing of that mother sunk into his heart—a good heart, though somewhat wayward, and sadly out of harmony with life just now.
A short time after this, Ashley again saw Miss Harley. They met in a fearful place, behind the sheet, on Termination Rock—the secret, dread abode, the dim, awful sanctuary of sublimity.
Even then, Ashley, exalted by poetry, solemnized by grandeur as he was, could but remark the miracle of beauty which made the young lady look lovely as ever in the rude, grotesque costume, the clumsy waterproof dress provided for this adventurous expedition. He next noticed the fearless, yet awe-struck enthusiasm, the high, rapt expression of her face, as, sheltering her eyes from the storm of spray with her fair hand, she gazed upward, to where the huge columns of water, dark-green, and snowy-white, leaped over the shelving precipice, and plunged with a thunderous roar into the black abyss at her side.
In after days he often thought of that fair creature, as she thus appeared—so young, so delicate, yet so brave—so lost to herself almost to life, in a deep trance of awe and adoration. He often thought of her thus, as his last sight of her; for after this they parted—he and Ellen passing over to the American side, saw no more of the Harleys during their brief stay at the Falls.